Where the story ENZ

By MIKE CHUNN*

I was asked recently to describe the start of Split Enz in one word. That was easy. Joy.

Joy is an emotional response that we don't experience often. We throw the word around like so many words these days, but to sense a pure, overwhelming joy is a rare thing. And there we were, standing around my bedroom in December 1972, beaming like Cheshire cats. We weren't just bright-eyed. We were dazzled. It was the day of our first show. How did this happen?

As a teenager at school, I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about music. I found a 1968 diary recently and every school holiday was taken up with hour after hour of recording songs on to a reel-to-reel tape with my brother Geoffrey. Songs he'd written, songs I'd written. I played bass because I wanted to be Paul McCartney and he was a tense mix of confidence and shyness. Surely George Harrison was like that.

And back at school we took to the stage with the boy with the incredible voice, Tim Finn, and we played concerts and shows.

But at the back of our minds I always knew we were some way short of accomplished. The broken strings, the dropped bars, the missing verse and the cover versions that took up most of our set lists pinned us to the ground and at no stage did I ever think, if we keep this up, we're going to fly. I did think if we keep this up, I might just become that industrial scientist that I used to tell everyone I was going to be.

Even the freedom and self-determination of university life found us trotting out cover versions and searching for some point of difference. We couldn't find it. We had the perfect generation gap - this was 1971 and we had 10 years of inspiration from a decade of music that successive decades strain to match.

But the big door just loomed before us, locked solid. And no one seemed to know where the key was.

The first time I saw Phil Judd, he was standing in the corner of a room looking like he didn't want to be there. The room was swimming with university students in their long hair and flared jeans. He was wearing a women's spencer top, black stovepipes and workman's boots. His name flitted around university circles as a painting talent from Hawkes Bay.

No one talked about him playing the guitar. In 1971, I don't think he had ever owned one.

By 1972, he was flatting with Tim Finn in Mission Bay and I would drop in.

Tim was a magnet. Still is, in many ways. There was an aura when the two of them were together.

It was as if plans had been made and surprises were in store for us all. They implied a joint sense of mischief coupled with an excitability that was seductive and I would escape my engineering school applied mathematics and just be there; sitting on a couch near the beach and waiting for something to happen. I think they were waiting for something to happen too.

There was no talking about it that I remember. And then one day they went out and bought two Yamaha FG300 guitars and Phil painted two-headed birds on them. And in a short time (hours?) they wrote three songs and played them to me. And I was in.

I've tried, but I don't think I have ever (could ever) accurately described what it was like playing those three songs. In those 10 minutes of music, the previous years of broken strings, dropped bars, missing verses and cover versions fell away, gone for ever. Where did those songs come from?

For 30 years now, I've worked with and for songwriters of every hue, creed and dogma. There is no one pattern of creative talent that points to someone being able to craft a song. But there is a common thread and that is they just have to do it.

There is a psychic purpose. And it seems the more they have to do it, the better the songs.

PHIL Judd found himself in a society he was uncomfortable with. What was wrong with it? Nothing. He just wasn't able to stand in a crowd and be at ease. He didn't want to shake hands, walk around the room and make small talk. He couldn't take the gentle, monotonous buffeting that the music industry so readily tosses at all who dare walk through it.

I can still see him standing in the corner of that room that first time I saw him. Now, some 30 years later, I know the look in his eyes. He was scared.

It may be inaccurate to say Phil Judd was socially phobic, even though those who are behave as he did. Certainly, his reticence, his alienation in the face of so much that we all take for granted, was very clear. I should know, I roomed with him many times as Split Enz moved out into the world.

We both hid in our rooms. Each grasping at family and fellow band members for stability. And then we were gone.

In sharp contrast to those later years, that first month of Split Enz's existence found him king of the world. In a combined surge of release, Tim and Phil had turned the key in the big lock in the big door and in a mesmerising, cathartic rush I was lucky to be whacked in the side of the head by what came flying out.

Phil's language was way beyond his years and Tim's melodic skill breathed life over Phil's intricate, mysterious guitar playing.

Maybe they stood in front of the mirror as they shaved and asked the question, "What the hell is going on?". I remember thinking at one rehearsal it didn't matter what I played. Every note seemed to find conviction. It was easy.

On the day of Split Enz's first gig we all gathered as usual in my bedroom and ran through the three songs that Tim and Phil had written. There was the jaunty introduction song Split Ends which still surfaces today.

"Writing letters to my friends

Telling em all about Split Ends ... "

There was the soaring slice of pop in For You which was to become the first single.

"My parents beat me cos I laughed

Or something like that."

And the now-forgotten Wise Men, never to be recorded.

"I think I'll get away from the sea

Before it drowns me."

The sense of discovery, the feeling of unity and the pure joy as we played through those songs was overwhelming.

We walked out of the bedroom and into my parents' lounge, where we discovered my brother Geoffrey and two of his friends. We sat them down at one end of the room and set up along the back wall. We played them our three songs.

I stared at them. They stared back. I don't remember anybody saying anything. We knew we were ready. So we piled out the front door and took off to the Wynyard Cafe in Symonds St.

The rest, I guess, is history.

* Split Enz's 30th anniversary performance is live on Holmes 7pm on Tuesday.

* Mike Chunn is the original bassist for Split Enz