March 17, 2026 • 35 mins
Years spent at ground zero of UK punk. Years of almost-bands, near-misses, and stolen moments on the sidelines. Sex-shop violence, marriage schemes with the Sex Pistols, coin-studded belts, bicycle chains, and a woman who was always there as history was being made. Listen to find out how Chrissie Hynde survived the birth of punk, dens of squalor, and attacks by jilted lovers – only to stop time and finally answer back as the leader of The Pretenders.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. This is a
story about being there, about showing up early, about standing
(00:23):
close enough to history that you can feel the heat
coming off of it. This is about a woman who
found herself in the future, watching bands form, watching cultures collide,
in the world being remade in real time. Not as
a star, not yet anyways, but as a witness and
(00:44):
a survivor. This is also the story of an unprovoked attack,
about studded belts, bicycle chains, and a gun stashed underneath
the bar. It's about two marriage proposals and a woman
who wasn't about to be tied down, a woman who
responded to the chaos, violence and loss surrounding her by
(01:04):
making a lot of noise. This is a story about
Chrissy Heine from The Pretenders, so of course it's a
story about great music. Unlike that clip I played for
you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
That was a preset loop from my melotron called are
(01:26):
You Ready Girls? Mk? Two. I played you that loop
because I can't afford the rights to le Freak by
Chic and why would I play you that specific slice
of stranded outside Studio fifty four Cheese Could I afford it?
Because that was the number one song in America on
(01:48):
January twentieth, nineteen seventy nine, and that was the day
that Chrissy Hines banned. The Pretenders released their first single,
A hard fought, hard won victory for someone who had
spent years lurking on the sidelines. As the Clash, the
Sex Pistols, and UK punk at Large were busy being born.
(02:09):
On this episode punk at Ground Zero, Chaos, Violence, Loss, Survival,
the origins of the Pretenders, Chrissy Hind, I'm Jake Brennan,
and this is Disgraceland. She was there. She was there
(02:49):
in nineteen seventy two when the Starman Ziggy Starred Us
first fell to Earth and landed somewhere in Ohio. She
was there in London in nineteen seventy six, she watched
Mick Jones and Joe's strummer meet and play together for
the first time. She heard Joe say to Mick, don't
do it that way, You'll never make a dime as
(03:10):
she was there when the Clash rehearsed for the first time.
The Damned Too anyone could see they were born to kill.
She was there when two members of the Sex Pistols
agreed to marry her so that she could get her
citizenship in England. And she was there in nineteen seventy
seven at the Roxy when Don Lets the Rebel Dread
(03:31):
spun reggae and dub records at a punk show. She
watched as the culture clashed in real time and in stereo.
She was there in nineteen eighty one in Milwaukee when
the violent femmes were just buskers on a dirty street
corner waiting to be plucked from obscurity. Chrissy Hine was
there when punk rock in New Wave took their first steps,
(03:56):
but first. She was here on the campus of Kent
State University in nineteen seventy tin Soldiers and Nixon's coming,
when the crack of discharged National Guard rifles echoed nearby.
The scene was chaos, thousands of students refusing to leave.
(04:16):
They were thinking of Cambodia as flanks of olive green
reflected in the whites of their eyes. Rocks and tear
gas sword through the air. Car windows, smashed American flags,
burned garbage cans rolled into the middle of the street.
Their contents had flames. The rotc buildings smoldered in the
near distance, and the guardsmen were up on the hill.
(04:39):
Now they were outnumbered, but they had the power, They
had the m ones. They turned and faced the angry,
confused student body. Clarity was coming in the form of
a bullet. The guardsmen raised their weapons, and then they
fired for thirteen seconds. Shots rang out nearly seventy in total.
(05:08):
Kent State freshman Chrissy Heine, who was then still going
by Christine or Christie or just playing Chris, ran her
hands across her arms and legs, assuming she'd be shot.
But she was lucky. Unlike the four who now lay
on the university campus dead, or the nine others who'd
been injured by the guardsman's gunfire. Chrissy Hein was there,
(05:34):
but she couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. The disorder,
the violence, the death. None of it made sense. For
weeks later, it still didn't make sense. But Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young had released a new single, Ohio, a
fiery piece of protest music that memorialized the unspeakable things
(05:56):
Chrissy and thousands of others had witnessed. The song didn't
bring those dead kids back but it brought a feeling
of catharsist to those who had been there. Rock and
roll was, by definition cathartic. It defended you, it supported you.
It didn't impose its will with brute's strength or bend
you into conformity. And it gave you freedom, if only
(06:19):
for two minutes and fifty eight seconds at a time,
as was the case with the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Song even better than a forty five spinning on a
turntable was live rock and roll. Later, Chrissy hin would write,
when a band played times stood still, A band was time.
(06:40):
It was a big bang, one song after another, these
sequential eras or periods of history being made. A band
was creation. It was life, a life made in God's image,
because God was absolutely a rock and roller. God wore
his hair in a cliff and wrapped his tattooed deltoids
(07:01):
in a biker jacket, except on Sundays when he put
on a proper suit and tie. But he did it
all casual, like the top button of his pressed white
shirt unbuttoned, his tie loosened. A band was not only
the way of the world, it was how the world
began and how it would end. And Chrissy Hine, for one,
(07:22):
would not rest like God on the Seventh Day, not
until she had a band of her own, until she
was the one making time stand still. Even before she
was an adult, bands were all Chrissy Hine cared about.
The other girls could have their boys and their Revlon
(07:43):
and all that white picket fence stuff. Chrissy just wanted
a Gibson Melody Maker and a copy of The Stooge's
Funhouse to play along to. But this being in a
band business would never fly in Ohio, acron Kyahoga Falls, Cleveland.
They all felt like they were stuck in the past.
The future was across the pond in London, the only
(08:06):
place on planet Earth where somebody like Ziggy's Stardust could
be conceived. It was September nineteen seventy two, twenty one
year old Chrissy he found herself walking next to the
Starman himself, immediately after his American debut at the Cleveland
Music Hall. Was it fate, was it luck? It didn't matter.
(08:29):
It was opportunity, an opportunity to observe, to absorb, to
see firsthand how freedom simply took style and attitude and
badassor she wasn't one of those groupies. Ziggy knew that.
He knew that as he slipped into the passenger seat
of Chrissy's mom's Oldsmobile Cutlass and Chrissy, just twenty one
(08:51):
years old, took the Starman and the Spiders from Mars
to one of her favorite local spots for dinner. Months later,
she was still thinking about it, about Ziggi, about English bands,
about England period. She felt the island call to her.
The restlessness brewing at her core was switched on here
in Ohio. She was a known quantity. She was attracted
(09:14):
to rock and roll, which meant she was attracted to toughness,
to danger, to trouble. The Kailudes were trouble, as were
the gang of bikers that circled around her one night,
like wolves sizing up their prey. But she was nobody's prey.
