Chrissie Hynde: ‘The music industry is yet to have its #MeToo moment’

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy There is a question that nags away at Chrissie Hynde, now some four decades into her music career: “Why didn’t more women get into bands?” She frowns and scrunches her eyes. And no one else knows it because I’m older than everyone now.” open image in gallery Hynde performing at the Lyceum in London, 1981 Hynde turned 68 two days before we meet, an occasion she celebrated by releasing her 15th album, Valve Bone Woe – an unexpected jazz dub covers collection in which she turns her smudgy, languorous voice to everything from Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Very Well Without You ” to Nick Drake’s “River Man”. Amid London’s burgeoning punk scene, she knew that to be a girl in a band would be a novelty, “And I didn’t want that either.” And yet she was desperate to play. “This sounds really frivolous,” she laughs, “but I have one of those Lazy Maids, they’re fantastic – every time I do all my laundry and I get it up there and it’s all perfectly flat, I think, ‘God I’ll miss you when I’m on tour.’” The tour will promote a new Pretenders album, co-written with the band’s guitarist.