Preparing to interview Chrissie Hynde is an exercise of mental and verbal conditioning, like getting ready for a heavyweight title fight when your best credentials come from the middleweight division.

Her reputation rests on such sterling adjectives as moody, contrary, angry and uncooperative. Those she's chatted with say she has the disposition of Godzilla. Something as simple as "How's the weather?" could be enough to put a premature end to the conversation.

An east coast newspaper reporter once tracked Hynde through several Florida tour stops, deflecting postponements and limp excuses in a persistent pursuit for his interview. When he finally got her behind a closed door, Hynde so unnerved him that he called her publicist to ask why he had been subjected to that.

During a stop in Philadelphia during the Pretenders' current American tour, Hynde put the kabosh on a pair of youths who had hid behind an ice machine on her hotel floor to meet her. In Detroit, she stalked right offstage, into an elevator and out of the hall before the sweat even dried.

So getting fit for this interview—one of a handful Hynde has agreed to ao during the first leg of the Pretenders' American tour—means jogging the memory, preparing a good defense of interesting questions and trying to come up with a few left hooks to try to keep her a bit off-balance. Lord knows, there's enough to make for some good verbal sparring; old band members who've died, new band members who are very much alive, a hot new album (Learning To Crawl) with a rebuilt group and a bouncing baby girl born a year and a half ago to Hynde and Kinks leader Ray Davies.

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The phone rings for Hynde's Atlanta suite after asking for her by a pseudonym at the desk (the best fighters always use different names). It's answered in a light British tone, by the nanny for Hynde's daughter, who's learning road life at an early age. A second later, she yields to a distinctively Midwestern accent.

Exclusive! The PARALLEL WORLD Interview!

As reported by Robert Matheu and translated by the editors.

Lining up this interview with Chrissie Hynde was at least as much fun as having your liver confiscated. To follow up Gary Graff's interview here, Bob Matheu—CREEM's expert Photographer On The Scene, Yesiree [POTSY]— followed her all over the country, taking hotte pix and trying his gosh darnedest to connect Chrissie to a CREEM "writer."

POTSY first caught up with the Pretenders in Seattle, home of America's worst male suicide rate statistics. Bob treks into the soundcheck, hinting at interview possibilities. Could she? Pleez?

"Do you remember 'Roomful Of Mirrors?' " she replies. Before he can switch gears, the band breaks into "Purple Haze" and all is rubble.

Next stop, San Diego. Bob again brings up the subject of an interview, which reminds Chrissie of Iggy Pop and a sleazy bar in Youngstown, Ohio.

Moving right along, the show hits sunny, funny L.A. Chrissie is said to be particularly congenial, undoubtedly because she's again dodged POTSY.

The tour arrives in the Motor City, home of America's Only. Bob is happier than a hogtoad on Beaver Day—Chrissie suddenly wants to talk to CREEM!

"Who was that guy who wrote that piece awhile back?" she asks gamely. "He really went on about us...Jay Korndish or something?"

Kornc//sh...hmm/ who could that be?

"Why don't we get him to do it? It might be interesting to talk to someone who obviously doesn't like us."

A dim lightbulb blinks in POTSY's skull. Kordosh! Of course! Bob runs out to alert Big J., but it's too late again. Before the scribe can arrive, the band's off to Chicago. Kordo follows for a planned chat—but due to a "sick kiddie" has to return to Detroit early.

No interview. Again.

At the Windy City soundcheck, Mr. Matheu grabs free food 'n' drinks and corners the elusive Hynde.

"So, Bob, what about this Korndish guy?" she inquires tersely. "What's his deal?

"Put down that Pepsi and plate until you answer me!" she demands, her congeniality having been left at least four major metropolitan areas behind.

"Well..." replies POTSY.

"Did you ever think that maybe the guy's whole concept was not to get the story at all?" she wonders. Uh-oh. She's obviously familiar with Korndish's style.

