"I don't mind getting older; I mind getting uglier." --Chrissie Hynde

In a recent interview, the Pretenders singer admitted it's the more surface elements of um, maturing, that get to her. She added, "You know -- knees, disease, old age, death. I'm a wreck."

Artist: The Pretenders
Video: 'Boots of Chinese Plastic'
Highlight: Chrissie Hynde and Co. get the proper visual treatment for this barnburner with frenetic editing and an aged-film aesthetic. Download 'Boots of Chinese Plastic' on iTunes.

To be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a band's first album must be at least 25 years old. In 2005, their first year of eligibility, the Pretenders were a shoo-in. Two original members, singer Chrissie Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers, were on hand to accept. The other two had been dead almost as long as the band's existence.

Hynde was a transplanted Akron, Ohio, native living in London in the mid-1970s, where she was writing about rock 'n' roll for the New Musical Express. After a few false starts forming bands of her own, she became musically and romantically involved with bassist Pete Farndon, a committed rebel-rocker with a penchant for samurai imagery. Farndon quickly recruited two fellow natives of the town of Hereford to join the new band. James Honeyman-Scott was a local guitarist who was growing vegetables to supplement his income; Chambers, the drummer, was working as a driving instructor.

"Chrissie Hynde's a rock 'n' roll singer who really should go back and study some country music," Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone 20 years ago. "She should go deeply into the heart of that stuff and then come back out."

To listen to the Pretenders' new album, 'Break Up the Concrete,' which features marked amount of country flourishes -- namely, a prominent pedal steel guitar -- one would think Hynde's ears had been burning.

"I didn't know Bob Dylan was thinking about me twenty years ago," Hynde told Spinner during the Pretenders' recent Sessions taping. "Had I known, I might have done it earlier."

"I never got a guy through my guitar playing." --Chrissie Hynde

The Pretenders frontwoman suggested to Spinner that it wasn't her modest guitar skills that scored her suitors.

"To warm up, I smoke Bugler tobacco. It's a shame, really. But it's rock 'n' roll." --Chrissie Hynde

The Pretenders frontwoman revealed her warm-up routine in a recent interview.

Artist: Pretenders
Song: 'Boots of Chinese Plastic'
Album: 'Break Up the Concrete'
Why You Should Listen: Many changes have taken place in the band's line-up in the past 30 years, but frontwoman Chrissie Hynde holds steady with her signature vibrato on the band's first song from their forthcoming album, 'Break Up the Concrete.'

Listen to 'Boots of Chinese Plastic'