Quote Of The Day By Chrissie Hynde: 'The Thing Is If You've Been ...'

Chrissie Hynde is one of rock's elder stateswomen, a new wave icon whose band the Pretenders has remained hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic since the late 1970s. Born in Akron, Ohio, on September 7, 1951, Hynde abandoned her studies at Kent State University, where she first played in bands, and relocated to London, where she worked as a music journalist while getting involved in the city's music scene.

She was in a band with Mick Jones, who would later form the Clash; joined an early incarnation of the Damned; and befriended members of the Sex Pistols before forming the Pretenders with guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon, and drummer Martin Chambers in 1978. The band would have their U.K. breakthrough with the Nick Lowe-produced Kinks cover "Stop Your Sobbing," which peaked at No. 34 on the singles chart in March 1979. They would establish themselves with further hits including the Hynde-penned "Brass in Pocket," which was a U.K. No. 1 and a notable hit in America. Their self-titled debut album from 1980 was a huge hit and is considered a classic of the era.

However, shortly after their rise to fame, the band suffered the tragic loss of two of their members: Honeyman-Scott, who died of a drug overdose, and Farndon, who was fired from the band in 1982 and died the following year. The loss has hung over the Pretenders ever since, with Hynde being forced to change and adapt. This resilience has become a characteristic of her music career — as shown by our Quote of the Day.

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"The thing is if you've been in the game for a long time, you do all the things you never wanted to do. You thrive on change. And I do like change."

Today's Quote of the Day by Chrissie Hynde is from 2010, when she gave a lengthy interview to the music outlet American Songwriter. The article looks back at her long career, reliving the highs and lows of her time in the Pretenders and highlighting the huge number of hit songs she wrote along the way.

The quote comes in the context of a discussion about her 1994 song "I'll Stand by You," co-written with Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg. As Hynde admits in the interview, the song was a "cold-blooded" attempt to garner a radio hit. "I was ashamed of it, to be honest," she said. "But then some people who I really like said they liked it, so that made me like it." It returned the Pretenders to the charts in several countries including the U.S. and the U.K.

Chrissie Hynde's Quote of the Day, then, comes in the context of a veteran artist approaching her craft from a new perspective, one which actively anticipates a song's commercial impact. "I'd never made an attempt to be commercial and get on the radio," she explained to American Songwriter. "And it started to hurt, that I wasn't getting on the radio. And I love radio. To me, radio is everything."

Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders had broken into the charts at the height of the punk revolution, when many rockers were expected to take an antagonistic stance toward the music industry and the trappings of fame. But the truth was that punk and the pop-infused new wave that came soon after it was, in most cases, still commercial music. While artists were expected to show a degree of authenticity and adherence to the DIY spirit of the age, figures such as Hynde had first been inspired to make music by the British Invasion acts of the 1960s, who never shied away from the fact that when they were writing songs, they were trying to write hits.

Hynde's early attitude toward authenticity meant that, for many years, she attempted to craft songs without an eye on their commercial potential. Some might say her change of heart in the mid-1990s was a form of selling out. However, Hynde says she was vindicated by the appreciation "I'll Stand by You" received from other songwriters, including Oasis' Noel Gallagher and guitarist Jeff Beck. It is a reminder that sometimes we can grow in unexpected ways, even when, at the time, we may feel we are losing a part of ourselves that is integral to our public persona.

• "When punk came along my manager wanted to put my face on a billboard in Shepherd's Bush and I sat on my bed and cried. I could already feel my freedom slipping away."
• "I loved everything about the U.K. and had always been drawn to it. When I was a kid, I loved horses and would draw them all the time. I knew there was an English style of riding and an English saddle. Then, when I was 14, I heard the Beatles and there was no turning back."
• "I keep a real ordinary, low profile. In my neighborhood here, I can't imagine that anyone in my local shops has the faintest idea what I do. I'm just another one of the hoodies; I don't really draw attention to myself."
• "I'm not one of those people who keeps pictures of the family on the refrigerator or anything. I don't have gold records or press clippings around."
• "I've never had any vocal training or coaching or lessons in how to sing right. Come on, it's rock 'n' roll! You can't buy it in the shops or learn it in the school — at least, I f****** hope you can't."