STACK #200 Jun 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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of the band’s decision to enlist Tickle for True Colours . “Michael Gudinski, to his credit, said, ‘Yeah, go for it,’ because he knew the power of I See Red ’.” (Fun fact: I Got You , the lead single from True Colours , became one of the biggest hit singles Mushroom ever released.) Split Enz were outliers, and just about as arty as you could

were so cramped that Crombie was forced to set up his drumkit in the toilet, and Rayner, plus keyboards, was situated in a position where he was almost constantly nudging Tim in the head with his elbow while playing. After a lengthy campaign initiated by Frenz Of The Enz, Split Enz’s devoted fan club, The Rootin Tootin Luton Tapes was finally released as an official record in 2007. “ I See Red was set up in

person, very supportive. I think she’s written since that Split Enz were one of the bands she admired at the time.” Although Rayner has since stressed

The world wasn’t ready for their Dr. Seuss- level fabulosity

get. “We reacted against anything that was boring and silly about early ‘70s

England in ‘78, when we were on the bones of our a-se,” Tim recalled. “Somebody suggested

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music, and refused to have any image that had anything glamorous or sexual,” Tim told Caz Tran of the Crombie- designed Split Enz aesthetic. “We just went right off on a tangent, and looked different and sounded different.” But going into True Colours , Tim bristled, “People had been calling us zany, wacky, weird for years, and although I could see why they had, it annoyed me. Those tags annoyed me because in our hearts we were songwriters, and we wanted to be known as songwriters…We were deliberately stripping things back.” Undoubtedly right up there among the best songwriters on the planet, brothers Neil and Tim Finn – who were sharing a house when they wrote the songs that would become True Colours – are deadset melodic wizards. “With True Colours , we felt like we were being recognised purely for our ability to write good songs, and that gave us the confidence to present ourselves more simply,” Tim shared during an interview. “I mean, how can you communicate with an audience when you look like a parrot?” On the radio series Enzology , Neil said of the album: “We went through a period where we shunned it, ‘cause it was so

that “there was never really any talk of giving it away,” the time Split Enz spent in the UK proved disenchanting, and they were always skint into the bargain. “When we were in London we decided we’d sack everybody – we sacked our management, our agent, our record company – as we felt they weren’t doing the right thing by us,” Rayner remembers. “We soon realised how difficult it is to work without those administrators around you to get things moving, make all the calls and do the legwork.” We’re tipping Tim felt inspired to pen the following I Hope I Never lyrics during this bleak London period: “I’m gonna move to a new town where the people are nice...” A true master of the minor key (mondegreen alert: when I was little, I used to think Tim’s In A Minor Key was actually ‘In A Monarchy’…), the melodies Tim masterminded to wrench our hearts out throughout I Hope I Never do the job, before you’ve even copped this song’s crestfallen opening lyrics: “I fall apart when you’re around/ When you’re here, I’m nowhere...” Perhaps Tim also wrote Nobody Takes Me Seriously Anyway (“I don’t want to suffer these conditions no more/ Haven’t I the right to say?”) around this time? Actually, probably Poor Boy ’s choruses as well… But thankfully, the New Zealand Arts Council came to the rescue with a

Legend has it that [the studio] was so cramped, Crombie was forced to set up

successful. We were sick of playing it. But it’s a fantastic record. Lean and tight, energetic and up. Good songwriting, and I love the sound of it now... There’s a tendency for bands to turn on the record that makes you successful, and regard it as a curse. But now I think it was a blessing in every respect...”

this young guy [then-18-year- old English engineer David Tickle] that they thought would be worth trying. It was an experiment. “We ended up at Startling Studios, which was John Lennon’s house when he and Yoko were doing Imagine and all that. So it had acres of legendary pathos and meaning for us to be there.” Between working on I See Red and True Colours , Tickle worked on The Knack’s My Sharona and Blondie’s Heart Of Glass (under the guidance of Mike Chapman). “The record [ I See Red ] worked out so well... It was a no-brainer for us,” Tim has said

his drumkit in the toilet

$5,000 grant, which enabled Split Enz to book a small 8-track studio in Luton. Laying down 28 new songs in less than five days, Split Enz’s new direction was captured on the hilariously named The Rootin Tootin Luton Tapes , from which the berserk, Tim-penned I See Red was lifted to become lead single on the band’s Frenzy record of 1979. Legend has it that Luton’s Quest Studios

Continue reading about how Neil joined the band at just 17 years old, the creation of Crombie’s fantastical costume designs, and exactly how many different colourways True Colours’ iconic album cover eventually got, online at stack.com.au!

16 JUNE 2021

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