Posted on Saturday, October 27 @ 00:00:00 EST by tim milfull

Reviewed by Evelyn Hartogh


By the time she formed the first incarnation of The Divinyls, Chrissie Amphlett had already performed in dozens of bands while travelling the world in her late teens and early twenties. She had even spent some quality time in a Spanish prison, so by the time she took to the stage she was tough enough to survive among cock rockers, and rough outback crowds and hyped-up biker audiences. Concentrating in depth on her time with The Divinyls, the infamous lead singer Amphlett spills out her insecurities, drug abuse, alcoholism, love affairs, disasters and triumphs in her autobiography Pleasure and Pain: My Life. Amphlett’s voice and narrative dominate the text. However, she includes large tracts of the recollections (in their own words) of many of the people she discusses - even when their version of events contradicts her own.

Before she donned the notorious schoolgirl outfit, for which she would later become world famous, a much shyer public Chrissie Amphlett recorded her song All the Boys in Town in 1982 for the soundtrack to Monkey Grip (a film based on Helen Garner’s book). The Divinyls played the ‘band’ in the movie’s story, and the soundtrack comprised several of their songs. The experience led to them making their first deals with record companies and publishers. Things did not go well and the band was locked into an album contract with WEA, and signed away their publishing rights to many songs to Castle Records (later incorporated into EMI). This was only the first of many contract mistakes that The Divinyls had over the years. Several albums later, by 1997 the band that famously had the biggest drinks rider in Australian history, was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Amphlett’s sexy schoolgirl stage outfit is now legendary. She believed it gave her the freedom to become wild and let loose and be tough on stage. Often the lone female in a sea of male musicians, Amphlett found a unique way to be treated with respect. She demanded it by being scarier and more daring than anyone else, and the schoolgirl outfit had a bizarrely powerful life of its own. Amphlett took the male fantasy of the naughty schoolgirl and rammed it back in the faces of men. She regularly humiliated and yelled abuse at obnoxious men; in her uniform of the ‘immature’ woman she mocked men trying to make her compliant. Her schoolgirl dress could also be interpreted as making men think twice before harassing her – by reminding them she was somebody’s daughter or little sister. It also had the punk effect of saying – “if you treat me like a child I will act like one”.

When The Divinyls were on the bill with other successful rock bands of the 1980s, such as Cold Chisel, AC/DC, and Dragon, Amphlett was invariably the only woman performing. She was a pioneering sheila, creating a tough enough public persona to be taken seriously by the men who were used to women being the groupies and assistants rather than the bandleaders. In spite of her iconic status as a trailblazing first lady rock, she does not boast in the book; her voice in this memoir is remarkably humble and her tone is coloured with shame, regret, and missed opportunity. Any pride her band’s impact is measured with the realisation that although she does not think of herself as a bad person she did some pretty bad things to a lot of people when she was drunk out of her mind. Amphlett doesn’t apologise for her mistakes, she just chooses not to repeat them.

However, one thing Chrissie Amphlett takes unabashed pride in is her forays into theatre, in Blood Brothers (with a young as yet unknown Russell Crowe in 1988) and in more recent years as Judy Garland in the Peter Allen biographical musical The Boy from Oz. When the musical premiered in Sydney in 1998 Amphlett consistently earned standing ovations and rave reviews. The producers regret that she was not part of the Broadway cast explaining, “we realised that you simply can’t have someone who is not American portraying this great American icon in America … US audience would have taken it as an insult and not turned up” (322). (This excuse may well now be redundant since 2001 when Australian actress Judy Davis gave an acclaimed performance of Garland in the made-for-television Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.)

Amphlett continues to play Garland in Australian productions of The Boy from Oz and, although at the time of writing her memoir, The Divinyls were split, and her friendship with Mark McEntee was nonexistent, since publication the band has reformed and are booked to play Homebake 2007. Amphlett may be less than proud of her rock years (perhaps due to the money wasted on booze) but she takes pride in many of the songs. She acknowledges she was the dictator of the band (and often domineering and abusive to get her way); at the same time she feels unable to really take too much credit for their success. Amphlett seems more inclined to take on the responsibility for The Divinyls' mistakes more than their dazzling influence on the world and continued fandom that invariably centres firmly on her.


Pleasure and Pain: My Life
(2007)

by Chrissy Amphlett with Larry Writer
Hachette Australia
ISBN: 978 0 7336 2223 6
340pp AUD$24.95
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