She was no lamb. She was a pack animal just
like the rest of them. She could run with the
toughest of the tough. She just needed her own gang
(09:37):
of outlaws, a gang to get you through, to help
you endure and become strong. But Chrissy Hine wasn't here
just to be strong. She was here to be free,
and soon she was. She was there in nineteen seventy three, London.
Paul It took was a one way ticket. Chrissy him
(10:23):
pushed open the door of the liquor store and stepped outside.
Slim button down shirt, vertical stripes opened at the collar, untucked,
lived in low rise jeans, metal studs glittered down the legs,
dark ankle boots below, and Keith Richard's shock of hair above.
Her androgynist secondhand attitude was all confidence as she made
(10:44):
her way down the sidewalk, the stolen bottle of cheap
wine stuffed under one arm. From there she caught the tube,
wrote it from one stop to the next, wrote it
just because there was nothing like it to ride back
home in Ohio, before finally arriving at where she was
now living, a small rented room in a house in Clapham,
Southwest London. Inside her room she found the few things
(11:07):
she brought over from the States, a change of clothes,
a couple hundred bucks, Give her Take, and her copy
of the Velvet Undergrounds, White Light, White Heat, and Iggy
and the Stooges Is Funhouse and Rob Howard. She listened
to the records for the millionth time and imagined she
was fronting the bands. If only it were that simple,
(11:28):
like how some things in life were right place, right time,
that simple twist of fate that another of Chrissy's heroes,
Bob Dylan, was writing about somewhere at this very moment.
But fate didn't lead her to a band, not yet. Instead,
fate led her to the next best thing. Journalists, music journalists,
that is, the kind who fancied themselves a bit like
(11:51):
Hunter S. Thompson, fearing little and loathing only the music
they couldn't stand, and who in nineteen seventy three seventy
four were diligently plying their trade long before Elvis Costello
or Frank Zappa or whoever. It was said, writing about
music is like dancing about architecture. I believe it was
(12:12):
actually Charles Pokowski, but there was no dancing around it.
Writers at The New Musical Express aka the NME aka
the premier weekly rock paper in the UK, writers like
Nick Kent and Ian McDonald were drawn to Chrissy's passion
for music in her acerbic American tongue, which would gladly
lash out at any fool Charlton or Pampus ass and
(12:35):
in print no less, it didn't matter if you were
Neil Diamond or Brian Eno. Nick Kent was drawn to
more than Chrissy's tough attitude. The two had barely met
when he moved into her place and they began a relationship.
And this happened simultaneously with Christy getting hired as a
music writer for the NME. But the critic thing was
never meant to be. She wasn't one to skulk on
(12:57):
the sidelines to simply observe and report. She was built
for the front mines. She just needed to get herself
closer to the real action. So when Malcolm McLaren and
Vivian Westwood offered Chrissy a job at their cutting edge
fetish boutique on King's Road, she took the gig in
a heartbeat. The shop had been known as Let It Rock,
(13:20):
a haven for teddy boys. Soon it would be rebranded
simply as sex, but at the moment they were calling
it too fast to live, too young to die. The
shop was frequented by Chrissy's kind of people, creative types, outsiders,
restless oddballs and schemers. Susie Sue Adam Ann, John Leyden.
(13:43):
If you wanted a psychedelic suit, something Keith Richards would wear,
you went up the street to Granny Takes a Trip.
But if you wanted leather, rubber or vinyl. If you
wanted studs, chains, tip clamps, and stiletto's so sharp they
could slice open an envelope, then you went to Welcome
in Vivian's Place. Their shop was ground zero for what
(14:04):
was coming, but before punk actually broke, before it was
called punk. Malcolm and Vivian's shop was also ground zero
for where Chrissy Hines's first major professional and personal relationship
in London came to a loud, violent end. Nick Kent
(14:25):
was pissed. He burst through the front door at four
thirty Kings Road, dramatically enough for everyone inside Malcolm and
Vivian's boutique to notice him. Heads turned and eyes went wide.
Here comes the NME guy making a mad dash for
the counter for his girlfriend or should I say ex girlfriend,
seeing as she had just dumped him. Like yesterday's news
(14:47):
to Chrissy, Nick was fish and chip paper. Now Chrissy
Hine didn't own Nick Kent anything. The only thing Nick
Kent had given Chrissy Hine other than a byline was
an STD. In fact, she didn't know anyone anything, because
here in London and Malcolm McLaren's shop, Chrissy Hahn was
(15:07):
a person of her own creation. She was becoming someone
that no one back in Ohio would recognize. She was
becoming free. And now here came the jilted lover, upset
about the breakup or about her leaving the paper, whatever
it was, and he was ready to punish her for
that freedom. A bewildered customer inside of Sex looked on
(15:28):
as Nick Kent reached the counter. Nick's face went beat red.
He grabbed at his belt buckle with his hands, fumbling
the undo the clasp, and when he did, he then
yanked on the belt, pulling it clean off his waist
and one fell swoop. The belt was cheap, but it
was studded with large coins that could inflict maximum damage
if wielded like a whip. He wrapped one under the
(15:49):
belt around his fist and began to swing, and the
leather smacked the counter and the noise it made was
shockingly loud. Malcolm McLaren freaked out and hit the deck,
yelling something about a madman, and Nick Kent swung again,
this time whipping Chrissy with the weight of the heavy
coins on the belt, and Chrissie screamed. She could already
feel a welt forming in her periphery. She could now
(16:10):
see the bewildered customer mobilizing himself. The customer's fist came
quickly barreling into the melee, and it caught Nick Kent
in the mouth, and there was a sound of bone
and flesh, a flash of blood, and in a blink,
one of Nick's teeth tumbled from his gums as he
fell backward and hit the floor. He was out cold.
(16:30):
But Chrissie wasn't waiting around to see what would happen next.
She was already out the door, her heart pounding, running
toward the western end of King's Road, where the ghosts
of old Victorian songs haunted what was known as the
World's End. The next morning, the world was still there,
(16:51):
but Chrissy hins roll in it had changed again. For
a guy who trafficked in shock, Malcolm McLaren didn't quite
know what to say, so he said it as best
he could. It's too confusing you working here. It was
his roundabout way of saying you're fired. Vivian Westwood agreed,
(17:12):
too much drama. Chrissy found herself back where she'd started
when she'd first arrived in London. She had no money,
and she'd made great contacts, but she had no prospects.
