Pop’s Accidental star
Kelly St singer Angie Hart tells Karl Quinn why she wasn’t prepared for either the cheery song’s success, or the backlash against it.
"Kelly Street was part of a turning point that made things so sour and difficult here." Angie Hart
‘‘I don’t see any point in being cagey or lying,’’ says Angie Hart at one point during our lunch. And she’s not joking: over the course of a couple of hours, the conversation touches on her battles with drugs and alcohol, her experience of losing her religion (twice), her ill-fated IVF treatment and eventual pregnancy, the attimes difficult relationship with her mother, and her long-running battle with depression.
Hang on. Is this the same Angie Hart who beamed and bounced her way across our television screens as the lead vocalist of Frente, singing about how life had never been so sweet? ‘‘Goodbye Kelly Street,’’ she says, smiling wryly. Is it traumatic dredging up all this stuff? ‘‘No. I just have to remember that there’s a purpose to it. Is it useful for other people to hear this, or is it just verbal spewing?’’
Before we sit down to a meal of dumplings – mostly vegetarian, since Hart is big on animal rights – at Hutong Dumpling Bar in Melbourne, Hart and I are strangers. But within minutes she’s laying herself open for me and my recorder,
She is, by nature, shy, she says and I believe her; everything about her body language, her nervous laugh, her quick and not especially loud manner of talking points to that. What a strange choice, then, to pursue a career as a performer.
As a child she did ballet, then youth theatre at St Martin’s. It was not a happy fit. ‘‘I found that just the wrong sort of terrifying,’’ she says.
She was 16 when she stumbled into what would become Frente, and 17 when they started performing live, 20 when Accidently Kelly Street made them simultaneously top of the pops and flops on the street, its relentlessly cheery video irritating the hell out of the same Fitzroy pub crowd that had nurtured them in their early days.
She has previously said the clip was a mistake, creating a false impression of what the band was about; in fact, they released a second clip, a far more restrained affair that actually seems to slow the tempo of the song (it’s an illusion; it doesn’t), as an antidote. But the damage was done.
‘‘Kelly Street was part of a turning point that made things so sour and difficult here,’’ she says.
She wasn’t prepared for the backlash, but then she wasn’t prepared for the success either. ‘‘It was just the wrong time and wrong place and maybe the wrong life. I keep thinking it would be nice now that I have my wits about me, but I don’t think I’d want it now either.’’
Hart was born in Adelaide but spent her childhood in Tasmania. Her parents were involved in a ‘‘community-based church’’; when she was 10 they moved to Melbourne and lived in a commune doing ‘‘urban mission work’’. They left when her parents split up. Hart was about 14.
She and her mother moved into a share house together that was, she says, ‘‘beyond unsavoury’’.
It sounds like you had the full Monkey Grip experience. ‘‘I did, unfortunately, you’re not wrong there.’’
Frente – born out of the Punters Club on Melbourne’s Brunswick St t– was her deliverance. ‘‘It happened at just the right time,’’ she says between mouthfuls of tofu and broccoli. ‘‘I moved up on top of the pub, to get out of the house.’’
She was only 16 at the time, but soon the band was gigging regularly and she was making money. ‘‘So I called my mum and said, ‘I’ve found this house in Carlton to rent, come live with me’. And I pulled her out of the share house and we went and lived together.’’
In retrospect, she says now, she thinks that first share house was yet another commune, where her mother was again cast as the carer for a bunch of damaged souls. ‘‘Except that I was there too, and I kind of missed out on that scenario.’’
Were you angry at her for not parenting you enough?
‘‘Of course,’’ she says. ‘‘Oh, of course, yeah. That’s where therapy is great. How much do I owe you?’’
There’s a beguiling mix of innocence and experience about Hart. She tells me that when she moved into the pub she didn’t drink, and was dead against all those people around her who overindulged. But she soon came to develop a taste for it, and became one of those people she would have tut-tutted at.
‘‘I’ve had an ongoing battle with alcohol,’’ she says. ‘‘I go in and out of having a healthy relationship with it, if I’m honest. I had a period of drugs in my life too.’’ Heroin? ‘‘No, and I was so lucky. I mostly did ecstasy.’’
She was surrounded by people doing heroin at a time when Melbourne was awash with it, though for whatever reason she was shielded from it. ‘‘My first three boyfriends were junkies. My first – I was so young, I was only 14 – I just thought he was so tired all the time. ‘He has one drink, he falls asleep’.’’ She laughs merrily at her naivety.
For the past four years, Hart has been working on a memoir about her most unusual life – the commune, the religion, the dodgy share houses and the pub and the band and the success and the backlash. It’s rich material, but she’s struggled to find a form that works for her.
‘‘I don’t have one chapter that I’m happy with yet,’’ she says. ‘‘I just seem to be writing down facts at the moment, and it’s not the way I see it.
‘‘My time in Frente was really interesting and full-on, but it’s been really boring to write about. It’s quite numb on the page. It’s not my main story, I’ve realised… [but] if I’m realistic, I wouldn’t have anyone interested in me writing anything if I didn’t have Frente.’’ – Fairfax