Joss Crowley's film is close to a definitive chronicle, as it explores the paradox of Chrissie Hynde: the smoldering punk who was also the most majestic songwriter of that scene. As a rock star, Chrissie Hynde has always been a bit of a paradox — gnarly but cerebral, ferocious yet guarded. And “Pretenders,” Joss Crowley’s sensational and revealing music documentary, shows you that there was a paradox — a glorious one — built into her band.
Formed in London in 1978, the Pretenders emerged from the moment when “punk” had morphed into “new wave.” But there were still musicians around who could claim to be both, and Hynde was one of them. When you listen to “Precious,” which is totally a punk song (it has the potent high-speed sizzle of something by the Ramones), the ice-cold defiance and gutter snarl of Hynde’s singing (“Made me wanna…”), the song’s total fuck-it-all vibe, are undiminished by time. Hynde, with her shag haircut and androgynous toothy scowl, had emerged from the original punk scene (she’d moved to London in her early 20s and even tried to join the Slits), and it left its mark on her.
She was a blistering rocker who was going to be no one’s doll. And yet…as fierce and defining as a song like “Precious” was, it doesn’t represent what I ultimately cherish about the Pretenders. To say what that is, I have to use a word that risks sounding innocuous: They were tuneful.
They came out of the world of rage and nihilism and buzzcuts and heroin, but there was an incandescence to the songs Hynde wrote, and to how the band sounded. For years, rock critics of the post-new wave era struggled to come up with different words to communicate the concept of “jangly guitar.” But it was James Honeyman-Scott, the lead guitarist of the Pretenders, who owned jangly guitar, and in some ways invented it. He had a sound that rang.
And Hynde, though she had the feeling of punk in her bones, was the most romantic songwriter of that scene. I don’t mean romantic as in “love songs,” but as in conjuring the majestic romanticism of life. Just listen to “Kid,” a song so happy and sad at the same time that it’s worthy of the Beatles.
How Chrissie Hynde wound up being that kind of songwriter is anyone’s guess. Songwriting is one of the true mysteries: a gift that drops into certain people from the heavens. But Hynde’s vocal expression was just as magical.
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