Credit: Ki Price

Chrissie Hynde claims she was “conned” by the counterculture movement

Mon 7 August 2023 15:20, UK

The Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde has discussed her conflicting thoughts about the counterculture movement and explained why “hippies were conned” during the Vietnam War.

Before moving to England in 1973, Hynde attended Kent State University when four unarmed students were shot by police when protesting against the Vietnam War. Additionally, nine more were injured during the incident.

“I was there, I heard the shots. I was right in the middle of it, and I knew one of the guys that got killed,” she said of the incident to The Guardian.

Hynde also explained how her view on the Vietnam War has evolved and become more nuanced with the passing of time. “If I’m honest, my lasting thoughts on that whole wider situation is that all of us hippies were conned, in some ways, by the peace and love thing,” she claimed.

The singer continued: “During the Vietnam War, there was a draft system, and if you were in university, you didn’t get drafted. My dad had been a marine in the war and my parents were hardworking ordinary people. They didn’t go to university, but they worked to put me there. All of us who were against the war, we were in the university, but the kids whose parents couldn’t put them there were in Vietnam.”

Elaborating on her stance, Hynde added: “That is what us hippies didn’t see. We’d see Green Berets coming back from Vietnam, and we’d be shouting and giving them the finger and everything. Now I’m ashamed of that. Those kids were 19, like me, but they didn’t have a choice. Looking back, I realise I was conned and got it wrong. No politician sent their own kids to Vietnam. If they’d had to, they would have thought differently about it.”

She also explained how age has helped her perspective change, stating: “For example, I don’t think there’s very many things that I know now that I didn’t know when I was 16. But there’s a big difference between knowing something and realising it. Realising something takes 50 years. I’m more relaxed now if you can believe it. This is the real mellow version of me. Ageing is like being a pothead again.”

Meanwhile, The Pretenders are scheduled to release their new album Relentless on September 15th and recently shared the new single ‘A Love’.