Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

An Amazon Best Book of September 2015: With her new memoir, Chrissie Hynde makes one point abundantly clear: She, and no one else, could have been Chrissie Hynde. It s hard to imagine how anyone else could so consistently find oneself time and again in the eye of the cultural storm: In just over 300 pages, Reckless charges through her life with, ahem, reckless abandon, taking us from her Northern Ohio upbringing through the demise of the first, combustible incarnation of her iconic band, The Pretenders. Against a tapestry of the urban decay of her hometown of Akron, Hynde walks a fine line between fan and groupie, effortlessly ingratiating herself with the day s rock & roll royalty, including David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Rod Stewart. As a somewhat shiftless student, she finds herself witness to the tragedy at Kent State University that changed the country and the course of an unpopular war. In London at its punk zenith, Hynde rubs elbows with Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer while looking for the band that would transform her songs into one of the most stunning debuts in rock history. Permeated with sex, drugs, and rock & roll--and sprinkled with sly hints about which experiences became what iconic songs Hynde s tell-all is as audacious, raw, and thrilling as her lyrics.-- Jon Foro