The Beginning Of The Enz: How Australia Booed & Then Fell In Love With Split Enz

Split Enz arrived in Australia 50 years ago today.

They were heralded as “New Zealand’s answer to Skyhooks.” Only problem was – they didn’t really know who Skyhooks were.

But two members of the Hooks – guitarists Red Symons and Bob “Bongo” Starkie – quickly became a key part of Split Enz’s Australian story, bringing their record company boss to one of the band’s first Sydney shows.

“And the next thing you know we’re onstage at the Coogee Bay Hotel and Michael Gudinski, the main man of Mushroom Records – the main man of the whole Australian industry – is in the audience,” recalls bass player Mike Chunn.

“This was outta sight.”

After the gig, local legend Ted Mulry went backstage and told the Enz: “Holy shit, there are only two bands I’ve ever seen where I couldn’t take my eyes off them. One was The Beatles. You’re the other one.”

Soon after, Gudinski offered the band a recording contract. And Red Symons offered some words of wisdom: “Go south, young men.” He believed they would find a more sympathetic audience in Melbourne.

The following month, Split Enz played their first Melbourne show, with Skyhooks and AC/DC at Festival Hall on Anzac Day. Tickets cost $2.70.

The Hooks incited memories of Beatlemania, while Bon Scott dropped his pants and swung through the crowd dressed as Tarzan. And Split Enz?

They were booed.

The Enz hecklers included a young Sharpie named Magda Szubanski, who would later admit to Tim Finn that she secretly enjoyed the show and was only booing to stay sweet with her Sharpie mates. “That’s a very Split Enz story,” Tim notes, “people who loved us but didn’t want to show it.”

The booing didn’t deter Gudinski, who believed that any reaction – even a negative one – was better than no reaction. He hooked the band up with Melbourne venue the Reefer Cabaret, which was booked by Michael Roberts, who would later manage Hunters & Collectors. “Booed off stage?” Roberts remarked. “Well, if the kiddies hate them, they’ll be perfect for the Reefer.”

Gudinski thought Split Enz would be his next Skyhooks. But unlike the Hooks’ rapid rise, the Enz ascent was slow and torturous. 

True believers were thin on the ground in Australia and the UK. As New Zealand music historian John Dix noted, “They were still an oddity, a group of art school crazies who performed strange music.” Sid Vicious told NME: “Split Enz is everything which is wrong with music.”

The Enz struggled to fit into Australia’s pub rock scene. Keyboards player Eddie Rayner famously said, “I’d rather be a hot tool than a Cold Chisel.”

In 1980, Tim Finn told the American edition of Rolling Stone: “I hate the word weirdo, I hate zany, I hate wacky.”

With their wacky haircuts and colourful clothes, no one knew where to place the band. Tim recalls a scary situation in London in 1977. “Sometimes people thought we were a religious sect, but this time a group of rockers surrounded us. They were going to beat us up because they thought we were a group of punks. 

“There was a lot of violence happening in 1977, things were pretty heavy. But Noel [Crombie] said: ‘No, we’re just New Zealanders.’ And it seemed to do the trick, they left us alone.”

Reflecting on the band’s indifferent crowd reactions in the ’70s, Tim Finn acknowledged: “How can you communicate to an audience when you look like a parrot?”

Even Countdown legend Ian “Molly” Meldrum urged his great mate to drop the band.

“One of Split Enz’s many classic songs is My Mistake,” Molly smiles. “It’s an apt title when I think about one of my biggest blunders. In the late ’70s, Michael Gudinski was making some cuts at his Mushroom label. ‘Maybe you’ll have to let Split Enz go,’ I suggested. Fortunately, Michael believed in the band so much, he ignored my advice. 

“Of course, a couple of years later, Split Enz had the landmark True Colours album, containing the classic I Got You. I don’t like to say this too often, but Michael, you were right.”

Peter Green, the founder of the band’s fan club Frenz Of The Enz, was always a believer. “My partner in crime, Mark, and myself spent most of our teenage weekends seeing Split Enz in 1979,” says Green, who is now the band’s official archivist. “They played 139 shows across Australia and New Zealand that year, most sold out.

