Mark McEntee to take Divinyls on the road in celebration of Chrissy Amphlett

Divinyls co-founder Mark Entee has put together a new Divinyls line-up to tour in 2019 in celebration of the life of Chrissy Amphlett.

Chrissy died in New York in April 2013 after a battle with breast cancer. She left a legacy of some of the greatest Australian rock songs of the 80s and opened doors for women in the music industry with her ‘take no bullshit’ attitude.

McEntee and Amphlett formed Divinyls in Sydney in 1980. While the band went through numerous line-up changes, Mark and Chrissy were the consistent force of the band from beginning to end.

“This will be a celebration of what we did together,” Mark McEntee tells Noise11.com. “That’s how I look at it”.

Divinyls 2019 is McEntee on guitar, Frank Infante (formerly of Blondie on guitar), Malcolm Clarke and J. Cortez from The Sleepy Jackson on drums and bass and on vocals Los Angeles based singer Lauren Ruth Ward.

“I was in LA when Billy Steinberg called me and said ‘there’s this girl going into the studio to record a Divinyls song,” Mark said. “He said ‘she’s wondering if you would come in a play a bit of guitar’. I thought, maybe, maybe not and then I agreed. I went into the studio and heard her singing I thought what a great voice she’s got. She’s got this crack right down middle C. Her voice breaks at middle C. She had a Janis Joplin vibe.

That started Mark off thinking about doing it again after all these years. “When I heard her singing it sounded like what I wanted to do. It started me thinking. I wondered if she’d do a tour. After a month, I asked her and she said she’d love to. So it was on from there”.

Divinyls last show with Chrissy was 4 January 2008 on the Gold Coast. In 2017 a new line-up with Isabella Manfredi of The Preatures played a one-off show for Wheels & Dollbaby in Perth. This tour will be the first official shows for Divinyls since that last Chrissy tour.

LISTEN TO THE MARK MCENTEE DIVINYLS INTERVIEW AT NOISE11.COM

https://www.divinylsofficial.com