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Mike Chunn: The Seven Voices of Split Enz - Page 2

© Anne-Marie de Bruin

"Yeah, cathartic, it would be. Writing the Enz book was, I think in terms of the agoraphobia. Yeah it is, and I think its even things you don't plan for- you don't plan to solve little niggles in your head, writing can sort of ease a lot of things. And I suspect a lot of people write subconsciously for that reason. I'd never imagine it as a profession or anything, perhaps some people play golf for the same reason. I think everybody if they sat down and started would enjoy writing, especially about themselves and other people, and how they all got on with each other. You can couch it all in fiction, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of fictional writers are all writing about people they know."

A lot of your book deals with the repressive nature of Catholicism, was music a way to break out this?

"For me it was the perfect way and coupled with boarding school being a place you weren't allowed to leave, without sort of making it sound like I felt sorry for myself, you hated the whole thing of being incarcerated and you couldn't leave it because you'd be caned. I mean one of the big things is you'd have little triggers in your emotions when you grow old, like I have (laughs) and if I ever see something where somebody achieves freedom, I'm very moved by it. As a kid, that's what I'd I planned, to be free, to dream of any day of my life, to be able to walk down a suburban street- to have that choice. And well I thought if I'm in a band playing rock and roll then I can do that."

After you left school, you enrolled in a maths degree...I guess classes and all must have been just a boring interruption to all the other mayhem around at the time?

"It was engineering yeah, theoretical and applied mathematics...but we had fun with it. It was a small class only nine of us or something. Why did I do it? Because I knew that it was only a short-term academic crazy class and I didn't intend to take it anywhere but its not like me to finish things half way through, so I just carried it through till I got the degree and kissed it goodbye."

I always read about that whole era as being a revolution, did you guys think of it that way or is it only something that is seen when you look back?

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