Worst of all, she had no band. But the stakes
were higher now. She could no longer afford rent, which
meant she was sleeping on the desks and floors of friends,
(17:35):
And she had no permit, which meant her very status
in Europe was now illegal. She had no other choice,
so she went round all the record labels in town,
and because her split with the enemy had yet to
really be broadcast, she used her press credentials to procure
a stack of promotional albums, which she then took to
(17:55):
a record store and Soho sold them all, and then
used that money to a plane ticket that took her
right back to the belly of the most uninteresting, least
happening beast. Ohio, do you know how to use one
of these? The fat man at his stubby little fingers
wrapped around the handle of a revolver, which he just
pulled out of a drawer behind the bar at the
(18:17):
Hotel Garfield in Cleveland, Like this right, Chrissy hin said
nothing as the fat man cocked the gun with his
leathery thumb. God forbid you ever to use it. But
then again, God help any of these fucking wackos, you
have to pull it off. Chrissy's eyes scanned the room
and saw a few of these wackos at work, nursing
rounds of Johnny Walker Red well before noon, maxing out
(18:38):
their credit lines at a table in the corner with
the Garfield's resident bookmaker. It wasn't just the hotel. The
whole city was crawling with dangerous types, all of whom
had their own itchy fingers on the trigger. She wasn't
crazy about the necessity of a gun to ten bar,
but it was a job, the job that paid her
one hundred bucks a week, a job which also allowed
her to sing in Jack Rabbit, a local R and
(19:00):
B covers band she'd recently joined. They played stuff by
the Isles and the Commodores. Not a dream gig by
any stretch, but it was a gig and a band,
which is better than nothing. And then fate blew in
off the Cuyahoga River. Chrissy was fired from the Hotel
Garfield after one of the regular soldiers of Grass in
(19:23):
the apartment building she lived in a Denis squalor in
which one had to climb into the sink to bathe
because the actual bathtub was busted burned to the ground,
and then Jack Rabbit fell apart. Like most small time
cover bands do, Chrissy was drifting a complete unknown, like
your guy Dylan would say. Oh, and this is where
(19:44):
fate comes in. It came in the form of a telegram,
and the telegram read come to Paris, We'll send ticket
sing in band, We'll be right back after this. We're We're,
We're Paris was a red herring. The gig was real,
(20:10):
the band was real. It all came as advertised. But
this particular gig, this band, this moment, it wasn't right.
It turns out that it was just Fate's way of
luring Chrissy Hin back to Europe, because as soon as
she bounced from the City of Light and went back
to London Town, that's when everything started to happen. That's
(20:31):
when Chrissy Hin found herself nearly becoming a member of
not one, not two, but three seminal English punk bands,
only to miss each opportunity just slightly. She had no
one to blame or thank for it all other than
her old boss, Malcolm McLaren. It was nineteen seventy five
or thereabouts, and McLaren knew that Chrissy Hin had it all.
(20:53):
The fuck you attitude, the get fucked swagger, the fuck
off fringe miniskirt, and the tongue in cheek fuck men,
Valerie Salona's Scum Manifesto T shirt that she'd cribbed from
his store. He never knew she'd actually paid for those things,
but that vibe of badassory was part of her lore.
Just months earlier, when Chrissy was back in Ohio, all
pathetic and pitiful like a dog with a tail between
(21:16):
its legs, McLaren had actually written to her. He offered
to pay her airfare she returned to London to join
a new band he was forming. But if Christy was
one thing besides being tough and restless, she was loyal,
and at that moment she was loyal to the po dunk,
R and B cover band that she was in, and
now here she was watching the band that Malcolm McLaren
(21:38):
had assembled, The Sex Pistols as they began their noisy
crusade of anarchy across the UK, and that my Friends
is band number one. That Chrissy him maybe would have
could have should have been a maybe if she hadn't
been almost four thousand miles away at the time. Now
onto ban number two, mcl nothing if not a man
(22:01):
of opportunity. Following the creation of the Pistols, he presented
Chrissy with a new opportunity. He introduced her to the
guitarist Mick Jones, who was looking for a songwriting partner.
Chrissy and Mick went to his apartment, guitars in hand,
trading chords, trading vocal lines. Chrissy came into her own
with Mick sitting across from her. She was finding her voice,
(22:22):
finding like minded souls and maybe maybe it would have
worked Chrissy and Mick in a band together if only
John Graham Miller aka Joe Strummer had not walked into
the picture and changed everything in an instant. Joe Strummer
couldn't even play guitar as well as Chrissy, but even
she had to agree the chemistry. The way that Joe's
(22:45):
grittiness balanced mixed sweetness was undeniable. Then that Folks was
the clash band number two that Chrissy high nearly helped launch,
which brings us to band number three. Malcolm McLaren was persistent.
Next he introduced Christy to a bass player named Ray
Burns and a drummer named Chris Miller. The trio called
(23:08):
themselves Masters of the Backside, which yeah, I know, and
they jammed in a church hall for some friends, mostly
the sex boutique crowded. But no sooner was that performance
over than ray Burns started calling himself Captain Sensible and
Chris Miller was now going by rat Scabies. And before
she knew it, Chrissy hadn't dropped by the guys who
(23:28):
were about to be known as the Damned. So as
punk band number three soldiered on without Chrissy Hind in
their ranks, Chrissy was feeling that familiar sting of deja vu,
no work, nowhere to live but an illegal squat, trying
not to take it too hard that she was always
the bridesmaid and never the bride when it came to bands.
(23:52):
But wait, oh shit, that was it the bride? What
if she could literally be the bride? The bride of
an Englishman, that is, so that she could be granted
citizenship and could therefore prolonger time abroad. It was a
goofy enough proposition that John Lyden aka Johnny Rotten of
the sex Pistols agreed to do it when Chrisy asked.
(24:13):
But that was just a few days before the Pistols
blew up. Now there was the talk of the town
courtesy of a scandalizing, profanity laced appearance on British television.
John now had a reputation to protect her something like that,
which was the excuse he gave Chrissy when he backed
out of the whole thing. No matter, Chrisy knew she
could convince Sid to do it. Sid Vicious was nineteen,
(24:37):
not yet a member of the sex Pistols, but everyone
who went to show's knew Sid. Sid had the look,
he had the sneer. He was Skinny Elvis on skid Row.
Sid walked the walk at a Pistol show, again before
Sid was in the Sex Pistols. Sid walked that walk
right up to one Nick Kent, Chrissy's ex and also
(24:59):
an ex Pistols of sort, having allegedly rehearsed with an
earlier version of the band, only to now talk shit
about them In the Enemy. Sid was a staunch defender
of his friends and the sex Pistols, especially when some
failed musician turned hack rider had to go. So Sid
look Nick Kent right in his eyes. I don't like
your trousers, Kent laughed. Was that supposed to scare him? Nah,
(25:21):
that's Sid scaring him. Well, that's what this was for.
Sid then produced a bicycle chain, which he proceeded to
use to beat Nick Kent with mercilessly. Chrissy had to
admit it was pretty funny watching Sid vicious tune up
the guy who once attacked her at her place of business.
So she took the wiry punk down to the local
(25:42):
office to tie the knot, but the place was closed
bank holiday. Going back the next day was out of
the question because Sid was dueing court to answer for
his involvement in another violent altercation, this time for throwing
glass that shattered and cut a woman's eye during a
show by the Damned. And so it continued living illegally,
(26:04):
living unfulfilled, living in neutral while the rest of London's
movers moved forward. At this point, Chrissy knew all the
players moving around, even if she wasn't one herself. There
was DJ don Lett spinning reggae and dub forty fives
for the punks down at the Roxy. There was Lemmy
Killmeister leaving Hawkwind forming motorhead, shifting into a higher, meaner
(26:26):
gear and getting higher. Not through sheer ambition alone. Amphetamines helped.