“We knew it was just a matter of time before the record-buying public caught up and gave the Enz a well-deserved massive hit. I Got You was just around the corner and changed all of our lives forever.”

Neil Finn had been working as a hospital orderly when big brother Tim asked him to join the Enz in 1977. He admits his guitar playing was “crap” and reveals that drummer Malcolm Green and bass player Nigel Griggs “tried to get me sacked”. And by the time they came to write songs for True Colours, the band had been dropped by their UK label. 

True Colours changed everything. But legend has it that Gudinski was disappointed when he first heard the record, believing it didn’t contain any hits. The story goes that he said, “I’ve just wasted 38 grand.” 

The label pressed only 6000 copies of the album. They were all gone just three days later.

Tim Finn recalls: “Michael Gudinski certainly didn’t recognise it [I Got You] as being a hit single. No one did, really. Until it started getting airplay, then people started going, ‘Oh, it’s a hit, it’s a hit!’ But when we handed in True Colours nobody said, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be the breakthrough record.’”

The late music mogul disputed that version of events. “There was a myth around at the time that I had said there were no hit singles on True Colours after first hearing the album. The truth is that the album was so strong that I was instantly taken aback and identified many potential singles.”

Whatever the truth, there’s no doubt that the Split Enz story is one of belief. Michael Gudinski and Mushroom Records hung in there until the band broke big – True Colours was the band’s fifth album.

Mushroom debated whether to go with Neil’s I Got You or Tim’s plaintive piano ballad I Hope I Never as the album’s first single. The band’s two previous singles – Give It A Whirl and Things – had been Neil compositions and both had stiffed.

I Got You spent eight weeks at number one in Australia, becoming the longest-running local chart-topper since Daddy Cool’s Eagle Rock. It also topped the charts in New Zealand and hit number 53 in the US and 12 in the UK.

“With I Got You streaking up the charts, it was a magical time,” Tim remembers. “We used to go around holding our fingers in the air – one hand for the single, the other hand for the album. We’d be a five and a three … then we eventually got to one and one, and we’d walk around with two fingers pointed at the sky.”

Neil Finn wrote I Got You at an apartment in Rose Bay in Sydney, which he was sharing with Tim.

“We were working in our respective bedrooms, swapping titles,” Neil recalls. “I remember thinking that the verse was good, but I would have to figure out a new chorus because it reminded me of something. That’s possibly why it was such a big hit. I can honestly say the first time I heard it on the radio I knew it was going to be huge.”

“I Got You was not only an important song for Split Enz but also for Mushroom Records who had been through many trials and tribulations and had believed in the band long before this breakthrough,” Gudinski explained. “It was another example of my record company’s continued belief in an artist. Some of the greatest acts we’ve worked with are the ones that have developed over time.”

I Got You and True Colours were produced by England’s David Tickle, who had been an assistant to Mike Chapman when the great Australian record producer made Blondie’s Heart Of Glass and The Knack’s My Sharona. Tickle was just 20.

The producer recalls hearing I Got You for the first time when the band did a soundcheck at The Playroom on the Gold Coast. “What’s that?” he remarked, as Neil went, “Dink, dink, dink”. “You gotta work that up!”

“Everybody has different memories,” Neil says. “He [Tickle] thinks he was there for the gestation of the song, but the fact is we’d comprehensively rehearsed it in the week leading up to that gig.”

True Colours became Mushroom’s first Top 40 album in the US, peaking at 40. It also reached number 38 in the UK and hit the Top 10 in Canada.

As John Dix noted, “After years of struggle, Split Enz had become New Zealand’s first genuine international rock ’n’ roll stars.”

The album spent 10 weeks at number one in Australia. And Mushroom released the record in a number of different colour combinations – eight different covers in total.

And the band that landed in Sydney 50 years ago today, surviving on sliced bread and Vegemite, is now embraced as one of our own. Split Enz were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2005. 

How do New Zealanders feel about Australians claiming their stars?

“I’ve never thought about it a great deal, but sometimes people will look a bit wounded about it in New Zealand,” Neil Finn says. “We’ve always said we were New Zealanders, but Australia has been a very fertile place for us. I lived there for 12 years. It was homely.”