Rocker’s sure got a beef

By Lydia Martin

You’ve just admitted to rocker Chrissie Hynde that you’re a meat eater. Turns out she’s not one of the easy-going PETA people who will cut you some slack.

“Why do you do it?,” she asks frostily.

Uh, because you’re lame? Really, because you like the taste.

“That’s not a very thought-out answer,” says the straight-talking front- woman for The Pretenders, wearing veggie-friendly eyeliner, a vegan T-shirt she picked up in Brazil and red, knee-high Stella McCartney boots made from something unleather.

She’s at Sublime in Fort Lauderdale sampling fried green tomatoes, crispy cauliflower, vegetarian sushi rolls and eggplant rollatini with tofu “ricotta.”

“Eggplant is the only vegetable I don’t love,” says Hynde, still coming off the high of her latest tour, with ZZ Top and Stray Cats. This fall, she’ll open (with partners) VegeTerranean, a restaurant in Akron, Ohio, her hometown.

“I needed a place to eat when I’m there,” says Hynde, who has lived in London since the 1970s. “My parents still live in Akron, and they’re getting on”

She wanted to visit Sublime with Dan Mathews, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) vice president, to get pointers from the place considered one of the country’s best gourmet vegan restaurants.

And now she’s here and giving you a hard time because you eat animals, and because you’re dense enough to say something about how humans are carnivores.

GETTING TOUGH

“Read a couple of books. You’ll find out we aren’t. Our digestive systems aren’t. Our jaws swing from left to right like herbivores. Go to a slaughterhouse. I don’t have to go, because I have an imagination. I can imagine what an animal goes through. If you don’t have enough of an imagination, go to a factory farm and see the pigs on the rape racks. And if you don’t like what you see, then gouge your eyes out and walk around unconscious, which is what most people do.”

Well.

Hynde has been a strict vegetarian (not entirely vegan, but close) since 1969. You mention that you were talking to Sting, another longtime vegetarian, a few years back, and he had just built an organic farm in England and started eating some of the animals he raised. Would she eat an animal if she raised it?

“If I farm it I have the right to kill it? F – – – you. I don’t think animals should be killed for any reason. To me it’s pornographic to be so interested in your tongue. I find it beneath human dignity. If you’re governed by your tongue and your d- – -, then you’re an animal.”

Hasn’t she ever been governed by her, ummm, whatever?

“No. I’d like to think I’m more governed by my principles.” One of them is, she doesn’t sleep with meat eaters. “If I wasn’t restricted by the idea of not wearing leather, I’d have shoes like Imelda Marcos. Because I’m sick with consumerism as much as the next guy. And I try to be selective in my human relations. I restrict myself to non-meat eaters even though that takes a big slice out of the picture.”

AFFABLE SIDE

Hynde, with her punky shag haircut and her flinty stare, is challenging. But that doesn’t mean she’s unfriendly. In fact, she’s one of the most affable celebs you’ve ever sat with.

“I know I come off kind of aggressive, but I’m just trying to make a point,” she says later, more softly.

And you’re cool with that. Refreshingly, Hynde, 56, has always practiced what she preaches. She always said she wasn’t setting out to be a star when she picked up a guitar and started her first band. When she finally hit it big with The Pretenders, chart toppers through the ’80s, she kept her word, never prancing before the cameras for the sake of media attention.

“Do you know if I’m married or not? You probably don’t. I alway say that I’m so secretive about my private life I’m not even sure who I’m sleeping with. I don’t like being in the spotlight. I like being in the dark. To me, that’s rock ‘n’ roll. To be obscure, to not be part of the mainstream, to be outside of the law.”

But Hynde has known such serious success that pop music lovers know many of her songs by heart. Back on the Chain Gang has just randomly come on Sublime’s sound system, which makes her roll her eyes. How did she keep her ego in check over the years?

“Maybe it’s about hanging out with bikers. Or not wanting to feel like I’m in a high-security prison, walking around with bodyguards. I just never went to premieres and stuff like that. I don’t think of myself as a rock star. I’m just a girl in a band. When I’m on the road, I feel like part of the crew, not like a celebrity. That’s where I’m comfortable. Maybe it’s because I was a waitress for years. I always just wanted to be able to sit on a doorstep and hang out in a normal bar. If you can’t do that, then what’s the point?”

Later in the evening, you say goodbye to Hynde and move to another table to chat with friends who happen to be at Sublime. Hynde sticks around to visit with the restaurant’s owners. But she notices you’ve left your organic vodka cocktail behind and brings it to your new table, playing like she’s still a waitress and asking if she can get you anything else.

Somehow you get to talking about Stevie Nicks, her witchy ways and her perplexing lyrics. And amid the jokes, the aggressive side of Hynde evaporates.

The hard-driving rocker? That part of her is indelible.

“When my daughters were young, I’d walk them past the butcher store, and I’d say, ‘That used to be a lamb, and that used to be a bird. In our society, it’s legal to kill them.’ Then I would show them a joint, and say, ‘This is an herb that grows in the ground, and you can go to jail for having this, but you can kill an animal.’ In this family, we will always live outside the law.”

This story was originally published October 16, 2007 at 3:10 AM with the headline "Rocker’s sure got a beef."