Lemmy was the only one in town tougher than Chrissy.
But how Chrisy wanted to know? How do you stay
tough when you couldn't get anything going? She laid out
her sob story to Lemmy like he was some kind
of guru on the mountaintop. She had all this opportunity,
(26:47):
all this right place, right time, but no simple twist
of feet. Lemmy didn't sugarcoat it. Who told you it
was gonna be easy? Tough was tough? That was the message,
the softer all back in Ohio, Chrissy watching the city
slowly turn into parking spaces. Let me tell Chrissy what
she needed to hear. He also told her the name
(27:09):
of a drummer she should track down, a guy called
gas Wild, tell him let me sing you. And with
that time was no longer in neutral for Chrissy Heine,
time was about to stand still. All right, disc goes.
(27:34):
Earlier in this episode, I mentioned how Chrissy hin discovered
the Violent Fems back when they were an unknown band
busking on the streets of Milwaukee. Some say that it
was the Pretender's guitarist, James Honeyman Scott who actually did
the discovering, but it doesn't matter. The story of how
the Violent Fems were given their first shot at the
big time by Christy Hine is wilder than you're thinking.
I just didn't have enough time to get into it here,
(27:56):
but if you want to hear that story, you can
do so right now in this week's brand new Disgrace
and Mini episode, which is available exclusively for our All
Access members. To become a member of All Access, where
you can not only hear this mini episode, but also
get ad free listening and other exclusive content like our
video podcast. This film should be played loud. Just go
to Disgrace dampod dot com for more details and sign
(28:17):
up today. All Right, now back to our regularly scheduled
programming and the conclusion of our Chrissy Heines story. The
drummer known as Gas Wilde did not share Chrissy Hines's toughness.
He did share her fondness for the high life, uppers, downers, Cooke,
smack web, whatever was going around, but he tended to
(28:38):
let the high life get the better of him more
often than not. Luckily for Chrissy, gas Wild also shared
something else before he was sacked, the name of a
bass player he'd once toured with Pete Farndon. He looked
like Dwayne Eddie by way of The Hell's Angels. Well
maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but he looked apart and
he was as much in the pocket basis as gas
(28:59):
wild was a loose cannon. And Pete also happened to
know a guitar player looking for her gig, James Honeyman
Scott Jimmy was tight, fast and this futuristic rockabilly thing
or whatever his style was, it didn't sound like anyone else.
And both those guys just so happened to know a
drummer who could fill the empty stool left by gas Wilde,
(29:20):
a human rhythm machine with great nuance named Martin Chambers.
The moment that Chrissy, Pete, Jimmy, and Martin got in
the same room together and tore through one of Chrissy's
original songs, Precious. Chrissy had to turn and face the
wall so as not to betray her own toughness and
show her hand. She was laughing. She was laughing because
(29:41):
she had never heard such a beautiful, perfect sound in
her life. She was laughing because she knew she had
finally gotten what she'd wanted ever since she had left
Ohio for the first time five years prior. A band,
her band, and her band was playing her songs, songs
she'd written while trying to get something going with Mick
(30:03):
Jones and Captain Sensible and all those other guys. Songs
that weren't built around traditional verses and bridges and choruses. Instead,
Chrissie's songs were built around attitude and defiance up the neck,
the weight private life. There were confidence songs, songs written
by a person who knew her place, even if that
(30:24):
place had been denied her for years. They had hooks
as heavy as a coin studded belt or a bicycle chain,
and mostly they felt real, even if the band performing
them were now calling themselves the pretenders. With the connections
Chrissy had built up over the years, the Pretenders went
into the studio, first with the great Nick Lowe, who
(30:47):
produced their version of the Kinks deep cut Stop Your Sobbing.
The song was released as the Pretender's first single in
early nineteen seventy nine, just weeks before Chrissy's one time
near husband said Vicious die of a fatal hotshot, but
I digress. Stop Your Sobbing did well, cracking the UK
Top forty, but it didn't yet reveal the true power
(31:09):
of the Pretenders. Soon the band were back in the studio,
this time with producer Chris Thomas, whose stacked resume included
the debut album by Chrissy's friends, The Sex Pistols. By
the end of that year, the Pretender's self titled album
was ready, but first in November of seventy nine, ahead
of the album's January release, the band put out another single,
(31:31):
an earworm called Brass in Pocket. The song was an
instant hit in the UK, riding up the charts, where
it was still gaining traction on Christmas Day, when, for
the first time in nine years, tragedy struck too close
to home. The house was on Endel Street in Covent Garden,
(31:51):
London's West End. It was a proper house, not a
squad with a shared filthy kitchen or a sink that
doubled as a bath. She had a mattress, and she
had ordered and routine she paid rent each month. Chrissy
lived on Endels Street with two housemates, two fellow creatives,
a typesetter Steve Mann and an artist Kevin Sparrow, who
(32:12):
designed album artwork for bands of the Stranglers and Eddie
and the Hot Rods. Christy wasn't home on Christmas Day
that year. She was at a friend's house where she
was celebrating the holiday. Also the fact that the song
that she had written and performed was actually heating up
the charts. Kevin wasn't at home either, he was at
another friend's place, and it was at that other house
(32:34):
that Kevin Sparrow's body was found on Christmas, dead with
lethal amounts of whiskey and heroin in his system. Only
two weeks later, Brass and Pocket hit number one in
the UK. For Chrissy, the achievement was bittersweet, trying to
wrap her head around all this sudden success after years
(32:56):
of trying, years of lurking on the sidelines, and now
once again trying to make sense of something that made
no sense, disordered death. It was like Kent State some
nine years prior, a moment of crisis turned cathartic by
the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and now
(33:16):
Chrissy was creating her own outlets for Catharsis, her own music,
her own words. The music promised freedom for the feelings
she couldn't explain away. Eventually, Chrissy would express her own
Catharsis in a song for Kevin, but that would be
years later, after the losses had begun to pile up,
(33:37):
after the pretender's original lineup had been reduced from four
to two. But that's another story. I'm Jake Brennan and
this this Disgraceland. All right, thanks for checking out this
(34:04):
Chrissy Hine episode of Disgracelam. This is an easy question
of the week for us guys. Who's the most badass
female musician in rock and roll? I mean, it's hard
to think of somebody other than Chrissy hin although there
are a ton of candidates, but Christy kind of broke
the mold. Get at us and let us know your choice.
Six one seven nine oh six six three eight voicemail
(34:25):
and text, or at Disgracelam pod. On the socials, you
might hear your answer on the upcoming after party. If
you want to support the show, you could do so
very easily by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify and you might win some free merch by doing so.
And if you want more Disgracelan, you know where to
find it. Become an All Access member get exclusive content
(34:46):
and ad free listening, including our new video podcast this
film should we played loud. Go to disgrace slampod dot
com to sign up. All right, here comes some credits.
