Reckless : My Life As a Pretender (9780385540629)

by Hynde, Chrissie

  Then we’d be off to the soundcheck and dressing rooms, and the little stack of clean underwear that came out of a bag labeled “Band” that the runner (if we were lucky) would distribute fresh from the local laundromat, where he’d spent his morning.

  Jimmy would check his pedal board. I would check my mic, “one, two, one two…” and Pete his with a rhyme:

  Won One was a race horse.

  Won Two was one too.

  Won One won one race.

  Won Two won one too.

  The guys, after soundcheck and catering (most likely lasagna if you stipulated “vegetarian” on the rider), would go off to a record store to trawl through the bins for the next two hours. (Lasagna got struck off the rider after three weeks.)

  I would rarely leave the building after the soundcheck, preferring to sit in a chair in my dressing room, inert. Every dressing room’s the same from gig to gig—as long as it’s dark and there’s a candle, I’m happy. I don’t like to see anyone before a show, so I can have what I call “tour sleep,” which is a wakeful state of remaining still with eyes shut and, although not being actual sleep, could fool a fly on the wall. Even though I wouldn’t do any kind of preparation, my meditation time—meditating on nothing—was essential and a way of dealing with stage fright.

  Half an hour before the show, and everybody would get into their stage gear: the same thing or a version of what they had on the day before. I myself tried a variety of looks, all of which I later regretted.

  “Five minutes!” was the warning, called out by Stan Tippins, our tour manager. Stan was instrumental in putting the right set list together, and all sorts of other essentials that the public takes for granted, but which can kill the vibe if not meticulously attended to.

  The inevitability of it—that’s what I liked; the birth and death of it. Then the final knock on the dressing-room door would come before we’d meet up, gig-ready, which meant looking marginally less like one of the crew, but twice as scared.

  I’d look around me. Yeah, they were nervous too: Martin like a prizefighter in his robe, punching the air. He had the SAS motto “Who Dares Wins” stenciled onto his drumsticks. Ha ha. Born to it. The other two—Pete fixing his collar, Jimmy just waiting—like dogs at the gate. Who’s the hare in this scenario. Me? Naw, they were chasing something, though. We all were.

  Then the intro tape, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” from Apocalypse Now, sounding like the helicopters were right over head, just to make sure that if we weren’t already shitting ourselves, we were now. Coming to the moment, the lights going all the way down. Okay, Mart first, Pete, me next, Jimmy behind me…

  I’d walk up to the mic (“Hello, Cleveland!”) and then…hang on, oh yes, there—at the top of the set list: Cincinnati. Of course.

  We’d sling on our guitars and I’d be thinking, “This is perfect.” The call of destiny; we were home now, standing next to each other. Home. And they wanted us! Then I’d see them. “Oh no, you gotta be kidding—they’re up the front again. How many shows has it been—seven? Good Lord!” Well, if not for them…

  I couldn’t help it, I’d already be laughing. Let’s do this thing. I’d take the mic and deliberately wouldn’t look at them, but they’d know who I was talking to. Here we go: “Are you ready, girls?”

  —

  If we didn’t have a good show, we’d all be desperate for a drink and thinking of nothing else by the third song to the end of the set. During the final bow it really would be ALL anyone could think of while smiling weakly, or just glaring at the audience for infringing on our drinking time.

  There would be a number of factors that could ruin the show for us, starting with sound problems. The monitor man is as important as a dealer to a junkie—our life in his hands. Confusingly, what the audience was hearing out in the hall would bear no relation whatsoever to what we’d be hearing onstage.

  For example, I’d have problems hearing myself because all I could hear was the bass. I knew my singing was way off and pitching probably a semitone out, or more, and I’d abandoned singing altogether and was shouting instead. By the middle of the set I’d be so distracted by the strain of trying to concentrate against the wall of noise I’d start to forget lyrics, especially if we’d done the same song for more than fifteen nights running and I wasn’t sure which verse we were on.

