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<\/p>\nIt was May 1973 and I was 22.\u00a0A girlfriend and I got in a cab at Heathrow and said take us to a hotel and he took us to the Lion Court Hotel behind Whiteleys. As soon as we arrived, we walked up to the top of the road and asked at the kiosks on the Bayswater Road: \u201cHave you got a job? Have you got a job?\u201d And a guy gave me a job selling handbags in a kiosk on Oxford Street.<\/p>\n
Now, I didn\u2019t know anything about London. For all I knew, Chelsea was a city. I\u2019d come straight from Akron, Ohio. I\u2019d never been on a train or the Underground. So when I saw all those kiosks, I\u2019d never seen anything like it. I went to work straight away because I had less than $500 on me. Anyway, there was a girl on the next stall and she invited me to a place in Clapham and that\u2019s where I got my first room in London.<\/p>\n
It was Clapham South, Englewood Road. I was living there on and off for quite a few years. I had one room and it was four quid a week. It turned out that Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood lived up the road but I didn\u2019t know them yet. I hadn\u2019t met anyone yet.<\/p>\n
I briefly worked in their shop. I remember walking with Malcolm from the shop on the King\u2019s Road back to Clapham together. They weren\u2019t well known then. I wasn\u2019t there for long; they fired me \u2013 again, this is a long time ago. There was an incident. But Malcolm and Viv were good pals of mine and I really looked up to them a lot.<\/p>\n
I never moved back to the States but I did travel there and try to get a band together.<\/p>\n
The next place I had was in Chelsea on Caversham Street. It was a squat, right off of Flood Street. I had a little room and was there a few months. The WC was out through the courtyard and there was no bathtub. It was the way places were back then. This was the early 70s.<\/p>\n
\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tNow a confirmed West Londoner, Chrissie has lived all over the city<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n
I also remember Margaret Thatcher was living around the corner on Flood Street at the same time I was there.<\/p>\n
Then somehow I ended up in Tufnell Park on Carleton Road. It was a boarding house run by an Irish couple, so I couldn\u2019t bring any guys into the house. And that\u2019s when I wrote a couple of songs, some of the early songs. I had a room in the attic and some of the other guys that I was going to get\u2026 well The Pretenders, the early band\u2026 just by coincidence, they were living somewhere else in Tufnell Park.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always loved London and I\u2019ve moved around a lot, like every few months. I was in Covent Garden on Endell Street. In Ledbury Road, just on someone\u2019s sofa for a while. Then I moved to Portman Mansions and this is by the time I was in the band, someone had a room going. And then the first flat I actually had was on Luxborough Street, Marylebone.<\/p>\n
What do I like about London? Well, that would be a whole book. The parks, the green space, the\u00a0trees. Everywhere in London is near a park and nature, that\u2019s the beauty of it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been in west London since I had kids. I\u2019ve tried to stay in the same place so that they had a sense of neighbourhood. I\u2019ve lived in two different places on Sutherland Avenue, two on Randolph Avenue, Mortimer Crescent, St John\u2019s Wood borders \u2013 is what an estate agent would call it \u2013 Kilburn. I lived in Hill Road, Maida Avenue.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been in my current place for about three years. And I\u2019ll probably stay here now. I can walk across the street to the shop, I\u2019m a two-minute walk from the Tube and I\u2019ve got everything right at my fingertips. I can walk from here to Marble Arch, to the West End. Paddington Rec, that\u2019s also local to me.<\/p>\n
I like where I am now. I\u2019m not a very nostalgic person; I always like where I am.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in the studio now until the end of July, working on a Pretenders album. I\u2019ve just finished an album with some guys in Brazil. I\u2019m not touring this year, so I\u2019ve got time to finish other projects. Oh yeah, I\u00a0love being on tour. But you know, you can only do so much \u2013 of anything \u2013 because it becomes mediocre if that\u2019s all you do. I needed to take some time out from that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always kept the band name as I didn\u2019t expect to change the line-up of the band, but you know a couple of them died [James Honeyman-Scott in 1982 and Pete Farndon in 1983]. And then I wanted to keep doing the songs that we had worked on together. But you know, I always worked within the framework of a band. I\u2019ve never thought of myself as a solo artist. Really, who wouldn\u2019t want to be in a rock band?<\/p>\n
I quit smoking about 10 years ago. I don\u2019t drink or take drugs, I avoid all that. I feel I had my fun and eventually you have to\u2026 yeah, I don\u2019t do anything!<\/p>\n
And certainly I\u2019ve seen changes in London. There have been some great improvements and I\u2019d\u00a0rather dwell on the good things rather than knife crime. What\u2019s changed for the better? I suppose people don\u2019t smoke. That\u2019s not really a British thing, that\u2019s all around. But no one would have been able to convince anyone 30 years ago that they would ban smoking in pubs, so that\u2019s a big step in the right direction. The parks are well looked after. But there are still too many cars.<\/p>\n
What would I bring back to London? Bus conductors, number one. It would be nice to have a bus conductor to tell people to get their feet off the seats. And to keep the noise down and not to stab anyone. It would be nice to have conductors on the\u00a0Underground, looking after that. It would be nice to have police on the streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact, I saw a bobby on the street yesterday and I crossed the road just to say hello and nice to see you, simply because it\u2019s so rare to see police on the streets. When I was bumming around Notting Hill in that 1970s punk scene \u2013 it was all punks and rastafarians in the Notting Hill of the 70s \u2013 I wouldn\u2019t have thought that I\u2019d be saying something like that.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s this whole secret London. I was talking to Billy, who runs the Regent Street Cinema \u2013 the city\u2019s oldest \u2013 and we went for a tour of the Down\u00a0Street station, it\u2019s one of the disused stations between Green Park and Hyde Park. Churchill had a bunker there in the war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rose garden \u2013 I think it\u2019s called St John\u2019s Lodge Gardens \u2013 in Regent\u2019s Park is fantastic at twilight when the sun\u2019s coming down, or early in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the little churchyard at St Mary\u2019s Paddington, where Sarah Siddons [a famous 18th-century actress] is buried. Her statue looks into the Westway, and people pass it every single day, hundreds of times and never see her sitting there looking out. Actually, Rufus Wainwright wrote a song about her because he also stumbled upon her one day, so we talked about that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I love exploring. If I was walking from here to Marylebone, I would take a route that I\u2019d never taken. I\u2019ll always find a street I haven\u2019t been on. I was looking up the other day and the other woman must have been on her phone and we banged into each other. We both ended up on the pavement.<\/p>\n
I feel like I\u2019ve done The Knowledge. I could be driving a black cab.<\/p>\n
I love the amazing galleries and museums but they haven\u2019t banned phones. I can\u2019t see anything because everyone is holding their phone up in front of an actual Van Gogh painting. Why haven\u2019t they banned phones? If you hear about a petition of anyone that\u2019s running for mayor who wants to put that on their\u2026 call me immediately! In theatres, they\u2019re chomping at the bit like a horse in a cage waiting for the curtain call so they can get their bloody phones out. It makes me crazy.<\/p>\n
I guess I can say I\u2019ve just about done everything I\u2019ve ever wanted to. It\u2019s fantastic.<\/p>\n
Keep up with Chrissie Hynde at chrissiehynde.com<\/a><\/p>\n
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