Home » Music » New Zealand Music » Twenty Five Years of Split Enz

Twenty Five Years of Split Enz

© Anne-Marie de Bruin

Twenty-five years ago this December 10th, Split Enz first played in Auckland, New Zealand. Twenty-five years have come and gone- years that Enz remember well. Tim Finn, Mike Chunn and Eddie Rayner, they were there. They now share some recollections of those times.

In 1971, Tim Finn arrived at Auckland University and took his place at O'Rorke Hall. Mike Chunn, Tim's buddy from the Catholic boarding school, Sacred Heart, had also enrolled and used to drop in on Tim who had befriended a group of art students. These students included Noel Crombie and Phil Judd- future Enzers. Says Tim: "It was a fruitful time. Living at the old O'Rorke was interesting. I leeched onto Crombie and Judd, and learned about states of consciousness."

Through the meeting of Phil Judd and Tim Finn, an extraordinary songwriting partnership was born, with Finn as singer, and Judd as guitarist. Through all this, Mike Chunn was witness, until one day, Tim asked him to join as bassist.

Much of the musical seeds for their careers had been planted while Chunn and Finn were in school bands - but it wasn't until later that it really happened. According to Mike: "The whole thing kicking in really was Phil Judd being at Auckland University. The thing at school was fine, but I couldn't see it really going anywhere until Juddsy came along with his songs and then boom!"

A large part of the Split Enz musical experience of course had been shaped through their Irish Catholic upbringing with the Finns growing up in Te Awamutu, the Chunns in Otahuhu, in 50's and 60's New Zealand. Mike recalls, "the rest of the world seemed like paradise and we were down here very dull and sort of brown and grey. But maybe in the end, it kind of works once you're out of it, because then small things had a very exciting nature to them. There was no TV, there was no pop music on the radio- nothing."

This was all to change with the arrival on the scene of four mop tops from Liverpool. For the future Enzers, music was never the same again- they had found their calling. To quote Mike Chunn: "John Lennon's rhythm guitar work, he was incredible. If you're listening to even something like I Want To Hold Your Hand it has just the sort of radical stuff you don't normally do on a guitar."

Later, Split Enz would make their Beatle dreams come true when in the early months of 1974 Tim Finn acquired a mellotron, a keyboard instrument which had been at the forefront of Lennon's Strawberry Fields some eight years earlier. Naturally being in possession of such an esteemed instrument they would need an equally esteemed keyboardist to play it, and Eddie Rayner arrived.

The copyright of the article Twenty Five Years of Split Enz in New Zealand Music is owned by . Permission to republish Twenty Five Years of Split Enz in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.