  My guitar playing at that point would be a total load of bollocks. I’d look into the faces up the front and read the cartoon bubbles over their heads, which said, “My nine-year-old brother can play better than that.”

  After the show we’d meet a guy from the record company, excitedly informing us that “the sound was amazing—I could hear every note.” I’d need a drink more than ever then, knowing that the whole audience just heard me crystal clear, singing and playing at my very worst.

  Or sometimes the sound onstage would be perfect—we could hear everything and really settle into what felt like a great performance. We’d come offstage with a rare sense of elation, only to find that nobody could look us in the eye because the slapback in the venue made it impossible for anyone to hear anything from where they were standing, and it sounded like I was singing in the wrong key altogether.

  There were infinite combinations of the above and we explored all of them. We would know if someone who came back after the show hadn’t enjoyed it, because instead of commenting on it they would say one of the following:

  “So, where you heading next?”

  “Lights were great!”

  Or “Who wants a line?”

  Another surefire factor in fucking up the night was pissed-off looking fans, especially the ones who’d been at the front of the stage for the last eight consecutive nights. Even if they weren’t pissed off, they soon would be when, having traveled a few hundred miles and waited out in the freezing rain, they were greeted by my telling them, “Fuck off!”

  I’d be glad they’d come (again), but it would make me self-conscious, telling the same gag from the previous night’s show—and the night’s before—knowing they’d already heard it. In fact, the only thing that made doing the same songs night after night make any sense was playing them to a new audience.

  (By now, the die-hards would be driving back to Ohio, never wanting to see me again.)

  I can still remember when Dennis Wilson threw his sticks and fled the stage at the Akron Civic Theatre in 1970. Fuck-ups and things going wrong always make for a memorable show. Obviously, those shows are better for the audience than the band, but that’s what great bands are made of. You don’t want too many of them, though.

  —

  On a subsequent visit to New York I again met Iggy Pop, same hotel, the Iroquois, which, back then, he described as: “a dump, but dirt cheap.” He seemed to live there.

  We ended up at the Empire State Building, two Midwesterners sightseeing. At one point in a stairwell, I leaned out a window and it seemed that, for a split second, he had in mind to take me from behind but then thought better of it.

  We wandered the streets, not hand in hand, but it felt like it to me. It was early morning and he hadn’t been to bed, so it made sense to buy a bottle. We had to huddle together in a phone booth to drink it out of the bag, as you could not drink on the street like you could in the UK: a stand-out moment in my life.

  —

  Who would have thought that rock and roll could be even slightly complicated? We are, after all, talking about three lousy chords played by high school dropouts. But the complications are life threatening.

  Alcohol poisoning: every band has gone onstage shaking after barely being able to stand up to do the soundcheck. You can see pictures of the gods of rock reduced to mere mortals, passed out on flight cases daily.

  There is nothing quite like the looks of desperation and fear exchanged at the side of the stage before the lights go down, with the whole band undergoing the shared experience of total alcohol meltdown. “Can we do this?”

  To see grown men, ashen-faced, with the loo
k of the condemned about to face a firing squad is truly pitiful. It’s just, after all, a rock show for a few hundred excited girls who work in shops wanting a bit of fun.

  The intense feeling of wanting to call the whole thing off, stagger back to the bus and crawl into a soggy bunk and cry would be dashed by the terrifying strains of the intro tape, the smell of adrenaline, and the faint sound of weeping. Wearing looks of resignation, one by one, the band would take their places onstage, the front row gasping when confronted with something resembling a reenactment of Night of the Living Dead.

  Throughout the show the entire band would be thinking, “Never, never, never again,” then leave the stage totally drained, thanking God to have got through it. Some die-hards up ahead would inevitably be waiting, and we’d hardly be able to look them in the eye, mortified that anyone had to witness the messy pile-up we’d just delivered. Yup, they’re waiting to say something—probably that they want their money back.

