Tim Finn chuckles when asked about rumours that Split Enz are planning their first reunion shows since 2009. “There are whispers,” he eventually admits as he discusses a new boxset series called ENZyclopedia, which begins with a celebration of the New Zealand band’s early years. “And it’s a whisper that is getting louder. I can’t talk about it now, but it’s more or less out that something is going on. I can’t say any more because I have an old-fashioned superstitious thing about secrecy.”
Tim Finn chuckles when asked about rumours that Split Enz are planning their first reunion shows since 2009. “There are whispers,” he eventually admits as he discusses a new boxset series called ENZyclopedia, which begins with a celebration of the New Zealand band’s early years. “And it’s a whisper that is getting louder. I can’t talk about it now, but it’s more or less out that something is going on. I can’t say any more because I have an old-fashioned superstitious thing about secrecy.”
Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, who produced Split Enz’s 1976 album Second Thoughts , is tickled at the thought of a Split Enz reunion. “That will be so much fun,” he says. “They absolutely should bring back some of their old tricks from their early days. They would suddenly appear on the stage and then disappear again in a puff of smoke. Noel Crombie, who played the spoons, was central to the look and the theatrical things that happened. It was like an Antipodean Magical Mystery Tour. Those gigs stayed with anybody who saw them.”
Manzanera first encountered Split Enz during Roxy’s first tour of Australia in 1975. He had no great expectations of the local musical scene upon arrival, so was surprised and delighted when he turned on the TV set in his hotel room to see Split Enz – and even more pleased when they turned out to be Roxy’s support act.
His enthusiasm was enough to persuade the band’s label to fund a trip to London. “They put us in digs on the King’s Road near Sex,” says Finn. “There was this strange intersection of radical thought in rock’n’roll – Split Enz and punk. We’d wander in and we’d check each other out, but nobody knew what was going to happen. Phil said there was a gap you could drive a truck through – he could sense there was a void that had to be filled.”
To add to the culture clash, the Kiwis recorded Second Thoughts – an alternative version of their debut Mental Notes – at Island Records, with Bob Marley downstairs making Exodus. The two bands would sometimes meet over the office football table machine.
Both Mental Notes and Second Thoughts are on the boxset, along with a new mix of Second Thoughts by keyboard player Eddie Rayner. The set is completed by a collection of formative singles and a CD of previously unreleased and rare material, including some live recordings. When the band performed the occasional gig in London, they had to restructure a show designed for theatres to suit pubs like The Nashville.
“We had to learn a new way of performing,” says Finn. “We had the costumes Noel made, like an extreme distortion of a male suit with asymmetrical buttons, different shoulder heights, different sleeve lengths, primary colours. This worked with the music which was full of these abrupt changes and an excitable nervy energy. It was like we’d had a revelatory experience together and wanted to express it.”
As Manzanera recalls, the band specialised in making dramatic entrances. Sometimes they would shuffle on stage in a giant bag, which would then slowly open to reveal the group lit up by dramatic strobe lighting. Another trick was to enter the stage via trampolines from the wings, complete with cartoon “boings”.
Finn, who has been performing “Time For A Change” at recent solo shows alongside better-known Split Enz, Crowded House and solo songs, won’t promise anything of that nature should Split Enz take the stage again, but he is looking forward to exploring the band’s early catalogue. “People would say we were ahead of our time, but we thought we were completely outside the times,” he says. “We didn’t feel we belonged anywhere. It’s difficult now to listen to those two albums and say where they belong. It’s untethered. That can be a difficult place to be in pop culture terms, but it means it has legs.”
