Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

Broadcast: 26/10/2005

Chrissy Amphlett reveals dark side of rock

KERRY O’BRIEN: For nearly two decades Chrissy Amphlett was the wild woman of Australian rock. Clad in a school uniform, suspenders and sporting a lip-curling pout, she excited rock audiences like no other Australian female performer. Fronting a band called The Divinyls, she sold millions of records and should now be a millionaire many times over. That didn’t happen. In fact, when the band split in the 1990s, it left Amphlett with a massive debt and a potentially ruinous alcohol problem. Lesser mortals may have given in. Not Chrissy Amphlett. She dried out, paid her debts and now she’s told her story in a brutally honest new book. Mark Bannerman reports. What’s it like to be up on stage and to have a crowd roaring at your feet? What’s the feeling?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: It’s incredible and you fell very powerful. You can get a bit of a big head.

MARK BANNERMAN: Looking at the videos in those early days, there’s one word that comes to mind when I look at them and it is rage. Is that right? There’s an angst and a rage.

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Yeah, there was a lot of rage. A lot of rage.

MARK BANNERMAN: Where did that come from? What was it?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Probably my father’s rage.

MARK BANNERMAN: Through you?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Probably. What I grew up with. I used to find his face sometimes very powerful...

MARK BANNERMAN: In your mind?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: ..when he was angry. And it was like, to me, I was always trying to re-create it because it was frightening.

MARK BANNERMAN: Of course the Chrissy Amphlett rock fans came to know didn’t simply fall to earth fully formed. Born in Belmont, south of Melbourne, she had, by her own admission, an unremarkable childhood with one exception - she loved to perform. A future in rock music beckoned, but not without some glitches because, believe it or not, Chrissy Amphlett is actually quite shy.

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: I felt very vulnerable singing, "I’m through hanging around all of the boys in town." It was difficult for me. I couldn’t stand there and sing them. I felt I wasn’t being interesting. I wanted to also perform and entertain or transport people also. I wanted other levels.

MARK BANNERMAN: The solution to her problem came when her manager Vince Lovegrove took her to see an AC/DC concert. Lead guitarist Angus Young had a schoolboy outfit on. The penny dropped.

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: So I went out and got a school uniform and probably Vince got suspenders and stockings. That freed me and then everything changed. With watching everybody’s reaction, all the men around me and everything, because there were all of these contradictions going on, it just made me angrier. I think I was angry because I didn’t want them to think I’m a pushover or I’m submissive because I’ve got these suspenders on and that I’m a slut, basically.

MARK BANNERMAN: You really got the reputation, rightly or wrongly, as the wild woman of Australian rock. You know the stories - stories that you would urinate on stage and this kind of thing, which you talk about. Did that ever happen?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Well, I don’t think I ever purposely did it.

MARK BANNERMAN: I mean, were you —

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: But possibly I would be so carried away and so involved in what I was doing, maybe I did.

MARK BANNERMAN: With that kind of focus, The Divinyls and Amphlett were a must for America. Songs like this simply couldn’t be ignored.

BUFFY, ’BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’: I moped over you for months, sitting listening to The Divinyls song ’I Touch Myself’. Of course I had no idea what it was about.

MARK BANNERMAN: But success, too, has a price. Faced with a life on the road, Chrissy Amphlett had two supports and two problems. The first was alcohol. The second an explosive relationship with the band’s lead guitarist and her then lover Mark McEntee. What words would you give it?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Dysfunctional. Co-dependent. I don’t know. We were -

MARK BANNERMAN: Highs and lows?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Oh, lots of very highs and lows. No middle ground. No sort of normality. There was a lot of drama and all that made for a more interesting performance and that was everything of a good performance. That’s what it was all about and that was the cost.

MARK BANNERMAN: Did it consume you in the end?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: I think so.

MARK BANNERMAN: How far did that go?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Probably totally lost myself in it. You know, the lines were blurred. You know, I lost all boundaries and forms of boundary. I didn’t have very clear boundaries for what I was responsible for, what I wasn’t responsible for.

MARK BANNERMAN: In the end, what was your poison?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Alcohol was my everything and it was my quick fix and it was how I coped in the beginning and then it was the only way I knew how to cope. It then made me vulnerable to other things. But if I hadn’t of drunk I probably wouldn’t have ever done anything else like snorted a line of cocaine or anything like that. I wouldn’t have been as vulnerable.

MARK BANNERMAN: In the end, something had to give. In the mid-1996 The Divinyls played their last concert. It should have been a celebration. It wasn’t. The band that sold millions was now $1 million in debt. To make matters worse Chrissy Amphlett was firmly in the grip of alcohol. Then on Christmas Day in 1996 at a relative’s home, something happened.

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: I was a blackout drinker, well into it by this point. And I remember some things. I just remember this almighty fight, this struggle.

MARK BANNERMAN: Within the room?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Within the room. I remember -

MARK BANNERMAN: How did it represent itself?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: It sounds so pretentious, but I remember wings. I remember white wings and I remember black wings and I remember this fight going on and I remember my sister sitting at the end of the bed. I remember the doctor there. I remember him having this needle and injecting it in my arm and I went down and they were saying, "She’s gone down. She’s quiet." And I remember coming up again and I bit him on the arm and they said, "She’s not down yet." I remember them giving me another injection and I went down and I remember waking up the next day and the struggle was over.

MARK BANNERMAN: Today Chrissy Amphlett lives in upstate New York. She has a husband, her animals and a story to tell about a person she lost touch with - herself. So what is the truth of Chrissy Amphlett now? Where does she reside?

CHRISSY AMPHLETT: Well, I think by doing this I’m just moving on. I still write music and I perform. I feel a lot better about myself. I even love myself some days.

MARK BANNERMAN: Some days? Chrissy Amphlett, thanks for talking to us.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Mark Bannerman with that report.