Purchase
Reckless, September 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
My Life as a Pretender
Doubleday
September 2015
On Sale: September 8, 2015
Featuring: Chrissie Hynde
336 pages ISBN: 0385540612 EAN: 9780385540612 Kindle: B00U4V6KUO Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Memoir
Chrissie Hynde, for nearly four decades the
singer/songwriter/ undisputed leader of the Pretenders, is a
justly legendary figure.
Few other rock stars
have managed to combine her swagger, sexiness, stage
presence, knack for putting words to music, gorgeous voice
and just all-around kick-assedness into such a potent and
alluring package. From “Tatooed Love Boys” and “Brass in
Pocket” to “Talk of the Town” and “Back on the Chain Gang,”
her signature songs project a unique mixture of toughness
and vulnerability that millions of men and women have
related to. A kind of one- woman secret tunnel linking punk
and new wave to classic guitar rock, she is one of the great
luminaries in rock history. Now, in her
no-holds-barred memoir Reckless, Chrissie Hynde
tells, with all the fearless candor, sharp humor and depth
of feeling we’ve come to expect, exactly where she came from
and what her crooked, winding path to stardom entailed. Her
All-American upbringing in Akron, Ohio, a child of postwar
power and prosperity. Her soul capture, along with tens of
millions of her generation, by the gods of sixties rock who
came through Cleveland—Mitch Ryder, David Bowie, Jeff Back,
Paul Butterfield and Iggy Pop among them. Her shocked
witness in 1970 to the horrific shooting of student antiwar
protestors at Kent State. Her weakness for the sorts of men
she calls “the heavy bikers” and “the get-down boys.” Her
flight from Ohio to London in 1973 essentially to escape the
former and pursue the latter. Her scuffling years as a brash
reviewer for New Musical Express, shop girl at the
Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood boutique 'Craft Must
Wear Clothes But The Truth Loves To Go Naked', first-hand
witness to the birth of the punk movement, and serial band
aspirant. And then ,at almost the last possible moment, her
meeting of the three musicians who comprised the original
line-up of The Pretenders, their work on the indelible first
album “The Pretenders,” and the rocket ride to “Instant”
stardom, with all the disorientation and hazards that
involved. The it all comes crashing back down to earth with
the deaths of lead guitarist James Honeyman Scott and
bassist Peter Farndon, leaving her bruised and saddened, but
far from beaten. Because Chrissie Hynde is, among other
things, one of rock’s great survivors. We
are lucky to be living in a golden age of great rock
memoirs. In the aptly titled Reckless, Chrissie Hynde
has given us one of the very best we have. Her mesmerizing
presence radiates from every line and page of this book.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|