Chrissie Hynde: Punk at Ground Zero and the Birth of the Pretenders

Years spent at ground zero of UK punk. Years of almost-bands, near-misses, and stolen moments on the sidelines. Sex-shop violence, marriage schemes with the Sex Pistols, coin-studded belts, bicycle chains, and a woman who was always there as history was being made. Listen to find out how Chrissie Hynde survived the birth of punk, dens of squalor, and attacks by jilted lovers – only to stop time and finally answer back as the leader of The Pretenders. For a full list of contributors, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.disgracelandpod.com/ To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠ disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 0:43Speaker 02

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• 1:35Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 1:53Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about being there, about showing up early, about standing close enough to history that you can feel the heat coming off of it. This is about a woman who found herself in the future, watching bands form, watching cultures collide, and the world being remade in real time. Not as a star, not yet anyways, but as a witness and a survivor. This is also the story of an unprovoked attack, about studded belts, bicycle chains, and a gun stashed underneath the bar. It's about two marriage proposals and a woman who wasn't about to be tied down. A woman who responded to the chaos,

• 2:37Jake Brennan?

  violence, and loss surrounding her by making a lot of noise. This is a story about Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders. So of course, it's a story about great music.

• 2:53Jake Brennan?

  Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called, "Are You Ready Girls MK2." I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "Les Freaks" by Chic. And why would I play you that specific slice of "Stranded Outside Studio 54 Cheese"? Could I afford it?

• 3:20Jake Brennan?

  Because that was the number one song in America on January 20, 1979. And that was the day that Chrissie Hynde's band, The Pretenders, released their first single. A hard-fought, hard-won victory for someone who had spent years lurking on the sidelines as The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and UK punk at large were busy being born. On this episode, punk at ground zero, chaos, violence, loss, survival, the origins of The Pretenders, and Chrissie Hynde. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 4:22Jake Brennan?

  She was there. She was there in 1972 when the Starman, Ziggy Stardust, first fell to Earth and landed somewhere in Ohio. She was there in London in 1976. She watched Mick Jones and Joe Strummer meet and play together for the first time. She heard Joe say to Mick, "Don't do it that way. You'll never make a dime." And she was there when The Clash rehearsed for the first time, The Damned, too. Anyone could see, they were born to kill. She was there when two members of The Sex Pistols agreed to marry her so that she could get her citizenship in England. And she was there in 1977 at The Roxy when Don Letts, the Rebel Dread, spun reggae and

• 5:07Jake Brennan?

  dub records at a punk show. She watched as the culture clashed in real time and in stereo. She was there in 1981 in Milwaukee when the Violent Femmes were just buskers on a dirty street corner, waiting to be plucked from obscurity. Chrissie Hynde was there when punk rock and new wave took their first steps. But first, she was here, on the campus of Kent State University in 1970. Tin soldiers in Nixon's coming, when the crack of discharged National Guard rifles echoed nearby. The scene was chaos. Thousands of students refusing to leave.

• 5:52Jake Brennan?

  They were thinking of Cambodia as flanks of olive green reflected in the whites of their eyes. Rocks and tear gas soared through the air. Car windows smashed. American flags burned. Garbage cans rolled into the middle of the street, their contents in flames. The ROTC building smoldered in the near distance. The guardsmen were up on the hill now. They were outnumbered, but they had the power. They had the M1s. They turned and faced the angry, confused student body. Clarity was coming, in the form of a bullet. The guardsmen raised their weapons, and then, they fired.

• 6:38Jake Brennan?

  For thirteen seconds, shots rang out. Nearly seventy in total. Kent State freshman Chrissy Heim, who was then still going by Christine, or Christie, or just plain Chris, ran her hands across her arms and legs, assuming she'd be shot. But she was lucky. Unlike the four who now lay on the university campus, dead, or the nine others who'd been injured by the guardsman's gunfire. Chrissy Heim was there. But she couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. The disorder, the violence, the death. None of it made sense. And weeks later, it still didn't make sense.

• 7:22Jake Brennan?

