Judd's history never repeats

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

LISTEN chronologically to the eight Split Enz studio albums - or scroll through the footage on the new DVD compilation - 30 years on from those first furtive steps, and it reminds they sure did cram a lot into their 12-year existence.

You can hear the adjustments to the times, as 70s dryness gave way to 80s studio sheen, which glues lesser offerings such as Waiata and Conflicting Emotions to their times.

You can see the visual shifts, too: a rabble of flared trousers, moustaches and muttonchop sideburns soon transformed into a visual symphony of topiary haircuts and face paint atop civil servant suits and ties. Then came the gradual application of cold cream as percussionist-resident tailor Noel Crombie ran up a new season's look with each tour.

On the albums after Dizrythmia, you can hear the songwriting and singing balance swing between the Finn brothers.

You can detect the Enz' increasing ambitions for wider acceptance - when they embraced it fully on 1980s True Colours, it made for a multi-single pop wonder. When they figured there was no use trying to repeat its success, they made Time and Tide the most sustaining heartfelt album of the band's twin-Finn era.

But those first two albums, Mental Notes and Second Thoughts (largely a re-recording of the debut under the eye of Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, which sounds the better for it today), remind that while the Enz are perceived as the Finns' first tilt at the world, it all began with another quite different partnership. And with another, differently wired kind of genius: Phil Judd, a man largely forgotten in New Zealand rock history, mainly because he wants to be.

"Spoke to Philip this afternoon. He has no interest in discussing Split Enz. Sorry, but I tried," was the response from Melbourne management and publishing company Mana Music, which now handles his work as a soundtrack composer, after an approach to talk about how he might now regard those days.

When the Enz gather for yet another reunion on Tuesday, Judd won't be there - though he's seemingly been in his former bandmates' thoughts lately: Tim Finn's latest solo album contains a previously unreleased Judd song, Incognito in California. So does keyboardist Eddie Rayner's new guest-vocalist-heavy album with Annie Crummer singing his Play It Strange (the album itself is titled Play It Straight).

And he's always been in the thoughts of diehard fans, Judd having achieved cult status. The bulletin boards of the Frenz of the Enz website (www.frenz.com) are full of wishful thinking that the reunion should be the original line-up.

The credits on those first two Enz albums tell their own story. Judd's name is on every song, with most of the tracks on both albums Judd-Finn compositions, the remainder Judd alone.

Among them are tracks which still define the Enz' early art-pop era - Late Last Night, Sweet Dreams, Time for A Change.

The former Elam School of Fine Arts student also painted the cover to Mental Notes (as appears on E1) and years later did a portrait of a much different band for the cover of Conflicting Emotions.

Judd doesn't feature too much in the DVD footage. His era was before the video age. But what's there reminds that he did like to play the nightmare vampire flipside to Finn's daydreaming clown.

The creative sparks of their partnership ignited Split Enz - and the careers of everyone involved - but it was the change from the introspective pursuits of songwriting and recording to touring and performing which helped pull them apart.

Tim Finn bloomed in the brightening spotlight, both as frontman and a songwriter in his own right. Judd, it seems, wasn't suited to chasing the big rock'n'roll dream beyond the studio.

He left in 1977 after a dismal first American tour which led to fists thrown - between him and Tim Finn backstage at a show in San Francisco. He then briefly rejoined in England, alongside his replacement, a teenage, fresh-off-the-plane Neil Finn. The song Play it Strange dates from that brief period, and the younger Finn has often included it in his live sets.

Arguably, the abundantly talented Finns had musical genius thrust upon them - the older by Judd, the younger by his brother. Listening to those early albums, it sounds as if Judd's songwriting faculties arrived fully formed but he wilted under the weight of having it turn into a career.

After the Enz, Judd followed a musically haphazard path which somehow managed to embrace New Zealand's nascent punk scene with brief involvement in the Suburban Reptiles and the Enemy. Then came his return with trio the Swingers who didn't survive Counting the Beat, their mammoth hit on both sides of the Tasman and a royalty boon in its later incarnation as a supermarket jingle.

There was an unloved solo album, Private Lives, and then it was back to the easel until Judd briefly re-emerged at the end of the 80s with Schnell Fenster, a band which included ex-Enzers Nigel Griggs and Crombie. They and their two albums were rudely ignored and they split soon after.

But the advent of the group did mean that, when a young Auckland Star music writer and card-carrying member of the Cult of Phil turned up in Melbourne wanting an interview, Judd reluctantly agreed to talk about his past.

"Our attitudes were so different when we were young that it was like we were just so focused on the whole thing and we didn't care about anything else," he said as we sat in a dimly lit windowless room in a studio in the middle of blazing hot day, with Judd seemingly more nervous than I was at having a close encounter with a musical hero. "It gets to the point where it just seems like someone else's life, you get detached from it."

Phil Judd remains detached. You've almost got to admire him for it.