New Pretenders Documentary Covers Overdose Deaths, Fallouts and Why the Band Hated Chrissie Hynde’s Boyfriend Ray Davies

Rachel DeSantisTue, September 15, 2026 at 11:28 PM UTC

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Chrissie Hynde in Canada in August 1980.Credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty -

Chrissie Hynde reflects on the Pretenders’ rise, personal struggles, and tragic losses in a new documentary

The film explores the deaths of founding members Jimmy Honeyman-Scott and Pete Farndon and their impact on the band

The Pretenders continue to thrive, releasing a 2023 album and celebrating decades of music since their 1979 debut

The Pretenders rocked and rolled their way to the top — but their journey, led by tenacious frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, was marred by tragedy.

Hynde, 76, opens up in the new documentary Pretenders about her rise from middle-class Akron, Ohio to London in the 1970s and ‘80s, where she became the face of one of the most popular bands in the world.

The film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 13, chronicles the band’s rise and its early fractures, from Hynde’s relationship with the Kinks’ Ray Davies to the tragic deaths of guitarist Jimmy Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon.

Hynde recalls meeting Honeyman-Scott for the first time after he was recruited into the group by Farndon, who’d once dated the guitarist’s sister.

“That was the guy I was looking for,” she says in the film, making it clear that Honeyman-Scott was the missing puzzle piece as she built the Pretenders. “My impression when I met him was that he was already kind of a f----d-up little speed freak. But my God he could play guitar.”

The group was full steam ahead from there, adding drummer Martin Chambers to the fold, and they released their self-titled debut album in 1979. The album was a major hit thanks to singles like “Stop Your Sobbing” and “Brass in Pocket.”

The Pretenders ca. 1980: (L-R) Jimmy Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon, Chrissie Hynde and Martin ChambersCredit: Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty

But with great success came a great amount of partying; at one point in the film, former manager Dave Hill recalls Hynde spending the night in a jail cell after she was handcuffed and kicked a police car window after having too much to drink.

Though the “I’ll Stand By You” singer says in the film that she thrived most while on tour, things within the group went off the rails when drugs — and Davies — became part of the band’s fabric. Members of Hynde’s inner circle claim in the film that the “wheels fell off” because Farndon was in love with Hynde, and their breakup sent him spiraling — and her into Davies’ arms.

After a gig in Brighton, England in December 1981, the Kinks singer smashed a glass against the wall backstage, angering Honeyman-Scott, who wound up punching Davies as a fight ensued. Hynde admits in the film that the rocker “didn’t get along very well” with her band.

“Ray Davies, when he was interacting with the band, it was a problem, ‘cause nobody liked him, basically. They thought he was a c---,” adds Hill.

Hynde and Davies eventually broke up in the mid-1980s, but not before welcoming daughter Natalie, 43. She does not reveal what went wrong between the two, quipping that anything she’d say would be a “lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Ray Davies in London in 1978.Credit: George Wilkes/Hulton Archive/Getty

Around the time she started seeing Davies, her relationship with Farndon worsened, and Hynde says in the film that he became hooked on heroin. She even recalls a particularly emotional soundcheck in which she and Farndon exchanged barbs over his loud bass playing, a conversation that grew so heated he cried.

Eventually, things reached a head, and Farndon got the boot from the Pretenders.

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“He was not happy…. The general consensus was that Pete was out of the band because of his behavior,” Hynde says. “It just got worse and worse, as it always does with a junkie, and it looked like I’m the one throwing him out. In actual fact, Jimmy said that if Pete stayed, he would leave, and I couldn’t leave Jimmy for anything. I was just gutted. I couldn’t believe this had happened. He started the band with me, he was the first guy in there. We never spoke again.”

Farndon was fired from the band in June 1982 — and just two days later, Honeyman-Scott was dead, having succumbed to heart failure brought on by cocaine use at just 25 years old.

“I was devastated. Devastated. I lost my right arm. We’d just fired Pete, and two days later, Jimmy’s dead,” Hynde recalls in the film.

Farndon attended Honeyman-Scott’s funeral, but brushed off warnings that he could be next if he didn’t curb his drug use. There was talk of bringing him back into the Pretenders, but the idea was shut down.

Still, Hynde never thought about ending the group, as it wasn’t what her beloved guitarist would have wanted.

Chrissie Hynde in Barcelona, Spain in July 2024.Credit: Xavi Torrent/Redferns/Getty

“Things weren’t really great. I could’ve walked away from it and started a different band but it never really occurred to me to stop doing it, ‘cause then what would I do?” she says. “For Jimmy there wasn’t anything else. It was just about the music. And almost in his honor, I didn’t feel like I could just let it all go.”

She wrote the band’s hit “Back on the Chain Gang” in his honor, and two new members joined, Robbie McIntosh and Malcolm Foster.

But soon, tragedy struck again. Less than a year after Honeyman-Scott’s death, in April 1983, Farndon died, drowning in his bathtub following a heroin overdose at age 30.

“I think anyone has regrets, whoever they are... I mean, drugs, alcohol, everything that comes with that. Of course that’s always regrettable,” Hynde says in the film. “And it killed two of my founding members. And best friends and the sound of my band.”

The Pretenders eventually came to thrive amid a number of other iterations, and their most recent album, Relentless, came out in 2023. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.

Hynde says in the film that while she wants to put her past behind, she does still enjoy talking about Honeyman-Scott and the music they created together.

“I would say for Jimmy, that was his life. For me, it’s kind of a sideline,” she says. “I guess the Pretenders are still going. It’s what I do.”

Pretenders features extensive interviews with Hynde shot over the last three years as well as archival footage. It’s helmed by documentarian Joss Crowley, and also features Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Johnny Marr, Viv Albertine and Nick Lowe.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”