  But Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had released a new single, "Ohio," a fiery piece of protest music that memorialized the unspeakable things Chrissy and thousands of others had witnessed. The song didn't bring those dead kids back, but it brought a feeling of catharsis to those who had been there. Rock and roll was, by definition, cathartic. It defended you, it supported you, it didn't impose its will with brute strength or bend you into conformity, and it gave you freedom. If only for two minutes and fifty-eight seconds at a time, as was the case with the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song.

• 8:02Jake Brennan?

  Even better than a forty-five spinning on a turntable was live rock and roll. Later Chrissy Heim would write, "When a band played, time stood still." A band was time. It was a big bang, one song after another, these sequential eras or periods of history being made. A band was creation. It was life, a life made in God's image, because God was absolutely a rock and roller. God wore his hair in a quiff and wrapped his tattooed deltoids in a biker jacket. Except on Sundays, when he put on a proper suit and tie. But he did it all casual, like the top button of his pressed white shirt unbuttoned,

• 8:47Jake Brennan?

  his tie loosened. A band was not only the way of the world, it was how the world began and how it would end. And Chrissy Hind, for one, would not rest like God on the seventh day, not until she had a band of her own, until she was the one making time stand still. Even before she was an adult, bands were all Chrissy Hind cared about. The other girls could have their boys and their Revlon and all that white picket fence stuff, Chrissy just wanted a Gibson Melody Maker and a copy of The Stooges' Funhouse to play along to. But this being in a band business would never fly in Ohio.

• 9:30Jake Brennan?

  Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Cleveland, they all felt like they were stuck in the past. The future was across the pond, in London, the only place on planet Earth where somebody like Ziggy Stardust could be conceived. It was September 1972. Twenty-one-year-old Chrissy found herself walking next to the Starman himself immediately after his American debut at the Cleveland Music Hall. Was it fate? Was it luck? It didn't matter. It was opportunity. An opportunity to observe, to absorb, to see firsthand how freedom simply took style

• 10:13Jake Brennan?

  and attitude and badassery. And she wasn't one of those groupies. Ziggy knew that. He knew that as he slipped into the passenger seat of Chrissy's mom's Old Mobile Cutlass. And Chrissy, just 21 years old, took the Starman and his spiders from Mars to one of her favorite local spots for dinner. Months later, she was still thinking about it. About Ziggy, about English bands, about England, period. She felt the island call to her. The restlessness brewing at her core was switched on. Here in Ohio, she was a known quantity. She was attracted to rock and roll, which meant she was attracted to toughness, to danger, to trouble.

• 10:54Jake Brennan?

  Quaaludes were trouble, as were the gang of bikers that circled around her one night like wolves sizing up their prey. But she was nobody's prey. She was no lamb. She was a pack animal, just like the rest of them. She could run with the toughest of the tough. She just needed her own gang of outlaws. A gang to get you through, to help you endure and become strong. But Chrissy Hind wasn't here just to be strong. She was here to be free. And soon she was. She was there in 1973, London. All it took was a one-way ticket.

• 11:57Speaker 06

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• 12:27Speaker 07

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• 13:42Speaker 08

  Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models,

• 14:27Speaker 08

  software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Ana Paula Assis and AXS CIO Giovanni Doniello, two people who think about these questions every day.

• 14:58Speaker 08

  Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:08Jake Brennan?

  Chrissy Hyne pushed open the door of the liquor store and stepped outside. Slim button-down shirt, vertical stripes open at the collar, untucked. Lived in low-rise jeans, metal studs glittered down the legs, dark ankle boots below and a Keith Richards shock of hair above. Her androgynous second-hand attitude was all confidence as she made her way down the sidewalk, the stolen bottle of cheap wine stuffed under one arm. From there, she caught the tube, rode it from one stop to the next, rode it just because there was nothing like it to ride back home in Ohio before finally arriving at where she was now living: a small rented room in a house in Clapham, southwest London. Inside her room, she found the few

• 15:52Jake Brennan?

