singer
Chrissie Hynde: Getting older is like smoking weed
‘The Pretenders’ frontwoman Chrissie Hynde isn’t naturally one to worry a lot. photo
© Ben Birchall/PA Wire/dpa
The front woman of the rock band The Pretenders doesn’t have any problems with aging and also sees the positive things in it. But one thing bothers her.
Singer Chrissie Hynde (71) has her own take on found aging. “I don’t mind getting older,” the frontwoman of the band The Pretenders (“Don’t Get Me Wrong”) told the British Sunday newspaper The Observer. “But I mind getting uglier. Come on, there’s only one thing we know is going to happen to us for sure.” Many of her friends didn’t get old.
She’s not naturally one to worry a lot, and a lot of things about getting older are great. For example, she doesn’t think she knows many things now that she didn’t know when she was 16. “But there is a big difference between knowing and understanding. It sometimes takes 50 years to understand something,” said the musician. She is also more relaxed today. “Getting older is like being a stoner again.” But that doesn’t mean she’s not upset too.
When asked about losing band members to drugs and when she’d had enough, she replied, “I think probably when I was in my 60s.” For a long time, people would go to the funerals of people who had overdosed and everyone would stand around the grave and get some weed.
People would think you get addicted because you have problems. “But in my experience most of us just wanted to be on it because all our heroes have been doing it and we wanted to know what that’s like,” said the musician, who will release a new album in September and is also a painter.