Beyond being female midwesterners who migrated to London, Chrissie Hynde and Madonna have nothing in common. Yet you couldn't help thinking of Madge during this one-off by Hynde and her grizzled but sparky Pretenders. Tickets for Madonna's UK tour had gone on sale that morning, at a typically entrepreneurial £80 for the cheap seats - and, by contrast, here was Hynde, trying to persuade fans not to part with their cash for a new Pretenders box set, Pirate Radio. "You know I'd never ask you to buy anything, but should you want to purchase this splendid collection ..." she trailed off, pop's worst practitioner of the art of self-promotion.
Hynde once sang, in the 1980 single Talk of the Town, "Oh, but it's hard to live by the rules. I never could and still never do" - and the 54-year-old singer still diligently observes a punk-inspired, anti-materialist creed. Her iconic status is due at least partly to her refusal to budge from her ethical position. Hynde's non-sales pitch for Pirate Radio was only to be expected at this gig, as was her inflexible stance on vegetarianism. Apropos of nothing, she dedicated Hold a Candle to This to "all you meat-eaters out there that have turned this country into a slaughterhouse", which is a pretty bracing way to address your paying customers, but very Hynde.
Another reason she's still an icon is the fact that she looks and sounds as fantastic as she did on the Pretenders' 1980 debut album. Hynde devoted the same all-or-nothing energy to her music tonight. Still cool and skinny, she gulped her way through the heart-rending Kid, which was dedicated to long-deceased original Pretenders James Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon ("forever in our hearts"), and was glacially aloof on the ambiguous Mystery Achievement.
There are, of course, three other Pretenders, and they were afforded rather too much time to bang out the semi-instrumental Fools Must Die and Cuban Slide. Hynde, though, seemed blissful during these rocky space-fillers, avidly mucking in on guitar. Having claimed in a recent interview that she found singing painfully embarrassing, she appeared happiest during songs such as these and the equally thrashy show-closer, Porcelain.
Apparently, she has been thinking of retiring, which might offer her relief, but would leave pop a poorer place.