Disgracelam was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
partnership with double Elvis. It's for this episode can be
found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank
(35:08):
you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And
if not, you can become a member right now by
going to disgracelampod dot com. Slash Membership members can listen
to every episode of Disgracelan ad free, rate and review
the show, and follow us on Instagram. TikTok, Twitter, and
Facebook at disgracelampod and on YouTube at YouTube dot com,
(35:28):
slash at disgracelampod, Rock Arolla. He then Land
Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. This is a
story about being there, about showing up early, about standing
(00:23):
close enough to history that you can feel the heat
coming off of it. This is about a woman who
found herself in the future, watching bands form, watching cultures collide,
in the world being remade in real time. Not as
a star, not yet anyways, but as a witness and
(00:44):
a survivor. This is also the story of an unprovoked attack,
about studded belts, bicycle chains, and a gun stashed underneath
the bar. It's about two marriage proposals and a woman
who wasn't about to be tied down, a woman who
responded to the chaos, violence and loss surrounding her by
(01:04):
making a lot of noise. This is a story about
Chrissy Heine from The Pretenders, so of course it's a
story about great music. Unlike that clip I played for
you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music.
That was a preset loop from my melotron called are
(01:26):
You Ready Girls? Mk? Two. I played you that loop
because I can't afford the rights to le Freak by
Chic and why would I play you that specific slice
of stranded outside Studio fifty four Cheese Could I afford it?
Because that was the number one song in America on
(01:48):
January twentieth, nineteen seventy nine, and that was the day
that Chrissy Hines banned. The Pretenders released their first single,
A hard fought, hard won victory for someone who had
spent years lurking on the sidelines. As the Clash, the
Sex Pistols, and UK punk at Large were busy being born.
(02:09):
On this episode punk at Ground Zero, Chaos, Violence, Loss, Survival,
the origins of the Pretenders, Chrissy Hind, I'm Jake Brennan,
and this is Disgraceland. She was there. She was there
(02:49):
in nineteen seventy two when the Starman Ziggy Starred Us
first fell to Earth and landed somewhere in Ohio. She
was there in London in nineteen seventy six, she watched
Mick Jones and Joe's strummer meet and play together for
the first time. She heard Joe say to Mick, don't
do it that way, You'll never make a dime as
(03:10):
she was there when the Clash rehearsed for the first time.
The Damned Too anyone could see they were born to kill.
She was there when two members of the Sex Pistols
agreed to marry her so that she could get her
citizenship in England. And she was there in nineteen seventy
seven at the Roxy when Don Lets the Rebel Dread
(03:31):
spun reggae and dub records at a punk show. She
watched as the culture clashed in real time and in stereo.
She was there in nineteen eighty one in Milwaukee when
the violent femmes were just buskers on a dirty street
corner waiting to be plucked from obscurity. Chrissy Hine was
there when punk rock in New Wave took their first steps,
(03:56):
but first. She was here on the campus of Kent
State University in nineteen seventy tin Soldiers and Nixon's coming,
when the crack of discharged National Guard rifles echoed nearby.
The scene was chaos, thousands of students refusing to leave.
(04:16):
They were thinking of Cambodia as flanks of olive green
reflected in the whites of their eyes. Rocks and tear
gas sword through the air. Car windows, smashed American flags,
burned garbage cans rolled into the middle of the street.
Their contents had flames. The rotc buildings smoldered in the
near distance, and the guardsmen were up on the hill.
(04:39):
Now they were outnumbered, but they had the power, They
had the m ones. They turned and faced the angry,
confused student body. Clarity was coming in the form of
a bullet. The guardsmen raised their weapons, and then they
fired for thirteen seconds. Shots rang out nearly seventy in total.
(05:08):
Kent State freshman Chrissy Heine, who was then still going
by Christine or Christie or just playing Chris, ran her
hands across her arms and legs, assuming she'd be shot.
But she was lucky. Unlike the four who now lay
on the university campus dead, or the nine others who'd
been injured by the guardsman's gunfire. Chrissy Hein was there,
(05:34):
but she couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. The disorder,
the violence, the death. None of it made sense. For
weeks later, it still didn't make sense. But Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young had released a new single, Ohio, a
fiery piece of protest music that memorialized the unspeakable things
(05:56):
Chrissy and thousands of others had witnessed. The song didn't
bring those dead kids back but it brought a feeling
of catharsist to those who had been there. Rock and
roll was, by definition cathartic. It defended you, it supported you.
It didn't impose its will with brute's strength or bend
you into conformity. And it gave you freedom, if only
(06:19):
for two minutes and fifty eight seconds at a time,
as was the case with the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Song even better than a forty five spinning on a
turntable was live rock and roll. Later, Chrissy hin would write,
when a band played times stood still, A band was time.
(06:40):
It was a big bang, one song after another, these
sequential eras or periods of history being made. A band
was creation. It was life, a life made in God's image,
because God was absolutely a rock and roller. God wore
his hair in a cliff and wrapped his tattooed deltoids
(07:01):
in a biker jacket, except on Sundays when he put
on a proper suit and tie. But he did it
all casual, like the top button of his pressed white
shirt unbuttoned, his tie loosened. A band was not only
the way of the world, it was how the world
began and how it would end. And Chrissy Hine, for one,
(07:22):
would not rest like God on the Seventh Day, not
until she had a band of her own, until she
was the one making time stand still. Even before she
was an adult, bands were all Chrissy Hine cared about.
The other girls could have their boys and their Revlon
(07:43):
and all that white picket fence stuff. Chrissy just wanted
a Gibson Melody Maker and a copy of The Stooge's
Funhouse to play along to. But this being in a
band business would never fly in Ohio, acron Kyahoga Falls, Cleveland.
They all felt like they were stuck in the past.
The future was across the pond in London, the only
(08:06):
place on planet Earth where somebody like Ziggy's Stardust could
be conceived. It was September nineteen seventy two, twenty one
year old Chrissy he found herself walking next to the
Starman himself, immediately after his American debut at the Cleveland
Music Hall. Was it fate, was it luck? It didn't matter.
(08:29):
It was opportunity, an opportunity to observe, to absorb, to
see firsthand how freedom simply took style and attitude and
badassor she wasn't one of those groupies. Ziggy knew that.
He knew that as he slipped into the passenger seat
of Chrissy's mom's Oldsmobile Cutlass and Chrissy, just twenty one
(08:51):
years old, took the Starman and the Spiders from Mars
to one of her favorite local spots for dinner. Months later,
she was still thinking about it, about Ziggi, about English bands,
about England period. She felt the island call to her.
The restlessness brewing at her core was switched on here
in Ohio. She was a known quantity. She was attracted
(09:14):
to rock and roll, which meant she was attracted to toughness,
to danger, to trouble. The Kailudes were trouble, as were
the gang of bikers that circled around her one night,
like wolves sizing up their prey. But she was nobody's prey.
She was no lamb. She was a pack animal just
like the rest of them. She could run with the
toughest of the tough. She just needed her own gang
(09:37):
of outlaws, a gang to get you through, to help
you endure and become strong. But Chrissy Hine wasn't here
just to be strong. She was here to be free,
and soon she was. She was there in nineteen seventy three, London.
