Preparing to interview Chrissie Hynde is an exercise of mental and verbal conditioning, like getting ready for a heavyweight title fight when your best credentials come from the middleweight division.

Her reputation rests on such sterling adjectives as moody, contrary, angry and uncooperative. Those she's chatted with say she has the disposition of Godzilla. Something as simple as "How's the weather?" could be enough to put a premature end to the conversation.

An east coast newspaper reporter once tracked Hynde through several Florida tour stops, deflecting postponements and limp excuses in a persistent pursuit for his interview. When he finally got her behind a closed door, Hynde so unnerved him that he called her publicist to ask why he had been subjected to that.

During a stop in Philadelphia during the Pretenders' current American tour, Hynde put the kabosh on a pair of youths who had hid behind an ice machine on her hotel floor to meet her. In Detroit, she stalked right offstage, into an elevator and out of the hall before the sweat even dried.