  things she brought over from the States: a change of clothes, a couple hundred bucks, give or take, and her copy of The Velvet Underground's White Light, White Heat, and Iggy and the Stooges's Funhouse and Raw Power. She listened to the records for the millionth time and imagined she was fronting the bands. If only it were that simple, like how some things in life were right place, right time, that simple twist of fate that another of Chrissy's heroes, Bob Dylan, was writing about somewhere at this very moment. But fate didn't lead her to a band, not yet. Instead, fate led her to the next best thing: journalists. Music journalists, that is. The kind who fancied themselves a bit like Hunter S. Thompson,

• 16:38Jake Brennan?

  fearing little and loathing only the music they couldn't stand. And who, in 1973 through 1974, were diligently plying their tree, long before Elvis Costello or Frank Zappa or whoever it was said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." I believe it was actually Charles Bukowski. But there was no dancing around it. Writers at the New Musical Express, aka The NME, aka the premier weekly rock paper in the UK, writers like Nick Kent and Ian McDonald, were drawn to Chrissie's passion for music and her acerbic American tongue, which would gladly lash out at any fool, charlatan, or pompous ass, and in print, no less.

• 17:22Jake Brennan?

  It didn't matter if you were Neil Diamond or Brian Eno. Nick Kent was drawn to more than Chrissie's tough attitude. The two had barely met when he moved into her place and they began a relationship. And this happened simultaneously with Chrissie getting hired as a music writer for The NME. But the critic thing was never meant to be. She wasn't one to skulk on the sidelines to simply observe and report. She was built for the front lines. She just needed to get herself closer to the real action.

• 17:54Jake Brennan?

  So when Malcolm McLaren and Vivian Westwood offered Chrissie a job at their cutting-edge fetish boutique on King's Road, she took the gig in a heartbeat. The shop had been known as "Let It Rock", a haven for teddy boys. Soon it would be rebranded simply as "Sex", but at the moment, they were calling it "Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die". The shop was frequented by Chrissie's kind of people: creative types, outsiders, restless oddballs and schemers, Suzie Sue, Adam Ant, John Lyden. If you wanted a psychedelic suit, something Keith Richards would wear, you went up the street to Granny Takes a Trip. But if you wanted leather, rubber, or vinyl,

• 18:38Jake Brennan?

  if you wanted studs, chains, tit clamps, and stilettos so sharp they could slice open an envelope, then you went to Malcolm and Vivian's place. Their shop was ground zero for what was coming. But before punk actually broke, before it was called punk, Malcolm and Vivian's shop was also ground zero for where Chrissy Hind's first major professional and personal relationship in London came to a loud, violent end.

• 19:09Jake Brennan?

  Nick Kent was pissed. He burst through the front door at 4:30 King's Road, dramatically enough for everyone inside Malcolm and Vivian's boutique to notice him. Heads turned and eyes went wide. Here comes the NME guy, making a mad dash for the counter, for his girlfriend, or should I say, ex-girlfriend, seeing as she had just dumped him like yesterday's news. To Chrissy, Nick was fish and chip paper. Now, Chrissy Hind didn't owe Nick Kent anything. The only thing Nick Kent had given Chrissy Hind other than a byline was an STD. In fact, she didn't owe anyone anything. Because here in London, in Malcolm McLaren's shop,

• 19:52Jake Brennan?

  Chrissy Hind was a person of her own creation. She was becoming someone that no one back in Ohio would recognize. She was becoming free. And now, here came the jilted lover, upset about the breakup, or about her leaving the paper, whatever it was, and he was ready to punish her for that freedom. A bewildered customer inside of sex looked on as Nick Kent reached the counter. Nick's face went beet red. He grabbed at his belt buckle with his hands, fumbling to undo the clasp. And when he did, he then yanked on the belt, pulling it clean off his waist in one fell swoop. The belt was cheap, but it was studded, with large coins that could inflict maximum damage if wielded like a whip. He wrapped one end of the belt around his fist and began to swing,

• 20:37Jake Brennan?

  and the leather smacked the counter, and the noise it made was shockingly loud. Malcolm McLaren freaked out and hit the deck, yelling something about a madman. And Nick Kent swung again, this time whipping Chrissy with the weight of the heavy coins on the belt. And Chrissy screamed, she could already feel a welt forming. In her periphery, she could now see the bewildered customer mobilizing himself. The customer's fist came quickly, barreling into the melee, and it caught Nick Kent in the mouth. There was a sound of bone and flesh, a flash of blood, and in a blink, one of Nick's teeth tumbled from his gums as he fell backward and hit the floor. He was out, cold. But Chrissy wasn't waiting around to see what would happen next.