As the tour winds down in Manhattan, Chrissie and new boyfriend Jim Kerr of Simple Minds invite POTSY to a vegetarian buffet.

The trio eat radishes and crimp celery. Whatever happened to Ray Davies, Bob is smart enough not to ask.

Doesn't matter. POTSY gets his answer early the next day, as Chrissie, Jim, a Unitarian minister and himself are trundled (yes, trundled) into a limo for a qi»ick ride to Central Park.

There, the party grabs a white horsedrawn carriage and rides around until they find a suitable spot for a marriage. A MARRIAGE?!, thinks Bob.

But before he has time to gasp, Chrissie and Jim are connubialized in the park. A union that will surely endure...just ask Cher and Gregg!

As the bride and groom make nowlegal kissyface, a single tear drops poigndntly from POTSY's eye, ruining his new, $1,500 telephoto lens.

Yes, love means never having to say you're Korndish.

"I leave the politics to the people it matters to."

"Hi. I'm like in the wrong room here," the Akron, Ohio-born Hynde says. "Can you call back? Thanks. Talk to ya in a second."

End of round one. No points, no casualties on either side.

Round two starts with half a ring before Hynde picks it up, apologizing for the mix-up with a soft laugh. It's time for a head fake.

"So how's Atlanta?"

"Good question," Hynde answers, laughing again. "We're in one of these controlled environments. The window opens into a shopping mall."

"Well, is it a nice mall?"

"What's the difference," she says. "It's OK. It could be anywhere, really, but it's Atlanta."

If that's her first shot, her first display of ascerbic temperament, it's pretty weak. Her tersest, nastiest comments are saved for gossip about bands she doesn't like or music industry politics, but her behavior is fine. In fact, nowadays Hynde is nothing if not cooperative. She's notching a few new adjectives into her image—previously unlikely terms like polite, complete, thoughtful and engaging.

Sure, it's not exactly an about-face yet. She still isn't into meeting people backstage or heavy tour socializing, and when something isn't going the way she wants, Hynde is still capable of spewing a mouthful of words her daughter really shouldn't hear. But as one staffer at Warner Bros. Records notes: "She's taking care of business now."

"I'm kind of fed up with myself," Hynde explains. "I don't want to be cynical anymore, or gloomy. I want to get away from all that. I don't want to bitch and moan publicly anymore.

"I don't know if I was that much of a monster anyway," she adds. "But I'll admit I probably have a lot of flaws in my personality. I don't think all of a sudden I've stopped being cynical or that I've mellowed out. Hell, I'm 32; you gotta mellow out. You can't indulge yourself like you did, say in your early 20s."

So she's not carrying on in bars anymore, and she's spending as much time with Natalie as she can. She reads the National Enquirer and watches Dallas in her hotel room. And, interestingly, the once less-than-pious Hynde's other reading material this tour includes the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu'bible that's the staple of the Hari Krishna sect.

Considering the events of the past year, Hynde probably deserves some sympathy and pardon for any ill manners, though she's not asking for it. Take a quick look at that period, and you'll see enough stress-causing incidents to lay any heavyweight low.

It began June 14, 1982, when the group fired bassist Pete Farndon—who formed the Pretenders with Hynde in 1978—because of his excesive drug use. Hynde still calls it "the saddest, most trying thing I've ever gone through."

Two days later, guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died at 25 when his own drug and alcohol abuses, particularly cocaine, got the best of him. Six months later, Farndon, Hynde's former boyfriend, was dead.

Then Hynde gave birth to Natalie last January, just when writers and fans were beginning to wonder if they'd heard the last of the Pretenders.

"I suppose people could feel sorry for me, say 'Ah, look at the poor thing,' " Hynde says. "But it's been just another year for me, really. If you can't handle a couple of deaths...that's just the art of living.

’ "The baby wore me out with the breast-feeding and everything, had me tired," she admits. "But I'm never going to have a nervous breakdown. Sorry, it's just not in my Zodiac. I don't think I'll get a bad back from stress, even.

