On this day · 71 years ago · 1955
71 Years Ago Today: Divinyls Guitarist Mark McEntee, Who Co-Wrote I Touch Myself, Is Born
Before he co-wrote one of the biggest Australian rock songs of all time, Mark McEntee was a Perth kid who fell into the original lineup of Air Supply. He was born July 16, 1955, and went on to found Divinyls with Chrissy Amphlett.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Mark McEntee, lead guitarist and co-founder of Australian rock band Divinyls, was born July 16, 1955, in Perth, Western Australia. McEntee co-wrote the band's biggest hit, I Touch Myself (1990), with singer Chrissy Amphlett and the professional songwriting team of Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly; it reached number 1 in Australia and number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100. McEntee and Amphlett were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006.
From Air Supply's original lineup to Divinyls' co-founder
Mark McEntee was born July 16, 1955, in Perth, Western Australia, and attended Christ Church Grammar School, according to Wikipedia's account of his career. Before Divinyls existed, McEntee had an odd footnote of a start: working on a 1975 Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar, he met singers Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell, who were performing in the musical, and played guitar in the earliest lineup of what became the soft-rock duo Air Supply. Hitchcock and Russell went on to massive international success without him. McEntee's real project came in 1980, after he was introduced to singer Chrissy Amphlett at a music venue in Collaroy, Sydney. The two formed Divinyls that year with keyboardist Bjarne Ohlin and drummer Richard Harvey, and despite years of lineup turnover, McEntee and Amphlett remained the band's constant core.
Writing I Touch Myself in a day and a half
Divinyls' defining song came together almost by accident. Per Wikipedia's sourced account of the song, professional songwriter Billy Steinberg, who'd already co-written hits like "Like a Virgin" and "True Colors" with Tom Kelly, had a first verse and chorus lyric for "I Touch Myself" that Amphlett liked immediately. Steinberg and Kelly rarely collaborated with outside artists, but McEntee, Steinberg, Kelly, and Amphlett wrote the rest of the song together the following day. Recorded to two-inch tape at Groove Masters in Santa Monica and co-produced by Amphlett and McEntee alongside David Tickle, the song's unusual structure, its bridge lands after the first chorus rather than the second, came out of the difficulty of editing that format. Released in November 1990, "I Touch Myself" hit number 1 in Australia, number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and number 10 in the UK, the band's only American top-40 hit. Amphlett later said she wrote it "in a heartfelt way" and wasn't bothered by its double entendre, even though "the musicians freaked."
A Hall of Fame co-write, and a life after Amphlett
McEntee and Amphlett's writing partnership produced more than one hit: "Science Fiction," another Amphlett-McEntee co-write, was named one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time by the Australasian Performing Right Association in May 2001. The pair were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame together in 2006, reuniting for the ceremony despite having barely spoken since Divinyls split in 1996. Amphlett died in April 2013 from breast cancer; the following year, "I Touch Myself" became the namesake and anthem of the I Touch Myself Project, a breast-health awareness campaign Amphlett had wanted the song adapted for. McEntee has kept the Divinyls name alive since, announcing a 2019 touring lineup he described to Noise11 as "a celebration of what we did together" (that tour was later cancelled).
The tone behind that riff
McEntee's own documented gauge from the Divinyls era isn't sourced anywhere we could confirm, so we won't guess at it. A standard nickel-wound electric set in standard E tuning remains the reliable modern starting point for that same pub-rock rhythm crunch; our history of guitar strings guide covers how that nickel-wound sound became the rock default.
Regular Slinky RPS-2241 Nickel Wound (.010–.046)
Why this one: A general nickel-wound starting point for pub-rock rhythm crunch, not a historical claim about McEntee's own undocumented Divinyls-era string gauge.
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