  But no, it’s a look of pure joy on their faces as they step forward, trying to touch a band member’s sleeve and gravely announcing, “That was the best show of the tour!”

  Back to the dressing room, sitting in a huddle. “They said it was the best show of the tour and I’ve seen them at the front every night for the last month.”

  “I thought they were going to try to beat us up.”

  The reason it was so good was that everyone had to dig deeper than they ever had before just to remain standing for an hour. And those party to the debacle loved it all the more, having witnessed the sweating, struggling and suffering, thrilled by the validation of seeing someone more fucked up than they’d ever been.

  “Thanks for keeping it real” is the highest compliment that can be paid to a rock musician. So, instead of swearing off as you’d promised yourself during every song, the band triumphantly toasts the first drink of the night…

  There is a code, unspoken, but adhered to by everybody: “What happens on the bus, stays on the bus.” Nobody violates the code or goes home tittle-tattling. Being a girl, I never got on the receiving end of the groupie phenomenon, but every single male member of any band has. It really would be rude not to. There is no denying that this is the very thing that motivates most guys to learn to play guitar. A guy on his own facing his sexual future is one thing, but a guy wielding a guitar is a different animal altogether. This doesn’t mean that everybody’s only in it for the sex—you can get endorsement deals and free strings too.

  —

  “Get yer hand on my cock!”

  I was in a hotel room—I knew that much because I could see the fire-escape route on the back of the door. I was wearing my T-shirt and underpants. Okay, that was a good sign. Nothing had happened, not in this bed, anyway.

  But who was Mr. Naked next to me? Hang on a minute—I recognized that voice!

  I rolled over and saw the dark blond hair spilling over the pillow. A manly scent rose up from under the sheet. I directed my eyes into his, a sea of green with a bloodshot sun rising.

  It was Iggy Pop.

  Never had I been so pleasantly surprised in this unseemly, though not entirely unusual happenstance. Are you kidding me? I’d won the Big Daddy Jackpot! I’d been in love with this Class A piece of tail for my entire band life and before. I was categorically in bed with Iggy Pop.

  The cock being referred to has been so well documented that I see no point in expanding on it. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already indulged in multiple viewings of The White Room: the see-through plastic strides; maybe you’ve seen it in person—thousands have. Every rock fan in the world knows as much about it as I do. He’s had it out onstage more times than Jim Morrison could say, “I’ll get to you next, honey.”

  The Pretenders were playing the Agora in Cleveland, and I saw on the bill that Iggy Pop was to play the next night. The next day being a day off, I didn’t take the bus with the rest of the band overnight to Columbus. I’d catch them up.

  He was happy for the company. We’d been drinking Yukon Jack, “the black sheep of Canadian liquors” (as stated on the label), all afternoon in a darkened bar in Cleveland—and no bar can get darker than that. To have him sitting across from me in real life and real time, the glass of liquor, the smoke, the baritone tones of the Swedish-colored lord of sex and rock-and-roll, contributed to it being one of my better days.

  He let me come back to his hotel room before the show but made it perfectly clear that if I wanted to hang around from there on in, I would have to keep my mouth shut. This was, after all, his show, not mine. “Don’t say one word around my band.”

  I was spellbound watching the most captivating performer of all time. I’d shimmied up to the rafters for a bird’s-eye view, never one to shy away from seizing the best vantage point at a gig. (Many times had I crawled on hands and knees to the front of stages through forests of legs so stealthily that I’d be through before anyone had a chance to say, “Hey, fuckhead—I’ve been standing here all day. Fuck off!”)

  But I almost fell from my perch and back into the audience when I saw him come out for the encore wearing the red Lewis Leathers jacket I’d left on the floor of the dressing room.

  We went on to a local radio station to play some records. (See, that’s what I’m talking about: Cleveland radio having Iggy Pop on at midnight to spin records—the best.) They asked me if I’d like to feature a Pretenders song, and I had them play “Tattooed Love Boys” so I could watch his reaction to Jimmy’s superlative solo.

