Officially breaking a four-year hiatus, the release has proved a fine excuse for Hynde to regroup for a giddily received tour which included a redemptive Glastonbury stop, but in truth she is the only Pretender featured on the record. Anything else I don't want to do, I won't." A day after the Dubai concert – her first in the region for 10 years, by my count, a fact Hynde cannot recall well enough to verify – The Pretenders release an expanded "special edition" of the band's 10th album, the pointedly titled Alone. "I have a Facebook page the record company set up which I've never seen – I don't pay attention to what doesn't interest me – which is why I have time to paint and read. "I never read a review or interview, I don't watch anything back, never look at my bank account, I never ask about sales or chart positions. "I'd rather hang myself than Google myself," she snarls, with no apparent irony.
Not that Hynde had a clue it was out already, sounding baffled when I praise the tune. A brilliant, bluesy duet with Robert Plant emerged on the former Led Zeppelin frontman's new solo album Carry Fire earlier this month. As well as leading her band, she has recorded with everyone from Frank Sinatra to Bruce Willis, UB40 to Emmylou Harris. You don’t really run out of gas until you run out of things to say.” “Some clever in marketing will have to get on it.” Still, kind of a big deal, no? “It’s significant that I’m still making records. “I really hadn’t even thought of that until you pointed it out,” she says laconically.
Next year will mark 40 years since the American singer-songwriter assembled the rock act, although she declares herself blissfully unaware of the impending landmark. Hynde is, of course, best known as the lead singer and driving force of The Pretenders, the band which headlines Dubai's Live on the Lake mini-festival on Thursday. Sharp, prickly and frequently profane at the outset of our conversation, an hour later she is offering me reading recommendations and encouraging me to write a novel, while apologising for keeping me on the phone for so long.Īll the wit, warmth and peculiarity you might hope for, then, from a 66-year-old artist who is variously held up as punk’s first authentic female voice, a rock ‘n’ roll survivor, feminist hero and uncomfortable fashion icon. L ike a glacier in the throes of climate change, Chrissie Hynde is cold and jagged, but quick to thaw.
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