In the early 1980s, drugs were woven into the fabric of rock and roll — often celebrated, rarely questioned, and sometimes deadly. Chrissie Hynde lived through that era from the front lines with the Pretenders, and decades later, she still carries the guilt of losing two of her closest bandmates to addiction.
The Ohio-born guitarist formed the Pretenders in London in 1978 alongside guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, bass guitarist Pete Farndon and drummer Martin Chambers. Their self-titled debut album arrived the following year, introducing a band that combined punk’s urgency with classic pop songwriting and Hynde’s distinctive rhythm guitar style.
The group’s rise was swift, but so was the devastation that followed. By 1982, both Honeyman-Scott and Farndon were dead, their lives cut short by drug-related problems. Looking back, Hynde has admitted she feels she should have done more to help them.
“I am guilty,” she told Record Collector in 2023. “It’s not a big word if you are guilty. It’s big if you feel guilty and you’re not guilty. If you really are guilty, then you should put your hand up and say, ‘Guilty as charged.’”
During the same interview, Hynde reflected on the culture surrounding the band’s early years and acknowledged that she was part of an environment where drug use had become normalized.
“I didn’t discourage the drug-taking, and I was part of it,” she said. “Not that I was their mother, and we went on the road, and it was very hardcore.”
Hynde’s memories also reflect just how normalized drug use had become in the rock world of the early 1980s. Her first encounter with Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister, which she recalled in her memoir Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, is a striking example of the era’s excess.
“The first time I clapped eyes on him was in a shop on the King’s Road. We exchanged no words at all,” she wrote. “He eyed me up and down, moved in close, dipped the silver tube he wore on a chain around his neck into a plastic bag of white powder, shoved it up my snout, then turned around and walked out. I was up for three days.”
For Hynde, though, the consequences of that culture were far from a rock ’n’ roll anecdote.
The Pretenders’ second album, Pretenders II, arrived in 1981 as the band’s profile continued to grow, but behind the scenes Farndon’s drug use had become increasingly destructive. He was eventually dismissed from the group and died less than a year later from complications related to his addiction.
Just two days after Farndon’s departure, Honeyman-Scott — who had attended the meeting where the bassist was removed — died from heart failure caused by cocaine use. The loss was devastating for Hynde, particularly because she had played a role in the decision to fire Farndon.
“I was having problems with Pete,” Hynde recalled. “So, perhaps not guilty, but there’s an element of wishing you’d done better.”
Honeyman-Scott’s death was the loss that hit especially hard. His melodic, inventive electric guitar playing had become central to the Pretenders’ identity, and Hynde has repeatedly spoken about the lasting impact he left on generations of players.
“Every guitar player I’ve had since James Honeyman-Scott has been influenced by him, for example: Johnny Marr [who briefly joined the band in 1987],” she said. “The moment James came to my front door, I knew we’d be in a band together. It’s insane: Jimmy died aged 25. Only guitar players remember him, and yet he was the sound of the Pretenders.”
For Hynde, losing Honeyman-Scott and Farndon also marked the end of the band’s original spirit.
“Since Pete and Jimmy died and because I’ve had to replace people, it’s now kind of like a Pretenders tribute band,” she said.
The Pretenders would continue for decades, with Hynde remaining the one constant at the center of the group. But the shadow of those early losses has never fully disappeared — particularly the absence of Honeyman-Scott, whose innovative guitar work helped define the band’s first era.