  “Hey—ha, ha—that’s real good!”

  We went on to some little club, raging drunk by now, practically incoherent as we climbed onstage, ousting the local band and—me on guitar and him on drums—performed an unintelligible version of “Louie Louie.”

  Oh, yeah, it was all coming back.

  —

  My old helluva-driver friend Hoover was still in northeast Ohio but remained true to form and would drive up to see us play even if we were a hundred miles away from Akron, where she was now managing an Italian restaurant. I called her one day from the West Coast. Things did not seem to be going her way: a boyfriend wanted by the FBI was only one of her grievances.

  “Why don’t you come and hang out with us for a few days?” I asked.

  “Oh, Chris, I can’t. I have too much to do here.”

  I didn’t like the tone of her voice. She sounded depressed, something I’d never known her to be before. I told Stan to get her on a plane and not take “no” for an answer. So he didn’t ask her if she was coming or not; he just told her the flight details.

  She arrived two days later. I got her on the tour permanently, where she became our first wardrobe girl. Luxury for us—no more washing underwear in hotel sinks—and luxury for her—she got to travel with the crew and not live in Akron. That story had a happy ending. Hoover went on to become one of the most sought-after wardrobe girls in the business, and moved to San Francisco.

  We did all the hip television shows in the States, such as Saturday Night Live, with Andy Kaufman, and David Letterman’s show so often that I used to present him with contraband Cuban cigars I brought in from England.

  —

  A couple of weeks later we were doing a soundcheck in Orlando, Florida, when a runner brought me a bit of folded paper. Every venue has a runner who is there to run errands for you if you’re in the band. Where else in life is the service that good?

  I opened it: “Hi. Remember me? I’m in the parking lot. Scotty.”

  How could I forget? It’s another part of getting success; the people left standing on the other side of the velvet rope of fame always think that you won’t remember them. People you sat next to in school for eight years will greet you by saying, “You probably don’t remember me…”

  I went to the parking lot and there he was, sitting on the hood of a 1967 Corvette Stingray—a sight for sore eyes. He ended up joining the tour, ostensibly to “help out,” but anyone could see it was going to end in tears. It always does. It totally b
roke the rules of the road, but I did it anyway. I cannot emphasize enough how terribly unwelcome this “tipping of the balance” is to the organization and the cracks became more pronounced by the day.

  We had a great time in New Orleans, fulfilling the regulation bar-hopping like a honeymoon for the mentally challenged. The signs were there. It was just a matter of time.

  One afternoon, after rolling off the bus in an unbecoming state, we entered the bar of one of the nicer hotels we were lucky enough to stay in, but were turned away as there was a dress code. No problem—we could always find a bar in town. My charming escort, however, decided to involve himself beyond the call of duty. I watched, captivated with wonder, as the thin white fluke sought out the hotel manager standing in the lobby, grabbed him by both wrists and rotated them downward while locking eyes like a defiant seven-year-old. The drinks the manager was holding now saturated his shoes, and within seconds the entire band and crew were ejected from the hotel.

  A disgruntled Stan scrambled about for the rest of the afternoon to find us alternative accommodation. It was obviously time for me to make other arrangements for my guest. But I held my ground. Pete, by now, was shooting up on the bus behind my back, no doubt pushed to doing so by the presence of my bad-boy companion.

  A night off in Memphis saw another telling incident. The band and crew were getting loaded in the bar of the sophisticated and popular haunt Friday’s, where I decided not to wait in line for the ladies’ room, opting instead for the men’s. Scotty took exception: “You don’t go in the men’s room when you’re with me!”

  “Who are you, my dad?”

  We were sitting on our own at the back of the restaurant as staff put chairs up on the tables. Someone told us we had to move. I was in full-on argument mode and took exception to the fact that the guy didn’t say “please.”