• 21:19Jake Brennan?

  She was already out the door, her heart pounding, running toward the western end of King's Road, where the ghosts of old Victorian slums haunted what was known as "The World's End." The next morning, the world was still there, but Chrissy Hines' role in it had changed, again. For a guy who trafficked in shock, Malcolm McLaren didn't quite know what to say. So he said it as best he could. "It's too confusing, you working here." It was his roundabout way of saying, "You're fired." Vivian Westwood agreed. Too much drama. Chrissy found herself back where she'd started when she'd first arrived in London.

• 22:04Jake Brennan?

  She had no money, and she'd made great contacts, but she had no prospects. Worst of all, she had no band. But the stakes were higher now. She could no longer afford rent, which meant she was sleeping on the desks and floors of friends. And she had no permit, which meant her very status in Europe was now illegal. She had no other choice. So she went round to all the record labels in town, and because her split with the enemy had yet to really be broadcast, she used her press credentials to procure a stack of promotional albums, which she then took to a record store in Soho, sold them all, and then used that money to buy a plane ticket that took her right back to the belly of

• 22:47Jake Brennan?

  the most uninteresting, least happening beast: Ohio. "You know how to use one of these?" The fat man had his stubby little fingers wrapped around the handle of a revolver, which he'd just pulled out of a drawer behind the bar at the Hotel Garfield in Cleveland. "Like this, right?" Chrissy Hines said nothing as the fat man cocked the gun with his leathery thumb. God forbid you ever have to use it, but then again, God help any of these fucking wackos you have to pull it on. Chrissy's eyes scanned the room and saw a few of these wackos at work, nursing rounds of Johnny Walker Redd well before noon, maxing out their credit lines at a table in the corner with the Garfields resident bookmaker. It wasn't just the hotel.

• 23:29Jake Brennan?

  The whole city was crawling with dangerous types, all of whom had their own itchy fingers on the trigger. She wasn't crazy about the necessity of a gun to ten bar, but it was a job. A job that paid her a hundred bucks a week, a job which also allowed her to sing in Jack Rabbit, a local R&B covers band she'd recently joined. They played stuff by The Isleys and The Commodores. Not a dream gig by any stretch, but it was a gig and a band, which is better than nothing. And then fate blew in off the Cuyahoga River. Chrissy was fired from the Hotel Garfield after one of the regulars sold her some grass. In the apartment building she lived in, a den of squalor in which one had to climb into

• 24:12Jake Brennan?

  the sink to bathe because the actual bathtub was busted, burned to the ground. And then, Jack Rabbit fell apart. Like most small-time cover bands do. Chrissy was drifting, a complete unknown, like her guy Dylan would say. Oh, and this is where fate comes in. It came in the form of a telegram. And the telegram read, "Come to Paris, we'll send ticket. Sing in band."

• 24:44Speaker 06

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• 25:21Speaker 03

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• 25:40Speaker 02

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• 26:16Speaker 03

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• 26:30Speaker 09

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• 26:59Jake Brennan?

  Paris was a red herring. The gig was real, the band was real. It all came as advertised. But this particular gig, this band, this moment, it wasn't right. It turns out that it was just fate's way of luring Chrissie Hynde back to Europe. Because as soon as she bounced from the City of Light and went back to London Town, that's when everything started to happen.

• 27:24Jake Brennan?

