Don't get me wrong...

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders. Photo / Supplied

Pushing 60 and still rocking around the world, Chrissie Hynde shuns the rock star label, writes Paula Yeoman.

She is the ultimate rock music heroine - the skinny black jeans-wearing, eyeliner-encrusted front woman from the Pretenders who has been blazing a trail for female musicians since the 1970s.

Just don't call Chrissie Hynde a rock star.

"Rock stardom is over. They don't have rock stars any more," she states matter-of-factly, leaving little room for argument. "It was kind of a 60s and 70s thing."

You'd expect no less from the new-wave icon who bought a one-way ticket from smalltown Ohio to London in 1973 and earned her stripes as a music critic, hanging out with the Sex Pistols and Iggy Pop. By the end of the decade Hynde had managed to pull together her own band, the Pretenders, whose self-titled debut and its hit Brass In Pocket propelled them headfirst into the 80s.

A string of hits followed, including Back On The Chain Gang, but much of the Pretenders' ensuing prime years were plagued by drug-related deaths and an ever-changing line-up.

That is except for Hynde, who has never refused to give up on the band. Her tenacity resulted in the 2008 release of Break Up The Concrete, the Pretenders' "comeback album", which let the world know the unflappable rock chick was here to stay.

"It was a real surprise," Hynde says of its success. "We made it very, very quickly. I had the songs in my head, some of them for a while, and we went in and recorded it and went out on tour."

The band - of which Hynde is the only original member - has remained on the road touring the record and is now planning a return Downunder.

"We're dying to come back. We had a great time playing in New Plymouth last time - it's one of my most memorable gigs of all time," she says.

Hynde recounts the night at the Bowl of Brooklands in 2007 and how she'd initially been disappointed to discover a lake separating the audience from the stage, but then thrilled to find that the gloomy pond, thick with duckweed, couldn't keep the Kiwi crowd at a distance.

"A lot of the audience swam to the stage and, at one point, I'd thrown my tambourine into the middle of the lake and one girl swam down to the bottom, among the eels and whatever else is down there, and came up with it. I'll never forget her."

The singer, who turns 60 next year, says she was initially hesitant about making the recently released DVD, Pretenders: Live In London, fearing it wouldn't capture the sense of oneness she always strives to build with the crowd.

"If I'm going to go see a band, it has to be about me in the audience and the performer. I don't want to get in a car and drive 200 miles to a stadium. To me that's sports. I'd rather go see it in a dirty club," she says.

But Hynde is pleased with the work of the Grammy-winning film-makers Pierre and Francois Lamourex.

"They just sold it - obviously we were hot, of course - but we didn't need to do anything. And the Shepherd's Bush Empire is our ideal venue. It's the right size, the bar is close and you can see everyone."

Despite her keen desire to get up close with her fans, Hynde has always been reluctant to embrace fame.

"I've never been in the celebrity thing. I mean, I could've gone that way. But I don't want to live my life in a high-security prison. I like getting on buses and I like that ordinary, man-on-the-street experience.

"I've never had electric gates or travelled with entourages or hair or make-up - can you tell?" she laughs. "I like to travel alone and do stuff on my own. I've always just been very ordinary."

And she's scathing of the way celebrity culture now goes hand-in-hand with making music.

"It's a new thing. Anyone in their 20s would surely not know what it was like pre this kind of fame phenomenon. Now the idea is, `I want to be famous, how can I be famous?'

"Back then it was that you wanted to be in a band, but you really didn't expect to get famous or wealthy. And if you could pull it off, you didn't know how long it'd last. In my case I didn't want to wait tables any more."

Flicking through a magazine as we chat, Hynde stops at a story about actor Johnny Depp.

"Being a celebrity is only good because you get to meet people like Johnny Depp, who also doesn't live like a celebrity. He's more like a guy in a band - that's how he started. He's awesome," she beams.

Hynde can easily spot the artists who, like her, just want to be in a band and be left alone.

"You don't see them unless they have something to promote and then they disappear again. The rest of them are in that machine all the time - trying to stick their tits out and get photographed."

That is the intriguing thing about Hynde. She's never played the media, she's never taken her clothes off to make a point and she maintains the highest of reputations in the tough, testosterone-driven industry of rock.

I put to her that she is among only a handful of female rockers - Patti Smith is another - who could have pulled off such a feat.

"No one from a record company would say get your tits out [to us] because they would have been met with a resounding chorus of `Go f*** yourself!'.

"Although I do believe Patti has got her tits out," she adds with a hearty laugh.

For a woman who claims she just wants to be left alone and get on with her life, Hynde is perhaps one of the most engaging musicians I've spoken to.

She's funny, sharp as a tack, doesn't take herself too seriously and, although she may scoff at the thought of being labelled a rock star, that is exactly what Chrissie Hynde is.

A good, old-fashioned rock star, who set out four decades ago to make good old-fashioned rock 'n' roll. And still is.

The DVD, Pretenders: Live In London, is in stores now.