Paul It took was a one way ticket. Chrissy him
(10:23):
pushed open the door of the liquor store and stepped outside.
Slim button down shirt, vertical stripes opened at the collar, untucked,
lived in low rise jeans, metal studs glittered down the legs,
dark ankle boots below, and Keith Richard's shock of hair above.
Her androgynist secondhand attitude was all confidence as she made
(10:44):
her way down the sidewalk, the stolen bottle of cheap
wine stuffed under one arm. From there she caught the tube,
wrote it from one stop to the next, wrote it
just because there was nothing like it to ride back
home in Ohio, before finally arriving at where she was
now living, a small rented room in a house in Clapham,
Southwest London. Inside her room she found the few things
(11:07):
she brought over from the States, a change of clothes,
a couple hundred bucks, Give her Take, and her copy
of the Velvet Undergrounds, White Light, White Heat, and Iggy
and the Stooges Is Funhouse and Rob Howard. She listened
to the records for the millionth time and imagined she
was fronting the bands. If only it were that simple,
(11:28):
like how some things in life were right place, right time,
that simple twist of fate that another of Chrissy's heroes,
Bob Dylan, was writing about somewhere at this very moment.
But fate didn't lead her to a band, not yet. Instead,
fate led her to the next best thing. Journalists, music journalists,
that is, the kind who fancied themselves a bit like
(11:51):
Hunter S. Thompson, fearing little and loathing only the music
they couldn't stand, and who in nineteen seventy three seventy
four were diligently plying their trade long before Elvis Costello
or Frank Zappa or whoever. It was said, writing about
music is like dancing about architecture. I believe it was
(12:12):
actually Charles Pokowski, but there was no dancing around it.
Writers at The New Musical Express aka the NME aka
the premier weekly rock paper in the UK, writers like
Nick Kent and Ian McDonald were drawn to Chrissy's passion
for music in her acerbic American tongue, which would gladly
lash out at any fool Charlton or Pampus ass and
(12:35):
in print no less, it didn't matter if you were
Neil Diamond or Brian Eno. Nick Kent was drawn to
more than Chrissy's tough attitude. The two had barely met
when he moved into her place and they began a relationship.
And this happened simultaneously with Christy getting hired as a
music writer for the NME. But the critic thing was
never meant to be. She wasn't one to skulk on
(12:57):
the sidelines to simply observe and report. She was built
for the front mines. She just needed to get herself
closer to the real action. So when Malcolm McLaren and
Vivian Westwood offered Chrissy a job at their cutting edge
fetish boutique on King's Road, she took the gig in
a heartbeat. The shop had been known as Let It Rock,
(13:20):
a haven for teddy boys. Soon it would be rebranded
simply as sex, but at the moment they were calling
it too fast to live, too young to die. The
shop was frequented by Chrissy's kind of people, creative types, outsiders,
restless oddballs and schemers. Susie Sue Adam Ann, John Leyden.
(13:43):
If you wanted a psychedelic suit, something Keith Richards would wear,
you went up the street to Granny Takes a Trip.
But if you wanted leather, rubber or vinyl. If you
wanted studs, chains, tip clamps, and stiletto's so sharp they
could slice open an envelope, then you went to Welcome
in Vivian's Place. Their shop was ground zero for what
(14:04):
was coming, but before punk actually broke, before it was
called punk. Malcolm and Vivian's shop was also ground zero
for where Chrissy Hines's first major professional and personal relationship
in London came to a loud, violent end. Nick Kent
(14:25):
was pissed. He burst through the front door at four
thirty Kings Road, dramatically enough for everyone inside Malcolm and
Vivian's boutique to notice him. Heads turned and eyes went wide.
Here comes the NME guy making a mad dash for
the counter for his girlfriend or should I say ex girlfriend,
seeing as she had just dumped him. Like yesterday's news
(14:47):
to Chrissy, Nick was fish and chip paper. Now Chrissy
Hine didn't own Nick Kent anything. The only thing Nick
Kent had given Chrissy Hine other than a byline was
an STD. In fact, she didn't know anyone anything, because
here in London and Malcolm McLaren's shop, Chrissy Hahn was
(15:07):
a person of her own creation. She was becoming someone
that no one back in Ohio would recognize. She was
becoming free. And now here came the jilted lover, upset
about the breakup or about her leaving the paper, whatever
it was, and he was ready to punish her for
that freedom. A bewildered customer inside of Sex looked on
(15:28):
as Nick Kent reached the counter. Nick's face went beat red.
He grabbed at his belt buckle with his hands, fumbling
the undo the clasp, and when he did, he then
yanked on the belt, pulling it clean off his waist
and one fell swoop. The belt was cheap, but it
was studded with large coins that could inflict maximum damage
if wielded like a whip. He wrapped one under the
(15:49):
belt around his fist and began to swing, and the
leather smacked the counter and the noise it made was
shockingly loud. Malcolm McLaren freaked out and hit the deck,
yelling something about a madman, and Nick Kent swung again,
this time whipping Chrissy with the weight of the heavy
coins on the belt, and Chrissie screamed. She could already
feel a welt forming in her periphery. She could now
(16:10):
see the bewildered customer mobilizing himself. The customer's fist came
quickly barreling into the melee, and it caught Nick Kent
in the mouth, and there was a sound of bone
and flesh, a flash of blood, and in a blink,
one of Nick's teeth tumbled from his gums as he
fell backward and hit the floor. He was out cold.
(16:30):
But Chrissie wasn't waiting around to see what would happen next.
She was already out the door, her heart pounding, running
toward the western end of King's Road, where the ghosts
of old Victorian songs haunted what was known as the
World's End. The next morning, the world was still there,
(16:51):
but Chrissy hins roll in it had changed again. For
a guy who trafficked in shock, Malcolm McLaren didn't quite
know what to say, so he said it as best
he could. It's too confusing you working here. It was
his roundabout way of saying you're fired. Vivian Westwood agreed,
(17:12):
too much drama. Chrissy found herself back where she'd started
when she'd first arrived in London. She had no money,
and she'd made great contacts, but she had no prospects.