  That's when Chrissy Hynde found herself nearly becoming a member of not one, not two, but three seminal English punk bands, only to miss each opportunity just slightly. She had no one to blame or thank for it all, other than her old boss, Malcolm McLaren. It was 1975, or thereabouts, and McLaren knew that Chrissy Hynde had it all. The fuck you attitude, the get fucked swagger, the fuck off fringe miniskirt, and the tongue-in-cheek fuck man Valerie Solana's scum manifesto t-shirt that she'd cribbed from his store. He never knew if she'd actually paid for those things, but that vibe of badassery was part of her allure. Just months earlier, when Chrissy was back in Ohio, all pathetic and pitiful like a

• 28:08Jake Brennan?

  dog with a tail between its legs, McLaren had actually written to her. He offered to pay her airfare if she returned to London to join a new band he was forming. But if Chrissy was one thing, besides being tough and restless, she was loyal. And at that moment, she was loyal to the podunk R&B cover band that she was in. And now, here she was, watching the band that Malcolm McLaren had assembled. The Sex Pistols, as they began their noisy crusade of anarchy across the UK. And that, my friends, is band number one that Chrissy Hynde maybe would've, could've, should've been in, maybe, if she hadn't been almost 4,000 miles away at the time. Now, on to band number two.

• 28:52Jake Brennan?

  McLaren was nothing if not a man of opportunity. Following the creation of the Pistols, he presented Chrissy with a new opportunity. He introduced her to the guitarist, Mick Jones, who was looking for a songwriting partner. Chrissy and Mick went to his apartment, guitars in hand, trading chords, trading vocal lines. Chrissy came into her own with Mick, sitting across from her. She was finding her voice, finding like-minded souls, and maybe, maybe it would've worked. Chrissy and Mick in a band together, if only John Graham Meller, aka Joe Strummer, had not walked into the picture and changed everything in an instant. Joe Strummer couldn't even play guitar as well as Chrissy, but even she had to agree.

• 29:37Jake Brennan?

  The chemistry, the way that Joe's grittiness balanced Mick's sweetness was undeniable. And that, folks, was the Clash, band number two that Chrissy Hynde nearly helped launch. Which brings us to band number three. Malcolm McLaren was persistent. Next, he introduced Chrissy to a bass player named Ray Burns and a drummer named Chris Miller. The trio called themselves Masters of the Backside, which, yeah, I know. And they jammed in a church hall for some friends, mostly the Sex Boutique crowd. But no sooner was that performance over than Ray Burns started calling himself Captain Sensible, and Chris Miller was now going by Rats Gabes.

• 30:18Jake Brennan?

  And before she knew it, Chrissy had been dropped by the guys who were about to be known as The Damned. So as punk band number three soldiered on without Chrissy Hynde in their ranks, Chrissy was feeling that familiar sting of déjà vu. No work, nowhere to live but an illegal squat. Trying not to take it too hard that she was always the bridesmaid and never the bride when it came to bands. But wait, oh shit, that was it. The bride. What if she could literally be the bride? The bride of an Englishman, that is, so that she could be granted citizenship and could therefore prolong her time abroad? It was a goofy enough proposition that John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols,

• 31:03Jake Brennan?

  agreed to do it when Chrissy asked. But that was just a few days before the Pistols blew up. Now they were the talk of the town, courtesy of a scandalizing, profanity-laced appearance on British television. John now had a reputation to protect or something like that, which was the excuse he gave Chrissy when he backed out of the whole thing. No matter. Chrissy knew she could convince Sid to do it.

• 31:29Jake Brennan?

  Sid Vicious was nineteen, not yet a member of the Sex Pistols. But everyone who went to shows knew Sid. Sid had the look, he had the sneer, he was Skinny Elvis on Skid Row. Sid walked the walk. At a Pistols show, again, before Sid was in the Sex Pistols, Sid walked that walk right up to one Nick Kent, Chrissie's ex, and also, an ex-Pistols of sort, having allegedly rehearsed with an earlier version of the band, only to now talk shit about them in the NME. Sid was a staunch defender of his friends in the Sex Pistols, especially when some failed musician-turned-hack writer had to go. So Sid looked Nick Kent right in his eyes. "I don't like your trousers." Kent laughed. Was that supposed to scare him?

