Back To The Wall

The Zoo Crew is locked in on this one for all you Zoo Freaks out there listening in, spinning "Back To The Wall" off the Divinyls album Temperamental, and man does this track hit with that raw Australian rock edge that cuts right through. Chrissy Amphlett and Mark McEntee had the band pared down to just the two of them by the time they cut this in the late eighties, and the label had pretty much told them it was make or break for breaking bigger overseas. They pulled in producer Mike Chapman, the guy behind a whole mess of classic rock and pop hits, and this came out as the lead single early in 1988, landing in the Australian top forty. It is pure defiance set to a driving rock groove, with Amphlett snarling about living in desperate times where there is no way out, holding back the tears so the pressure does not show, feeling like a time bomb that might blow any second.

The lyrics dig into that cornered feeling, warning not to push or shove because when the back is to the wall there is nothing left to lose and anything might happen, even lighting a fuse. That kind of tension sat right in the middle of what the band was living, with managers and members coming and going in what Amphlett later called an emotional maelstrom while they were writing the songs for Temperamental. She always said the album held some of their strongest material, and this track stands as proof of that grit. It even landed on the soundtrack for A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, underscoring one of those tense driving scenes where the threat is closing in, which fits the song's trapped and ready to snap vibe like a glove. Years later the Australian band Tropical Fuck Storm covered it, and their take got real praise for how the women's vocals brought a fierce and vulnerable edge to Amphlett's words about desperate times, with one of the singers calling it a timely song written and sung by a woman that made perfect sense for them to perform.

That whole spirit of not backing down when the pressure builds is pure Chrissy Amphlett, the woman who fronted Divinyls from the start and never played it safe. She grew up in Geelong, Victoria, born Christine Joy Amphlett in 1959, and she was performing early, modeling as a little kid and getting into musical comedy by age ten. Her cousin was the sixties pop star Little Pattie, so she had that glimpse of the stage life, but she was determined to do it her own way instead of playing the good girl role. By her mid teens she was out on her own, hitching rides, seeing bands, and then she took off for Europe on her own. At seventeen she ended up busted for busking on the streets in Spain and spent time in jail there before getting shipped around and eventually making her way back to Australia. That stretch on the road toughened her up and fed into the raw edge she brought to every performance.

Back home she hooked up with guitarist Mark McEntee in 1980 around Sydney. They met through connections in the scene, including after a choral performance at the Opera House or out in the car park at a small venue, and right away they clicked on wanting to make a proper rock band instead of the polite disco stuff that was floating around. They pulled in other players and started grinding it out in the pubs and clubs of Kings Cross, playing those grimy rooms night after night. Amphlett was shy at first, sometimes standing with her back to the crowd, but she and the band knew she needed something stronger to match the intensity of the songs they were writing. Their manager pointed her toward inventing a theatrical persona after they caught AC/DC, and she went with the schoolgirl look, fishnets, and that wild energy that made her the screaming banshee on stage. It was not some calculated gimmick so much as a way to channel everything and take control so she could headline instead of staying in the background.

That breakthrough came quick once they got involved with the film Monkey Grip in 1982. They recorded tracks for the soundtrack, including the single Boys in Town that became a hit, and Amphlett even acted in it. From there the band built a reputation in the Australian pub rock circuit with Amphlett's brash, sexually charged stage presence and McEntee's guitar driving it all. The lineup shifted plenty over the years, but the core of those two stayed solid even through the volatility of their working relationship, which she later described as intense and sometimes physical in the heat of it all. By the time Temperamental rolled around they were operating as a duo in the studio, pouring all that experience into songs that captured the pressure and the fight. Amphlett has talked in interviews about deciding early on to be a warrior rather than a victim, and that comes through clear in a track like Back to the Wall where the character has nothing left to lose and is ready to take any chance.

The band kept going through the nineties with bigger hits like I Touch Myself, got inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, and even reformed for a stretch of shows later on, but that late eighties stretch with Temperamental shows the Divinyls at a raw, no-frills rock peak. For all the Zoo Freaks digging the deep cuts and the artist stories, this one is a reminder of how Chrissy Amphlett took the long road from those early Geelong days and European scrapes to owning the stage with a voice that could go from a snarl to a wail without flinching. You can catch more of that freeform album rock spirit right here on THE ZOO, where the Zoo Crew keeps the records spinning for the listeners who get it. Head over to the band's page on Facebook to see what the community is sharing about the music and the legacy.