Many things can kill you in the music business. For Split Enz, New Zealand’s first internationally successful rock group, the most lethal poison was hairspray – or it should have been. “How did I not die?” marvels bandleader Tim Finn, whose head – at its vertiginous peak – resembled an upturned paintbrush.
Sitting next to him, percussionist Noel Crombie grins as Finn continues the story. “Noel would lacquer merciless amounts of this toxic spray … the makeup would start to run but the hair would just somehow … sit there.”
Crombie, for his part, flapped about on stage with what looked like a pair of bat’s wings sprouting from his head.
Finn is now the proud owner of one of the best heads of hair a nearing 74-year-old pop music veteran could wish for.
Younger brother Neil – later of Crowded House – sailed through his Split Enz years with a neat Dennis the Menace-style bowl cut. He’s now making up for lost time with so much product you can see his mop from the moon.
Tim Finn and Crombie are resting at their hotel in Wellington, the day after the third show of their Forever Enz tour – the band’s first since 2009.
On Saturday, they’ll play their home town of Auckland (which welcomed the beginning of the Enz in 1972) before kicking off a run of Australian concerts next week.
So, is this really the end of the Enz?
“Nobody’s announced that it’s the last time,” says Finn – which suggests that, if there’s to be a next time, they’d best not leave it another 17 years.
“Never say never,” nods Crombie, who has just turned 73.
From 1977 (when Neil Finn replaced founding member Phil Rudd on guitar) to 1984, Split Enz was one of Australasia’s biggest groups. They amassed an immense roll-call of hits: the international smash I Got You, Six Months in a Leaky Boat, Message to My Girl, One Step Ahead, History Never Repeats and many more.
After folky beginnings, they became new wave innovators, their nervy, brainy earworms spearheaded by the songwriting talents of the Finn brothers and the visionary designs (and occasional spoon solos) of artistic director Crombie.
Eventually, the Finns went their own ways; there have been only very sporadic Split Enz reunions since.
But with a global resurgence of interest, there are good reasons for the group to carry on. There’s a new box set, Enzyclopedia; an 18-month rollout of separate vinyl reissues of their nine studio albums; a forthcoming coffee-table book dedicated to Crombie’s ever-evolving visual presentation of the band, and more. All of which fuels further demand.
With wind in their sails, there may even be a new studio album – but if it happens, it’s a way off.
Neil remains committed to Crowded House, after the release of Dreamers Are Waiting in 2021 began that band’s own creative renaissance.
Everyone has their own projects.
In fact, Tim says, a new Split Enz album nearly happened about 20 years ago. The band was keen but he held out, preferring to remain solo.
“No one seems to carry a grudge about it,” he says, sounding a bit relieved. “I think we should make one more; I think we’d make a really good record now.”
Without new material, they’re limited to a greatest-hits set, with just a few deeper cuts thrown in. Of course, no one minds – including the band, even as they step uneasily back into the slightly warped psychology of songs they wrote in their early to mid 20s. A song like Shark Attack, Finn admits, is “a young man’s statement but I can still get right inside it”. Likewise the jealous mania of I See Red.
Finn insists he’s no longer an angry young man but when the song is performed, the fury is contagious: “When the crowd hears I See Red, they go for it. It’s a good expression of rage without hurting anyone.”
What’s new is the look.
Finn says part of the incentive to get back together is curiosity about what Crombie will come up with as he designs the set, stage and costumes that made the band such a visually arresting spectacle when they relocated to Australia in 1975, shortly after the debut of colour television: “We just sit back and wait!”
It was the peak of the glam era but both Finn and Crombie insist Split Enz felt no kinship with the movement. “There was no satin involved in anything,” Crombie quips. Instead, he was inspired by vaudeville, circus acts and kabuki. “I’d just sit down and draw and it came out somehow at the end of a pencil.”
Part of it was a reaction to the conservatism of their surroundings while they were growing up.
“All our dads wore suits all the time and Noel was taking the suit and distorting it,” Finn says. “The different heights of shoulders, different sleeve lengths, buttons that fastened off-centre. And the colours were primary.”
Crombie’s designs, Finn says, “corresponded exactly with the music” – the sharp angles, the bold imagery, the attention-grabbing melodies.
It also helped them transform: “Part of the pre-performance ritual was getting dressed and made up. I think that was a really valuable thing for us, to feel like a cohesive unit when we went on stage.”
Beyond the spectacle, though, what keeps the audience coming back is the songs.
“I hear Neil sing Message to My Girl and the whole room just floats,” he says. “You see people grooving at the shows to Dirty Creature, and a lot of younger people now have never seen Split Enz. Of course there’s also the diehards that come from way back.”
“They’re the ones on the walking frames,” Crombie says.