And there I was, like the real loser, you know? Really the loser. All the people I knew in town, they were all in bands. When I left, I said, "Thanks a lot for lettin' me come along," and I went back and went weeping on the Underground throughout London. And to go to all the gigs, to see it so close up, to be living in it and not to have a band was devastating to me. After a brief spell in the band Johnny Moped, Mick Jones invited Hynde to join his band on their initial tour of Britain. Īfter the lack of success with the band, Malcolm McLaren placed her as a guitarist in Masters of the Backside but she was asked to leave the group just as it became the Damned. Later, Hynde tried to start a group with Mick Jones from the Clash. Jon Moss (who would later be in Culture Club) and Tony James of Generation X also auditioned. In late 1976, Hynde responded to an advertisement in Melody Maker for band members and attended an audition for the band that would become 999. Upon arrival at the registry office the following morning, they found it "closed for an extended holiday" and were unable to attend the following day due to Vicious making a court appearance.
Hynde's version of this episode has it that Rotten "offered to go to a registry office with me and do the unmentionable" but when he subsequently pulled out, Sid Vicious volunteered to take his place. At one point she tried to convince Steve Jones and then Johnny Rotten (of the Sex Pistols, who were managed by McLaren) to marry her to get her a work permit.
She returned to London in the midst of the early punk movement. For one show at the Olympia Theatre when their singer had left, she took the lead singer duties. She left Kent for Michael Fradji Memmi, bass player of the Frenchies, which she joined. She went back to France in 1976 to try to form a band but it did not work out. Hynde attempted to start a band in France before her return to Cleveland in 1975. It was then that she met rock journalist Nick Kent and landed a position at the music magazine New Musical Express ( NME), writing what she subsequently described as "half-baked philosophical drivel and nonsensical tirades." This proved not to last and Hynde later got a job at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing store, SEX. With her art background, she landed a job in an architectural firm but left after eight months. Hynde was also caught up in the Kent State Massacre on May 4, 1970, in which the boyfriend of one of her friends was among the four victims. Mat., which included Mark Mothersbaugh, later of Devo. While attending Kent State University's Art School for three years, she joined a band called Sat. Hynde became interested in hippie counterculture, Eastern mysticism, and vegetarianism. I had, uh, bigger things in mind." Early career For me, knowing that Brian Jones was out there, and later that Iggy Pop was out there, made it kind of hard for me to get too interested in the guys that were around me. So I was in love a lot of the time, but mostly with guys in bands that I had never met. I used to go to Cleveland just to see any band. Except, of course, I could go see bands, and that was the kick. I mean, I never went to a dance, I never went out on a date, I never went steady. She graduated from Firestone High School in Akron, but stated that "I was never too interested in high school. Hynde was born in Akron, Ohio, the daughter of a part-time secretary and a Yellow Pages manager. 7.2 JP, Chrissie and the Fairground Boys.