Lead Pretender Chrissie Hynde is the real deal

When the call comes through from Chrissie Hynde, she has only just returned to her home in London after a trip back to her native United States to visit family and friends. She's readying herself for the first rehearsals before taking her band, The Pretenders, back on the road after a break of about 18 months.

The 61-year-old says the gap in between performances will benefit those in Hong Kong who turn up for The Pretenders' gig at the Kowloon Bay International Trade & Exhibition Centre on Thursday as it has left the band "gagging for it".

As for the singer-songwriter-guitarist herself, while she is happy enough with her time out of the limelight ("Away from the band I am a very, very ordinary person," she says), getting up and doing her thing centre stage is quite simply what she was put on this planet to do.

"My fans pay me to goof off and have a good time," says Hynde. "I don't think they want to see me as some ambitious, intense person and I don't want to be. Not everyone gets to be a rock star and I take it pretty seriously. If my fans want me to have fun and look cool and that's all I have to do, then I take that very seriously."

Fans who have followed Hynde since The Pretenders emerged at the back end of the late-1970s punk movement may be surprised to learn that, in the very beginning at least, that she found playing live "torture".

"Probably for the first 200 shows, I just hated it," she laughs. "I found it really, really uncomfortable. I was a natural showoff with my friends, but the idea of going to theatre school or drama school horrified me. I only did this because I like rock'n'roll music. I thought at one time I would be a painter, but I got waylaid by rock'n'roll. But this was the way it was meant to be. I just loved rock'n'roll then and I love it now."