Stranger than fiction: The life and times of Split Enz

by Mike Chunn

Revised 2019 In the early 1970s, a group of impoverished students formed a rock band in Auckland, New Zealand, and planned their assault on the world's music charts. For a decade Split Enz fought to be understood by audiences and music critics who often struggled to accept their madcap on-stage performances and innovative sounds.

Eventually, they found chart success in the UK, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia with hits like I Got You and with best-selling albums such as Mental Notes, Frenzy, True Colours, Waiata/Corroboree and Time and Tide.

At home, they remain New Zealand's most successful rock band. The band launched the careers of its leader Tim Finn and brother Neil Finn who later formed the hugely-successful Crowded House and joined Fleetwood Mac.

Success had its price for members of Split Enz, and founding bass-player Mike Chunn shares his inside story of the band in Stranger Than The Life and Times of Splitz Enz, a searingly honest account of this much-loved group of musicians.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2013

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an updated edition of Chunn's 1992 history of the legendary Kiwi band. Chunn was the original bass player. His writing style is chatty and playful, and although he left the band before they really took off, he stayed close, and his account has a nice balance of insider perspective with a certain objectivity for the events that happened after he left.

The band sprung from a boarding school friendship with Tim Finn, and Chunn does a great job establishing the context in which he and Tim discovered and explored music. As the story moves on, Chunn shows his storytelling ability. Bands aren't machines. They are a complex mix of personalities and talents who also must answer to the mundane requirements of life. Chunn's account hits on all of those things.

The arc of Split Enz's story is a help. They changed personnel, evolved as songwriters, and had success, but the gigantic worldwide breakthrough never materialized. This doesn't make it a sad story, but certainly one can engage in a lengthy exercise of what if.

I've been a fan of Split Enz for a long time, and this book enhanced my appreciation for them, as making it out of New Zealand in the '70s was not exactly an easy thing.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is interesting, and as a former member of the band, Mike Chunn has the inside stories - but it's also messy, and too much of it is composed of regurgitated press cuttings. It's worth picking up a copy if you're interested in Split Enz, but I think a definitive book about them remains to be written.

[Chris Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mainly one for the fans

I’m a long-time fan of Crowded House and Neil Finn. I knew a couple of Split Enz songs (History Never Repeats, One Step Ahead) that you would occasionally see on MTV or on one of the other shows on cable that would show videos in the 80s. I also recall an A&M records “hits” compilation that I had in college, but that only scratched the surface of the Enz catalog. But these days, you can find almost anything you want to listen to on Apple Music or Spotify, and during the early days of covid, I read a (disappointing) book about Crowded House and then found this one on the “People who liked this book also like…” page. I bought it, but after being underwhelmed by the Crowded House book, I never got around to this one.

This one is far more interesting than the Crowded House book. Chunn (a member of Split Enz during their earliest days) has an informal and humorous style that makes the pages roll by quickly. As with many books about bands, this does get a bit repetitive in parts as you settle into the album-tour-album-tour routine that most bands go through. The Enz fell into this pattern, but there are enough bumps in the road to add some color.

Still, this is not a band that was (or is) well known in the US unless your favorite band/singer was a fan (Eddie Vedder is a fan and friend of both Neil and his son, Liam). It is a book that sent me to Spotify to listen to the albums as they are mentioned in the book, and that was a rewarding way to get to know the music. There are some real gems in there, too, such as True Colours or Time and Tide (my personal favorite). I would recommend this to fans of the Enz or the Finn Brothers. It might also be your cup of tea if you just love books about musicians, but while I enjoyed the book, I cannot imagine it appealing to a wider audience. That is more a comment on the subject matter than it is the quality of the book.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfectly fine overview. It was a little too focused on their commercial musical journey and less so on their personal lives like the Split Enz podcast, in contrast, did really well. Pretty amazing that it was written in two months after the memories came back and I really valued the significance of Noel Crombie designing all the Enz covers.

[Viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impossible to find, but it's online. Someone scanned each page to jpgs with the consent of the author.