Yes, She’s the Great Pretender : After a long hiatus, Chrissie Hynde is back on the rock ‘n’ roll chain gang with a new album and a real band--but no less ambivalent about stardom

Chrissie Hynde is arguably the greatest female rock singer of the last decade-plus, but if you wanted to hear her in the last four years, you’d have to turn to such items as her performances on the Jimi Hendrix tribute album and at the Bob Dylan 30th-anniversary concert, and her one-time collaborations with such bands as INXS and Urge Overkill.

There’s been no new music from her group the Pretenders since the “packed!” album in 1990, and that collection was a pale shadow of the bright, aggressive sound that established the London-based band as one of rock’s leading forces and made the feisty singer-guitarist a role model for female rockers.

That changes with the release Tuesday of “Last of the Independents” (see review, Page 60), an album that reunites Hynde, 42, with original Pretenders drummer Martin Chambers for the first time since the “Get Close” album in 1986.

“Independents” also introduces what Hynde says is a “real band,” ending the revolving-door membership that’s marked the Pretenders since the drug-related deaths of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott in 1982 and bassist Pete Farndon in 1983. The new Pretenders are guitarist Adam Seymour (from the Katydids) and bassist Andy Hobson (ex-Primitives).

The Ohio-born Hynde, who has lived in London since the late ‘70s, has devoted her time between albums to those assorted collaborations and side projects, and to raising her two daughters--an 11-year-old whose father is the Kinks’ Ray Davies, and a 9-year-old by Hynde’s ex-husband, rock singer Jim Kerr.

With her enthusiasm renewed, she’s looking forward to the upcoming Pretenders tour--especially the shows in small clubs such as L.A.’s House of Blues, where the band will play on June 12. In an interview on the eve of the album’s release, Hynde touched on such topics as women’s place in rock and her ambivalence about stardom.

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Question: How do you feel about being held up as an inspiration for women in rock--someone who blazed a trail?

Answer: I think that’s just gibberish really. That doesn’t mean anything. Because I didn’t blaze any trails. Women could do it, and they still can if they want. When I was a teen-ager we didn’t have the term role model , but if I had any they were all men anyway. It was a musical endeavor.

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Q: Do you think women face more obstacles in rock if they don’t fulfill a traditional role or image?

A: I don’t know about other women, but myself personally I never had any problems. I think it was an advantage. I get to play with guys because I can sort of guest with them--I mean think of all the duets I can do with guys where they need a woman. There aren’t that many women rock singers.

I don’t offer any competition to guys, so it’s kind of good to have me around, I guess. I can play all right, but everyone’s better than me--there’s no problem there. And I have a vision and I can make everyone sound great. So I’m an asset. But I’ve never felt there were any obstacles or that I’ve had to work harder. I mean, to tell you the truth, I think I’ve had to work a lot less than guys. Competition is stiff for them.

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Q: Is it difficult to have a fulfilling private life--specifically raising children--and meet the demands of a career?

A: Well, it’s always difficult having a fulfilling private life. I don’t really think of it as demands in my career. I mean, first of all I don’t really think of it as a career. I’m not really trying to get to the top. I’m not trying to be a legend or be seen as an important musical voice in any way.

I don’t think what I do is nearly as hard, to be honest, as most women who work and have kids. Friends of mine at the record company, they have to be at the office early in the morning and have to work late. I know people who don’t get to see their kids that much even though they’re living in the same house.

I think what happens to a lot of women who haven’t had children is that they end up excelling and getting to the top of the tree, and then when they do decide to have children it becomes very awkward. Because really a woman’s nature isn’t to work that hard and be competitive and get to the top. She’s much more into her life, not on a domestic level but an emotional level.

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Q: How competitive are you in your career?

A: I never had a commitment to this career. I just wanted to get in a band and do the business. Get onstage, play, make some records. So I got that. And ever since then that’s worked out just fine, you know. I can just kind of tool along and do what I want to do.

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Q: When those first albums became successful, didn’t you think that this pinnacle was in your reach?

A: No, I didn’t think like that. The pinnacle that was in my reach was when I finally got the band together, and everything after that was just the ride. I just wanted to be Chrissie Hynde in this bad-ass band. I never thought about Chrissie Hynde singer-songwriter--and still don’t. After two albums I didn’t feel there was anything more or less to achieve. Just trying to stick to some kind of guns, you know, stay true to the vision.

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Q: Can you describe that vision?

A: Well it’s just my personal code of what a rock band should sound like. . . . There’s like an intro to the song, there’s a song, there’s more often than not an ending. . . . A lot of people don’t attend to those things. There’s certain things I adhere to. Certain guitar sounds. When I say vision, it’s just the way I like to hear things. It’s very traditional. It’s not that original or anything. My thing is just keeping things crisp.

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Q: What music influenced that way of hearing things?

A: I’m from Akron, Ohio, you know. I grew up with AM radio. I could get stations from all over the place--Nashville, Detroit, Chicago--and they were all different kinds of music. It’s not like it is now, where it’s uniform. . . . B. B. King, James Brown, the Rolling Stones, all that English music. The Beatles, of course. Then there was all the West Coast stuff. Then as soon as everything started going underground, I could start getting stuff like “Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground.

I was in the middle of nowhere. There was no real scene where I was, and that’s always a really good place to be if you’re a rock fan. Because you’re not really ensconced in your own scene. You can just kind of dig everything that’s going on everywhere. You don’t really have a personal favorite because you’re biased. . . . I was from nowhere. I liked it all.

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Q: What was your family life like growing up?

A: Happy. Typical, Midwestern, Lutheran, you know--mom, dad, two kids. Me and a brother. Like the cover of any Life magazine you’d care to point out from the early ‘50s.

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Q: What kind of mother are you?

A: You could say I’m pretty strict. I don’t think you’d think that the kids were being raised by a rock star. Manners--that’s what’s important to me. . . . An understanding of life on Earth and appreciation for it. I appreciate that they can enjoy their childhood, so I’ve allowed that to flourish. I haven’t pushed them into anything. Let them discover their own little things. There’s nothing foisted on them that they should be musical or they should be this or that, but if they are, that’s great.

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Q: You’ve said the Pretenders’ first tours burned you out. Have you learned how to tour and survive?

A: Well, you can’t get too excessive with alcohol and drugs. I think moderation is a good thing. It’s not something that I’ve really mastered yet, but I’m working on it. I’m getting there. It’s hard for people in this business, because most of us are pretty extreme. But going from being a total alcoholic junkie raging maniac to being a total fitness fanatic, that’s not really my approach to life. I’d rather try to roll with the punches. But I don’t mind getting a few punches.

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Q: You’ve had two tragedies in the Pretenders, with the deaths of James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon. What was your reaction to Kurt Cobain’s suicide?

A: Devastated. Very sad. It’s just heartbreaking. I didn’t know him, but I was a fan, and I liked him. . . . We’re used to this kind of thing in this business. People don’t usually (kill) themselves. They usually do it, at least it appears, accidentally, even though they’ve been on some self-destruction or death-wish sort of trip. It never seems as blatantly intentional, I guess. . . . I can’t speak for anyone else, but one does understand somewhat how he must have felt a lot of the time.

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Q: How did you deal with those two deaths in your band?

A: Well, you know, you just live from day to day, don’t you? You just go through it.