• 32:14Jake Brennan?

  Nah, thought Sid, scaring him, well, that's what this was for. Sid then produced a bicycle chain, which he proceeded to use to beat Nick Kent with mercilessly. Chrissie had to admit, it was pretty funny watching Sid Vicious tune up the guy who once attacked her at her place of business. So she took the wiry punk down to the local office to tie the knot. But the place was closed, bank holiday. Going back the next day was out of the question because Sid was due in court to answer for his involvement in another violent altercation. This time, for throwing glass that shattered and cut a woman's eye during a show by the damned.

• 32:55Jake Brennan?

  And so it continued, living illegally, living unfulfilled, living in neutral while the rest of London's movers moved forward. At this point, Chrissie knew all the players moving around even if she wasn't one herself. There was DJ Don Letts spinning reggae and dub 45s for the punks down at the Roxy. There was Lemmy Kilmeister, leaving Hawkwind, forming Motorhead, shifting into a higher, meaner gear, and getting higher, not through sheer ambition alone. Amphetamines helped.

• 33:26Jake Brennan?

  Lemmy was the only one in town tougher than Chrissy. But how, Chrissy wanted to know. How do you stay tough when you couldn't get anything going? She laid out her sob story to Lemmy, like he was some kind of guru on the mountaintop. She had all this opportunity, all this right place, right time, but no simple twist of fate. Lemmy didn't sugarcoat it. Who told you it was gonna be easy? Tough was tough. That was the message. The soft are all back in Ohio, Chrissy, watching the city slowly turn into parking spaces. Lemmy told Chrissy what she needed to hear. He also told her the name of a drummer she should track down. A guy called Gas Wild. Tell him Lemmy sing you.

• 34:09Jake Brennan?

  And with that, time was no longer in neutral for Chrissy Heine. Time was about to stand still.

• 34:27Jake Brennan?

  All right, discos. Earlier in this episode, I mentioned how Chrissy Heine discovered the Violent Femmes back when they were an unknown band busking on the streets of Milwaukee. Some say that it was the Pretenders guitarist, James Honeyman Scott, who actually did the discovering, but it doesn't matter. The story of how the Violent Femmes were given their first shot at the big time by Chrissy Heine is wilder than you think, and I just didn't have enough time to get into it here. But if you want to hear that story, you can do so right now in this week's brand new Disgrace Land mini-episode, which is available exclusively for our All Access members. To become a member of All Access, where you can not only hear this mini-episode, but also get ad-free listening and other exclusive content like our video podcast, This Film Should Be Played Loud, just go to disgraceampod.com for more details and sign up today.

• 35:12Jake Brennan?

  All right, now back to our regularly scheduled programming and the conclusion of our Chrissy Heine story.

• 35:20Jake Brennan?

  The drummer known as Gas Wild did not share Chrissy Hind's toughness. He did share her fondness for the highlife, uppers, downers, coke, smack, weed, whatever was going around, but he tended to let the highlife get the better of him more often than not. Luckily for Chrissy, Gas Wild also shared something else before he was sacked: the name of a bass player he'd once toured with, Pete Farnin. He looked like Dwayne Eddy by way of the Hells Angels, well, maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but he looked the part, and he was as much an in-the-pocket bassist as Gas Wild was a loose cannon. And Pete also happened to know a guitar player looking for a gig, James Honeyman Scott. Jimmy was tight, fast, in his futuristic rockabilly thing, or whatever his style was,

• 36:04Jake Brennan?

  it didn't sound like anyone else. And both those guys just so happened to know a drummer who could fill the empty stool left by Gas Wild: a human rhythm machine with great nuance named Martin Chambers. The moment that Chrissy, Pete, Jimmy, and Martin got in the same room together and tore through one of Chrissy's original songs, Precious, Chrissy had to turn and face the wall so as not to betray her own toughness and show her hand. She was laughing. She was laughing because she had never heard such a beautiful, perfect sound in her life. She was laughing because she knew she had finally gotten what she'd wanted ever since she'd left Ohio for the first time five years prior: a band.

