Amplitudes were needed to easily describe wave-like behavior. To produce an interference pattern, we need something like a probability that can be negative to represent the negative half of a wave.

Amplitudes are like probabilities that can destructively interfere when added. With traditional probabilities, if P(A) > 0 and P(B) > 0 the sum of the probabilities P(A)+P(B) cannot be zero. However, we needed to model observations like the two slit experiment where we observed that a location on the target that had positive probability of being hit by a photon in the two single-slit-only situations, that became zero when both slits were open.