Chrissie Hammond - Cheetah

Chrissie and her older sister Lyndsay formed the duo Cheetah who were once "lilting" but much raunchier after they were taken under the wing of the famous Aussie songwriting/production partnership of Vanda and Young who also produced AC/DC. Vanda and Young are also rumoured to have played most of the instruments on the ROCK & ROLL WOMEN album despite crediting a five piece band.

My initial reaction on hearing the album was that it was mostly Lyndsay singing but someone else said mostly Chrissie. I then decided it was a 50-50 split, or a 45-55 split in favour of Lyndsay if you consider one is more a dual lead. However looking at the various videos that have surfaced on the net suggests that all the tracks being shared lead vocals would be more accurate. Good isn't it. This is supposed to be a Chrissie Hammond site and I can't even recognise her voice!

Eight singles were released in Australia between the formation of Cheetah in 1977 and 1982. I have seen suggestions that five of them got to number 2 and I seem to remember seeing that some singles were released in Europe though I may be wrong about that. I also saw a suggestion that "Spend The Night" was released in the UK and made number 19 but again I may be misinterpreting things. I have also seen discussion about a video of "Bang, Bang".

• Shake It To The Right (1977)
• Love Ain't Easy To Come By (1977)
• Walking In The Rain (1978)
• Deeper Than Love (1979)
• Spend The Night (1980)
• Love You To The Limit (1981)
• Bang Bang (1981)
• My Man (1982)

Cheetah's UK touring band (from 1982-1984 ?) featured Ant Glynne and D'zal Martin on guitars who both went on to work with Rick Wakeman. They toured internationally with some pretty big names like U2, Gary Moore and Neil Young. It seems they finally disbanded in 1987.

The Nostalgia Central site has a page on Cheetah that seems pretty well informed and probably contradicts some of the stuff above! Lyndsay's own site has had more about them.

Lyndsay is in now working back in Australia where she seems to be working more on the country music scene. Her album THE RAVEN was well received. I have it and to me the country music influences such as the steel guitar are intrusive and do nothing for it.

Apparently Cheetah do sometimes reform for the occasional tour and indeed in November 2003 there was the "Blood Sisters" tour in Australia. There was talk of a European tour for 2005, though if it actually happened I didn't notice, and they performed in Australia in 2006, and indeed there is now a Cheetah website that was created to promote the tour which includes photos and videos of them in action. That website was suggesting a European tour in 2007.