Andrew P Street: ‘Chrissy Amphlett Always Seemed Bulletproof To Me’

ANDREW P STREET reflects on the legacy of the iconic Chrissy Amphlett, who passed away yesterday, aged 53.

Chrissy Amphlett always seemed bulletproof to me. Along with a lot of my generation I can trace the moment I was first cognisant of my sexuality to the Divinyls ‘Boys in Town’ video when I was eight or nine. Amphlett’s unflinching gaze straight down the camera, her confident sexuality, the weird fluorescent tube-cum-mic-stand thing: it was a defining moment in both my musical and sexual development, not least because it’s one hell of a tune.

It’s impossible to talk about Amphlett without sex coming up. For one thing, it was a deliberate choice from day one, with her stage gear of suspenders and schoolgirl uniform (which I saw less as being provocative and more as a sly counterpoint to AC/DC’s Angus Young, because even as a child I was both a music nerd and incredibly naive). And there’s also the fact that Divinyls’ two best known songs are explicitly carnal: the massive local hit ‘Pleasure and Pain’ and the worldwide breakthrough ‘I Touch Myself’ which my ex-girlfriend once memorably and accurately declared as being “the greatest song ever about girls touching themselves”.

Amphlett’s sexuality wasn’t the glossy, coy romance of pop starlets. On stage and on screen she was voracious and confident. Reportedly she had all the usual insecurities and self-doubt that ever artist – hell, every human – has, but in my mind she’s always been sitting on a throne of human skulls, idly picking her teeth and wondering which conquest she’d bounce off the walls next.

She also belongs in the pantheon of Artists Who Look Impossibly Cool Doing What Are Objectively Ridiculous Dance Moves, along with the likes of Mick Jagger and Jarvis Cocker, where that incredible level of self-confidence defies any possible mockery.

“Amphlett’s sexuality wasn’t the glossy, coy romance of pop starlets.”

But most of all it was her voice: husky and cracked, swapping from purr to howl in a heartbeat, often dripping with delicious sarcasm (is there a more dismissive line in Australian music than ‘Pleasure and Pain’’s “please don’t ask me how I’ve been getting off”? No. No, there is not). That voice was the Divinyls. Sure, guitarist and co-songwriter Mark McEntee was there from day one too, but which pops into your head when you think of the band? Exactly.

When Divinyls wound down in the early-’90s Amphlett made the sideways move into theatre, playing Judy Garland in The Boy from Oz and relocating to the US with her partner (and late-period Divinyls drummer) Charley Drayton, while McEntee moved to Perth with his girlfriend, Wheels & Doll Baby founder Melanie Greensmith. While the band were on ice, Amphlett wrote her autobiography, Pleasure and Pain: My Life; pottered around in the NYC scene; and then reformed the band for an anniversary tour after Divinyls were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006 and a Homebake headline slot the following year.

That potential second act was scuppered, however, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which forced her out of live performance for good in 2009. That cruel blow was made even worse when she was diagnosed with breast cancer the following year, which was near impossible to treat as her MS precluded chemotherapy or radiation treatment. She fought hard, but yesterday the cancer won. But for me, she’ll always be swinging that mic stand around and declaring: “I must have been desperate/I must have been pretty low.”

Rest well, Ms A. You’ve earned it.