"I still talk about the dead guys. I'll always be paying my respects to Pete and Jim for starting the idea, creating this thing. It's important that the audiences understand the role the dead guys played."

But their deaths created a new role for Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers, a responsibility to rebuild the band she planted the seeds for when she left Akron for London 11 years ago. America had welcomed the Pretenders with open critical arms after its 1980 debut album, praising Hynde for her tough, honest songwriting and the band for its punkish energy. Even America's stolid album rock radio stations pushed for the band's success.

They excused Hynde's tirades and her belligerent media personality; hell, people actually found heart in her wellpublicized hard-drinking, hard-rocking lifestyle. Even after a follow-up EP and Pretenders II received comparative cold shoulders, Hynde and the Pretenders were still accepted for their potential.

So the first step in putting the Pretenders back on their feet was to record a single during fall 1982. Recruiting former Rockpile guitarist Billy Bremner and Big Country bassist Tony Butler, Hynde and Chambers unleashed a seeming tribute to their dead mates, "Back On The Chain Gang," and a pithy pseudo-lament, "My City Was Gone."

Bremner and Butler were temporary spark plugs, however,and the pair eventually hired guitarist Robbie McIntosh, who Honeyman-Scott had asked to join the band as a fifth member,and bassist Malcolm Foster. Hynde then had her baby, and the infant Pretenders lineup made an unlikely debut at the mega-commercial US Festival last May in California.

"We thought it would be something to boost group morale, give us something to work for," Hynde explains. "I had just had the baby, was wiped out, tired, breast-feeding and everything. I was in a new band, we'd never played together before. There was a lot of money involved.

"You're offered work, that's what you do," she adds.

"That's your job, I was actually grateful they'd ask a band that had been shredded like we had. The Pretenders had been kind of chewed up and spit out."

By all reports, the Pretenders breathed fire at the festival, but it still wasn't enough to keep Hynde immune from the show's failings.

"I was kind of disappointed, just with the things I heard about the other acts," she says. "There was a lot of talk about money, bands saying, 'We won't go on if we don't get as much as this other act,' or 'We won't go on before this act.'

"I'm never going to have a nervous breakdown."

"I was kind of ashamed for those bands. I was disgusted. Just that fired me up to do the show. I can't take that mentality. I leave the politics to the people it matters to. I don't understand it; I don't want to.

"It's all about money. I'm tired of money grabbing. The whole arena thing is a load of bollocks, geared to 18-year-olds who get some beers, drive a van down and go ‘Oh yeah.’ I can’t relate to it. I’m 32, and I don’t want to go up to a big arena, sit in line to park a car, then go traipsing through the turnstiles, climb to my seat and watch a band through binoculars.

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“I’d rather be in a nice, smokey club. The best venues to me are a nice floor where you can dance and have bleachers on the sides if you want fo sit.”

But even though her indictment of the festival puts the screws to about three-quarters of the current scene, Hynde now finds a few compliments for the current state of music and for her audience. Credit a package tour of Australia and New Zealand earlier this year—along with the Eurythmics, Talking Heads and Simple Minds— for her improved outlook.

“What happened in Australia and New Zealand was such an eye-opener of what the possibilities could be,” she explains. “You should get four acts to tour together like that, pick 10 cities in America that have the right venues—maybe 8,000 seats with standing on the floor. It would be like the circus come to town for people.

“I’m certainly enjoying (music) more than I ever have,” Hynde adds. “I’m so fucking grateful I can be in a band, not in the audience. I can’t imagine a more privileged job. Face it, everyone in the audience wants to be onstage. 1 am in the audience, but I’m the lucky one tonight who got up onstage. The real nature of the business is getting people fired up, getting them to have fun.

“The whole climate here is great now, better than anything I’ve felt here since the late ’60s. They’re open to anything now, they really want to have a good time. They’re responding to anything I do now. That makes it a lot more fun, and makes it so much easier to live, too.” ififr