Worst of all, she had no band. But the stakes
were higher now. She could no longer afford rent, which
meant she was sleeping on the desks and floors of friends,
(17:35):
And she had no permit, which meant her very status
in Europe was now illegal. She had no other choice,
so she went round all the record labels in town,
and because her split with the enemy had yet to
really be broadcast, she used her press credentials to procure
a stack of promotional albums, which she then took to
(17:55):
a record store and Soho sold them all, and then
used that money to a plane ticket that took her
right back to the belly of the most uninteresting, least
happening beast. Ohio, do you know how to use one
of these? The fat man at his stubby little fingers
wrapped around the handle of a revolver, which he just
pulled out of a drawer behind the bar at the
(18:17):
Hotel Garfield in Cleveland, Like this right, Chrissy hin said
nothing as the fat man cocked the gun with his
leathery thumb. God forbid you ever to use it. But
then again, God help any of these fucking wackos, you
have to pull it off. Chrissy's eyes scanned the room
and saw a few of these wackos at work, nursing
rounds of Johnny Walker Red well before noon, maxing out
(18:38):
their credit lines at a table in the corner with
the Garfield's resident bookmaker. It wasn't just the hotel. The
whole city was crawling with dangerous types, all of whom
had their own itchy fingers on the trigger. She wasn't
crazy about the necessity of a gun to ten bar,
but it was a job, the job that paid her
one hundred bucks a week, a job which also allowed
her to sing in Jack Rabbit, a local R and
(19:00):
B covers band she'd recently joined. They played stuff by
the Isles and the Commodores. Not a dream gig by
any stretch, but it was a gig and a band,
which is better than nothing. And then fate blew in
off the Cuyahoga River. Chrissy was fired from the Hotel
Garfield after one of the regular soldiers of Grass in
(19:23):
the apartment building she lived in a Denis squalor in
which one had to climb into the sink to bathe
because the actual bathtub was busted burned to the ground,
and then Jack Rabbit fell apart. Like most small time
cover bands do, Chrissy was drifting a complete unknown, like
your guy Dylan would say. Oh, and this is where
(19:44):
fate comes in. It came in the form of a telegram,
and the telegram read come to Paris, We'll send ticket
sing in band, We'll be right back after this. We're We're,
We're Paris was a red herring. The gig was real,
(20:10):
the band was real. It all came as advertised. But
this particular gig, this band, this moment, it wasn't right.
It turns out that it was just Fate's way of
luring Chrissy Hin back to Europe, because as soon as
she bounced from the City of Light and went back
to London Town, that's when everything started to happen. That's
(20:31):
when Chrissy Hin found herself nearly becoming a member of
not one, not two, but three seminal English punk bands,
only to miss each opportunity just slightly. She had no
one to blame or thank for it all other than
her old boss, Malcolm McLaren. It was nineteen seventy five
or thereabouts, and McLaren knew that Chrissy Hin had it all.
(20:53):
The fuck you attitude, the get fucked swagger, the fuck
off fringe miniskirt, and the tongue in cheek fuck men,
Valerie Salona's Scum Manifesto T shirt that she'd cribbed from
his store. He never knew she'd actually paid for those things,
but that vibe of badassory was part of her lore.
Just months earlier, when Chrissy was back in Ohio, all
pathetic and pitiful like a dog with a tail between
(21:16):
its legs, McLaren had actually written to her. He offered
to pay her airfare she returned to London to join
a new band he was forming. But if Christy was
one thing besides being tough and restless, she was loyal,
and at that moment she was loyal to the po dunk,
R and B cover band that she was in, and
now here she was watching the band that Malcolm McLaren
(21:38):
had assembled, The Sex Pistols as they began their noisy
crusade of anarchy across the UK, and that my Friends
is band number one. That Chrissy him maybe would have
could have should have been a maybe if she hadn't
been almost four thousand miles away at the time. Now
onto ban number two, mcl nothing if not a man
(22:01):
of opportunity. Following the creation of the Pistols, he presented
Chrissy with a new opportunity. He introduced her to the
guitarist Mick Jones, who was looking for a songwriting partner.
Chrissy and Mick went to his apartment, guitars in hand,
trading chords, trading vocal lines. Chrissy came into her own
with Mick sitting across from her. She was finding her voice,
(22:22):
finding like minded souls and maybe maybe it would have
worked Chrissy and Mick in a band together if only
John Graham Miller aka Joe Strummer had not walked into
the picture and changed everything in an instant. Joe Strummer
couldn't even play guitar as well as Chrissy, but even
she had to agree the chemistry. The way that Joe's
(22:45):
grittiness balanced mixed sweetness was undeniable. Then that Folks was
the clash band number two that Chrissy high nearly helped launch,
which brings us to band number three. Malcolm McLaren was persistent.
Next he introduced Christy to a bass player named Ray
Burns and a drummer named Chris Miller. The trio called
(23:08):
themselves Masters of the Backside, which yeah, I know, and
they jammed in a church hall for some friends, mostly
the sex boutique crowded. But no sooner was that performance
over than ray Burns started calling himself Captain Sensible and
Chris Miller was now going by rat Scabies. And before
she knew it, Chrissy hadn't dropped by the guys who
(23:28):
were about to be known as the Damned. So as
punk band number three soldiered on without Chrissy Hind in
their ranks, Chrissy was feeling that familiar sting of deja vu,
no work, nowhere to live but an illegal squat, trying
not to take it too hard that she was always
the bridesmaid and never the bride when it came to bands.
(23:52):
But wait, oh shit, that was it the bride? What
if she could literally be the bride? The bride of
an Englishman, that is, so that she could be granted
citizenship and could therefore prolonger time abroad. It was a
goofy enough proposition that John Lyden aka Johnny Rotten of
the sex Pistols agreed to do it when Chrisy asked.
(24:13):
But that was just a few days before the Pistols
blew up. Now there was the talk of the town
courtesy of a scandalizing, profanity laced appearance on British television.
John now had a reputation to protect her something like that,
which was the excuse he gave Chrissy when he backed
out of the whole thing. No matter, Chrisy knew she
could convince Sid to do it. Sid Vicious was nineteen,
(24:37):
not yet a member of the sex Pistols, but everyone
who went to show's knew Sid. Sid had the look,
he had the sneer. He was Skinny Elvis on skid Row.
Sid walked the walk at a Pistol show, again before
Sid was in the Sex Pistols. Sid walked that walk
right up to one Nick Kent, Chrissy's ex and also
(24:59):
an ex Pistols of sort, having allegedly rehearsed with an
earlier version of the band, only to now talk shit
about them In the Enemy. Sid was a staunch defender
of his friends and the sex Pistols, especially when some
failed musician turned hack rider had to go. So Sid
look Nick Kent right in his eyes. I don't like
your trousers, Kent laughed. Was that supposed to scare him? Nah,
(25:21):
that's Sid scaring him. Well, that's what this was for.
Sid then produced a bicycle chain, which he proceeded to
use to beat Nick Kent with mercilessly. Chrissy had to
admit it was pretty funny watching Sid vicious tune up
the guy who once attacked her at her place of business.
So she took the wiry punk down to the local
(25:42):
office to tie the knot, but the place was closed
bank holiday. Going back the next day was out of
the question because Sid was dueing court to answer for
his involvement in another violent altercation, this time for throwing
glass that shattered and cut a woman's eye during a
show by the Damned. And so it continued living illegally,
(26:04):
living unfulfilled, living in neutral while the rest of London's
movers moved forward. At this point, Chrissy knew all the
players moving around, even if she wasn't one herself. There
was DJ don Lett spinning reggae and dub forty fives
for the punks down at the Roxy. There was Lemmy
Killmeister leaving Hawkwind forming motorhead, shifting into a higher, meaner
(26:26):
gear and getting higher. Not through sheer ambition alone. Amphetamines helped.