• 36:49Jake Brennan?

  Her band. And her band was playing her songs. Songs she'd written while trying to get something going with Mick Jones and Captain Sensible and all those other guys. Songs that weren't built around traditional verses and bridges and choruses. Instead, Chrissy's songs were built around attitude and defiance. "Up the Neck," "The Weight," "Private Life." They were confident songs, songs written by a person who knew her place, even if that place had been denied her for years. They had hooks as heavy as a coin-studded belt or a bicycle chain. And mostly, they felt real, even if the band performing them were now calling themselves "The Pretenders."

• 37:34Jake Brennan?

  With the connections Chrissie had built up over the years, The Pretenders went into the studio first with the great Nick Lowe, who produced their version of the Kinks' deep cut "Stop Your Sobbing." The song was released as The Pretenders' first single in early 1979, just weeks before Chrissie's one-time near-husband Sid Vicious died of a fatal hotshot. But I digress. "Stop Your Sobbing" did well, cracking the UK Top 40, but it didn't yet reveal the true power of The Pretenders. Soon, the band were back in the studio, this time with producer Chris Thomas, whose stacked resume included the debut album by Chrissie's friends, The Sex Pistols. By the end of that year, The Pretenders' self-titled album was ready.

• 38:18Jake Brennan?

  But first, in November of 79, ahead of the album's January release, the band put out another single, an earworm called "Brass in Pocket." The song was an instant hit in the UK, riding up the charts where it was still gaining traction on Christmas Day, when, for the first time in nine years, tragedy struck too close to home.

• 38:42Jake Brennan?

  The house was on Endil Street in Covent Garden, London's West End. It was a proper house, not a squat with a shared filthy kitchen or a sink that doubled as a bath. She had a mattress, and she had order and routine. She paid rent each month. Chrissie lived on Endil Street with two housemates, two fellow creatives, a typesetter, Steve Mann, and an artist, Kevin Sparrow, who designed album artwork for bands like The Stranglers and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Chrissie wasn't home on Christmas Day that year. She was at a friend's house, where she was celebrating the holiday and also the fact that the song that she had written and performed was actually heating up the charts. Kevin wasn't at home either. He was at another friend's place.

• 39:27Jake Brennan?

  And it was at that other house that Kevin Sparrow's body was found on Christmas, dead, with lethal amounts of whiskey and heroin in his system.

• 39:37Jake Brennan?

  Only two weeks later, Brass in Pocket hit number one in the UK. For Chrissie, the achievement was bittersweet. Trying to wrap her head around all this sudden success after years of trying, years of lurking on the sidelines, and now, once again, trying to make sense of something that made no sense. Disorder. Death. It was like Kent State some nine years prior. A moment of crisis turned cathartic by the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And now Chrissie was creating her own outlets for catharsis. Her own music, her own words. The music promised freedom for the feelings she couldn't explain away.

• 40:21Jake Brennan?

  Eventually, Chrissie would express her own catharsis in a song for Kevin, but that would be years later, after the losses had begun to pile up, after the Pretenders' original lineup had been reduced from four to two. But that's another story. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 40:57Jake Brennan?

  All right, thanks for checking out this Chrissie Hynde episode of DisgraceLand. This is an easy question of the week for us, guys. Who's the most badass female musician in rock and roll? I mean, it's hard to think of somebody other than Chrissie Hynde, although there are a ton of candidates, but Chrissie kind of broke the mold. Get at us and let us know your choice. 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text, or @disgracelandpod on the socials. You might hear your answer on the upcoming after-party. If you want to support the show, you can do so very easily by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and you might win some free merch by doing so. And if you want more DisgraceLand, you know where to find it. Become an All-Access member, get exclusive content and ad-free listening, including

• 41:42Jake Brennan?

  our new video podcast, This Film Should Be Played Loud. Go to disgracelandpod.com to sign up. All right, here comes some credits. Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rocker roll.

• 42:29Speaker 10

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• 42:45Speaker 11

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• 43:28Speaker 11

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