The relationship of Chrissy Amphlett and Mark McEntee was fuelled by alcohol and drugs. Source: Supplied
BACK in 2005, Chrissy Amphlett documented her extraordinary life in a book called Pleasure and Pain.
It was, of course, titled after the 1985 hit by her band, the Divinyls.
The book was explosive. Those in the Divinyls' inner sanctum knew Amphlett and bandmate Mark McEntee had a fiery relationship, flames fuelled by alcohol and drugs.
Amphlett detailed just how fiery that relationship - professional and romantic - was. And the fieriness that continued long after the relationship was in embers.
In 2006 the pair did their first joint interview in 12 years with this writer. Asked about Amphlett's memoir, McEntee was blunt.
"I don't want to read it, I prefer to do something new," he said. He looked at Amphlett and said: "I haven't read it, sorry. I keep meaning to. I see the book, it's there on the table, and I go, 'Shall I read the book today or shall I go out and have a good time?' "
Amphlett called their relationship her "most intense friendship" but for many years it was hidden not only from the world, but their bandmates.
The pair met in Sydney in 1980. They wouldn't become lovers for another two years - McEntee was married.
"Here at last was someone as manic about music as me," Amphlett wrote in her book about their instant creative attraction. When they finally became intimate, the pair remained clandestine lovers.
Amphlett and McEntee revealed they were a couple to the rest of their band only while recording their debut album, Desperate, in New York in 1982. McEntee had split with his wife, but the pair's romantic relationship was far from harmonious.
With Amphlett drinking heavily and class A drugs in the mix (she'd dabbled with heroin and cocaine in the past), the singer said the pair would attack each other after returning from recording sessions in New York.
"We had screaming matches that sometimes degenerated into physical fights," she said.
"Usually not hard punching or kicking or anything that would do either of us any lasting damage, just slapping and pinching and rumbling."
The Divinyls broke ground in many ways. Inspired by seeing Deborah Harry fronting Blondie, Amphlett knew she wanted to be famous.
"All I wanted was to a be a rock star," Amphlett wrote. "Everything else in my life, relationships, family, friends, came second."
Their manager, Vince Lovegrove, also scored them a major US record deal - rare at the time for Australian bands. Chrysalis, home to Blondie and Pat Benatar, gave the band $250,000 to record a debut album; a wild sum of money.
Amphlett had already created her school girl persona; Lovegrove had worked with AC/DC and saw how Angus Young would use his school uniform to get into character.
Amphlett used her outfit to literally create a monster - a prowling frontwoman who would fight with fans and deal with hecklers.
"As the '80s got under way, Australia needed a monster and I decided I could be it," Amphlett wrote, acutely aware the country had no female rock stars, let alone ones who both thrilled with their talent and terrified with their ferocity.
The dysfunction between the band members - and particularly McEntee and Amphlett - was vital to the Divinyls' dynamics.
Lovegrove said their best performances came when they were "at each other's throats - Chrissy and Mark's weird, foaming-at-the-mouth furious, loving, hopelessly dependent relationship was the magic of Divinyls".
Their default setting was argumentative. By the early '90s the band had failed to crack the US. Chrysalis dumped them, cutting its losses to the tune of more than $1 million.
The band was reborn in 1991 when songwriter Billy Steinberg (who wrote Madonna's Like a Virgin) showed Amphlett a list of potential song titles. One was I Touch Myself. She finished the rest of the song and the band scored at No. 1 in Australia and a No. 3 hit in the US; the video was filmed in a US nunnery.
But Amphlett was struggling in her personal life - she had become an alcoholic.
Amphlett would drink until she blacked out and when drunk would have no problem telling people what she thought of them.
By 1993 the band - and the relationship - was spluttering to a bitter end.
Amphlett wrote: "There was something about each of us that ignited the other, that exacerbated our nastiness and potential to be cruel. That would have happened without the alcohol and drugs, but those substances made us worse. Much worse."
After Divinyls finally split in 1996, she and McEntee were not speaking when the offer came a decade later to be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006.
Releasing Pleasure and Pain in 2005 had caused a new rift between the pair, who by this stage were happily married to new partners. Amphlett had fallen in love with drummer Charley Drayton and was enjoying a new stage career with the role of Judy Garland in The Boy From Oz.
But Amphlett still clearly cared for McEntee, even if she said she couldn't imagine Divinyls ever reforming.
"Mark and I are so dysfunctional," she said. "It's fun for you guys watching it, but for us to live in it . . ."
By 2007 they'd patched up their differences - briefly - and were on the road playing sell-out shows.
"When we play music, when we're together and we perform, that's what it's all about for us," Amphlett said at the Hall of Fame.
"It's where we belong. All the other stuff is the hard work. The music is what brings us back together."
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