Lemmy was the only one in town tougher than Chrissy.
But how Chrisy wanted to know? How do you stay
tough when you couldn't get anything going? She laid out
her sob story to Lemmy like he was some kind
of guru on the mountaintop. She had all this opportunity,
(26:47):
all this right place, right time, but no simple twist
of feet. Lemmy didn't sugarcoat it. Who told you it
was gonna be easy? Tough was tough? That was the message,
the softer all back in Ohio, Chrissy watching the city
slowly turn into parking spaces. Let me tell Chrissy what
she needed to hear. He also told her the name
(27:09):
of a drummer she should track down, a guy called
gas Wild, tell him let me sing you. And with
that time was no longer in neutral for Chrissy Heine,
time was about to stand still. All right, disc goes.
(27:34):
Earlier in this episode, I mentioned how Chrissy hin discovered
the Violent Fems back when they were an unknown band
busking on the streets of Milwaukee. Some say that it
was the Pretender's guitarist, James Honeyman Scott who actually did
the discovering, but it doesn't matter. The story of how
the Violent Fems were given their first shot at the
big time by Christy Hine is wilder than you're thinking.
I just didn't have enough time to get into it here,
(27:56):
but if you want to hear that story, you can
do so right now in this week's brand new Disgrace
and Mini episode, which is available exclusively for our All
Access members. To become a member of All Access, where
you can not only hear this mini episode, but also
get ad free listening and other exclusive content like our
video podcast. This film should be played loud. Just go
to Disgrace dampod dot com for more details and sign
(28:17):
up today. All Right, now back to our regularly scheduled
programming and the conclusion of our Chrissy Heines story. The
drummer known as Gas Wilde did not share Chrissy Hines's toughness.
He did share her fondness for the high life, uppers, downers, Cooke,
smack web, whatever was going around, but he tended to
(28:38):
let the high life get the better of him more
often than not. Luckily for Chrissy, gas Wild also shared
something else before he was sacked, the name of a
bass player he'd once toured with Pete Farndon. He looked
like Dwayne Eddie by way of The Hell's Angels. Well
maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, but he looked apart and
he was as much in the pocket basis as gas
(28:59):
wild was a loose cannon. And Pete also happened to
know a guitar player looking for her gig, James Honeyman
Scott Jimmy was tight, fast and this futuristic rockabilly thing
or whatever his style was, it didn't sound like anyone else.
And both those guys just so happened to know a
drummer who could fill the empty stool left by gas Wilde,
(29:20):
a human rhythm machine with great nuance named Martin Chambers.
The moment that Chrissy, Pete, Jimmy, and Martin got in
the same room together and tore through one of Chrissy's
original songs, Precious. Chrissy had to turn and face the
wall so as not to betray her own toughness and
show her hand. She was laughing. She was laughing because
(29:41):
she had never heard such a beautiful, perfect sound in
her life. She was laughing because she knew she had
finally gotten what she'd wanted ever since she had left
Ohio for the first time five years prior. A band,
her band, and her band was playing her songs, songs
she'd written while trying to get something going with Mick
(30:03):
Jones and Captain Sensible and all those other guys. Songs
that weren't built around traditional verses and bridges and choruses. Instead,
Chrissie's songs were built around attitude and defiance up the neck,
the weight private life. There were confidence songs, songs written
by a person who knew her place, even if that
(30:24):
place had been denied her for years. They had hooks
as heavy as a coin studded belt or a bicycle chain,
and mostly they felt real, even if the band performing
them were now calling themselves the pretenders. With the connections
Chrissy had built up over the years, the Pretenders went
into the studio, first with the great Nick Lowe, who
(30:47):
produced their version of the Kinks deep cut Stop Your Sobbing.
The song was released as the Pretender's first single in
early nineteen seventy nine, just weeks before Chrissy's one time
near husband said Vicious die of a fatal hotshot, but
I digress. Stop Your Sobbing did well, cracking the UK
Top forty, but it didn't yet reveal the true power
(31:09):
of the Pretenders. Soon the band were back in the studio,
this time with producer Chris Thomas, whose stacked resume included
the debut album by Chrissy's friends, The Sex Pistols. By
the end of that year, the Pretender's self titled album
was ready, but first in November of seventy nine, ahead
of the album's January release, the band put out another single,
(31:31):
an earworm called Brass in Pocket. The song was an
instant hit in the UK, riding up the charts, where
it was still gaining traction on Christmas Day, when, for
the first time in nine years, tragedy struck too close
to home. The house was on Endel Street in Covent Garden,
(31:51):
London's West End. It was a proper house, not a
squad with a shared filthy kitchen or a sink that
doubled as a bath. She had a mattress, and she
had ordered and routine she paid rent each month. Chrissy
lived on Endels Street with two housemates, two fellow creatives,
a typesetter Steve Mann and an artist Kevin Sparrow, who
(32:12):
designed album artwork for bands of the Stranglers and Eddie
and the Hot Rods. Christy wasn't home on Christmas Day
that year. She was at a friend's house where she
was celebrating the holiday. Also the fact that the song
that she had written and performed was actually heating up
the charts. Kevin wasn't at home either, he was at
another friend's place, and it was at that other house
(32:34):
that Kevin Sparrow's body was found on Christmas, dead with
lethal amounts of whiskey and heroin in his system. Only
two weeks later, Brass and Pocket hit number one in
the UK. For Chrissy, the achievement was bittersweet, trying to
wrap her head around all this sudden success after years
(32:56):
of trying, years of lurking on the sidelines, and now
once again trying to make sense of something that made
no sense, disordered death. It was like Kent State some
nine years prior, a moment of crisis turned cathartic by
the music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and now
(33:16):
Chrissy was creating her own outlets for Catharsis, her own music,
her own words. The music promised freedom for the feelings
she couldn't explain away. Eventually, Chrissy would express her own
Catharsis in a song for Kevin, but that would be
years later, after the losses had begun to pile up,
(33:37):
after the pretender's original lineup had been reduced from four
to two. But that's another story. I'm Jake Brennan and
this this Disgraceland. All right, thanks for checking out this
(34:04):
Chrissy Hine episode of Disgracelam. This is an easy question
of the week for us guys. Who's the most badass
female musician in rock and roll? I mean, it's hard
to think of somebody other than Chrissy hin although there
are a ton of candidates, but Christy kind of broke
the mold. Get at us and let us know your choice.
Six one seven nine oh six six three eight voicemail
(34:25):
and text, or at Disgracelam pod. On the socials, you
might hear your answer on the upcoming after party. If
you want to support the show, you could do so
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And if you want more Disgracelan, you know where to
find it. Become an All Access member get exclusive content
(34:46):
and ad free listening, including our new video podcast this
film should we played loud. Go to disgrace slampod dot
com to sign up. All right, here comes some credits.
Disgracelam was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
partnership with double Elvis. It's for this episode can be
found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank
(35:08):
you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And
if not, you can become a member right now by
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(35:28):
slash at disgracelampod, Rock Arolla. He then Land
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