The Pretenders Wouldn't Have Existed Without Lemmy Of Motörhead

Mind explode.

On the latest episode of comedian Marc Maron's WTF podcast, the former Pretenders' lead singer Chrissie Hynde unpacks her long life and career in rock ‘n’ roll, and drops some little-known factoids along the way.

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One of them: The Pretenders wouldn't have existed were it not for … Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead.

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She was drawn to bikers, and so the two hung around in the same circles in London when she moved there from Ohio. The first time she met Lemmy, she says, “He stuck a silver tube that hung around his neck in a bag of white powder and shoved it up my snout, and he walked away. I was up for three days."

They eventually became friends, and Lemmy helped Chrissie piece together the band that would make her famous. He gave her some tough love along the way, not letting her wallow when things didn’t seem to be going well and she’d get down on herself. “Lemmy was very instrumental in my history. Without him the Pretenders wouldn’t have happened,” she says.

But that's not the only surprise in Hynde's long history.

Before heading to London, she joined her first band while at Kent State. They performed one show of cover songs in a church hall in Ohio. Also in that band? Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh.

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They were called Sat Sun Mat, which was short for "Saturday Sunday Matinee." Mothersbaugh is the potato in the middle above.

Elsewhere in the podcast Hynde alludes often to the dangers of drugs, the hardship of divorce and single motherhood, and the realities of running a vegan restaurant in downtown Akron, Ohio. (It closed.)

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No surprise, she's very much the badass we've all come to know over the years.

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And we owe it all to the Ace of Spades.

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You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here.