ENZ Questionsand Answers

Rip It Up, Issue 32, 1 March 1980, Page 8

ENZ Questionsand Answers

Roy Colbert

Rip It Up spoke twice with Split each time in Dunedin during the' course of nation-wide tours. Time one with just Tim Finn was during the 1979 Frenzy tour, and it was in intriguing contrast to time two late February of this year. ** ■■'■" -X-.-X-X-..VV.AV/ /.-.V " .vCyAvi-.y -■ ■ v. " >v.v -.- .r-v-V

When Enz passed through Dunedin in 1979, things were at an interesting stage.. Chrysalis had offered the band an either-or either go into the studio and come out with some hit singles, or leave the ; label. The latter included forgetting all about a debt of some $150,000, r so it was hardly surprising Enz went for the or. The band’s future at that stage was very much up in the air. "Getting an overseas label ; is proving harder than we thought” said i Finn at the time. "Record companies are not throwing mud against the wall anymore.” The perennial Enz search for hit-single' that would open doors to the mass rock audience was also still i to be dealt with, and [while] band [morale was [high after a highly successful Australian tour, it did seem hat ’ Enz’ future lay, merely,*! with delighting Australasia. And making very good albums that didn’t sell too well. And making extremely good singles, which. radio stations wouldn’t piaySPWpMpHPVHHVV But the strength of this band surprised even [their, hardcore followers. Eh? have entered the 1980 s arguably more powerfully placed than ever to make an impact internationally with the True Colours ; album, surely: with the phenomenally fine single "I Got You”, definitely. Enz have new management, a new record company (in this country), a new producer,'and chart action (to coin a phrase) I hitherto only dreamed of. At time of writing was number two and the album number one and there were two more Enz albums in the top 40. _

£: TICKLE TIME - ;■ The new producer is David Tickle, and his role in the . renaissance should not be underestimated. Enz ! had XTC producer John L'eckie very interested in doing the last one?but Leckie had ,to race off to America, and they eventually settled for Mallory Earl ("He seemed the most enthusiastic?but in the end he probably had too much influence” says Finn. "We were in a state of frustration at the time, and we listened to too many people”). Tickle; engineered the "I See Red” single, and that was enough. He was flown over to Melbourne for the album. “We were his first production, but he had engineered for people like Blondie and The Knack, and after us he went over to New York to do Ellen Shipley” says Finn. "He’s about to become very famous, he’s one of a new wave of young star producers he’s only 20. We all found ! him very good.” Tickle brought the Enz sound right up to date, and gave it a sharpness and clarity previous albums had only hinted at. He also shifted some of the instrumental emphasis over to the English bass-drums team of Griggs and Green. "Yes, he got a really good drum sound for me” admits Green. The single is one of a number of tracks on the album attesting to that, while the closing piece "The Choral Sea” was built up from the drums in layered German disco fashion,, the same approach Tickle used on Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass”. 'Finn, says this one was just an experiment, and Eddie Rayner. says it was going to be discarded , until the very last minute. Archivists may wish to know also that the track was named by Rayner whilst absorbed (very) in a television programme on : undersea 1 monsters. Another feature of Tickle's production is the absence of piano. "And acoustic guitar” says Finn. "A piano tends to be a cloudy instrument, and it works on similar frequencies to the guitar. We wanted clarity on this, album. And besides, David said pianos were old-fashioned” says Rayner (who plays piano

better than any other keyboard yet invented). HITPICKING Enz went into the studios for Frenzy with around 30 songs. Finn said at the time he was happy with perhaps four or five “Give It A Whirl”, “Stuff And Nonsense”, “Betty”, “Mind Over Matter” and “Marooned”. For True Colours they had nearly 50. “We got it down to 20, and then 15. We're getting very good at eliminating things” says Finn.r Some bands like to try their new songs out on audiences and lick them into recordable shape on the road. Enz do it the other way. "I Got You” was performed for about a month before True Colours was begun, but most of the material was written two weeks before going into the studio. “When the song are fresh it’s easy to do them over and over again in the studio” says Finn. Everyone in the band agrees True Colours has the best production of any Enz album. In Dunedin last year, Finn had intimated they would do the next album themselves “we’re not the sort of band that needs a heavyweight producer” but a stab at thatjDn the late 1979 Australian single ‘"’Things” convinced Enz they did in fact need, at least, a welterweight. “We’ve a long way to go before we produce ourselves" says Rayner. " Things’ didn’t work. We have too many opinions and too many strong opinions when we’re doing it ourselves.” The B side of that single was "SemiDetached”, a concert standout last year. Enz had been carrying round a stunning demo of that song for some time, and it’s the demo that’s on the B side (get it). Finn says he hopes to put similar tracks on the bottom sides of the next two singles, which he is confident will come off True Colours. Two tracks to the side even. Favourites for singles at time of writing incidentally were “I Hope I Never” and "What’s The Matter With You”. Personally I would have thought “I Wouldn't Dream Of It” or “Nobody Takes Me Seriously” or “Poor Boy" (especially) were in line as well, but ... ; NEIL & EDDIE X -W- .. The continuing emergence of Neil Finn is another factor helping to strengthen Enz for the 1980 s. Neil wrote the music for the magnificent "Give It A Whirl”, and three more tracks on True Colours, including “I Got You”-. How does Tim feel as the older brother of such obvious singles genius? “I’ve always encouraged Neil, right from when I was banging balls at him against the garage wall” says "But yes, it is great to have two writing styles in the band.” And as a guitarist, is Neil being held in check, or is he still growing? . “I’ve a long way to go, but I'm happy with the guitar that's on the album” says Neil. “I think he’s a great rhythm player at the moment” says Tim “and there aren’t many of those. Besides, Eddie dominates everything anyway.” Rip It Up readers somehow contrived to keep Eddie Rayner out of the instrumentalists list in the 1979 poll, a fact which amused Finn at the time. Did anyone try and steal Rayner while Enz were in England? "No. He had a couple of offers to do session work as well as playing on Phil Manzanera’s album, but we kept pretty secluded over there. If he'd been around a bit more maybe a few more would have been interested." ' v -T NEW DEAL When Citizen Band last played in Dunedin, Mike Chunn spoke somewhat incredulously on how Enz could fill concert halls right through the country but only sell seven thousand copies of an album. He lay the blame firmly at the feet of Festival Records, and Enz don’t disagree with him. “The whole thing with Festival speaks for itself” says Tim Finn diplomatically. "It’s obvious they’ve held us back, and with the cover for the re-released Mental Notes, I think they’ve insulted the public. It looks like a

photo of the painting.” And Polygram? “They have a good rapport with radio, which is important" says Finn. “They know the industry and they have a lot of energy." “And we've just given them our best album by far” says Rayner. “But our albums haven’t been weak" says Finn. “Frenzy could have done better” says Crombie. “Yeah, we play to thousands and can’t get a gold album” says Finn. More talk ensues on Enz albums, and a kind of sloppy agreement is reached that yes thealbums have been good, and True Colours is the best of them' 4 —'though Finn understands the strong feelings people still have for Mental Notes. “A lot of our old fans were around 18 to 22 when that came out, and that’s a period you always remember well” he says. On the Frenzy tour I asked Finn to assemble an Enz ‘Greatest Hits’ not including the Frenzy album itself: Confronted with all six members this time, I was loathe to try and update it most of Finn’s original choices probably would have been tossed out the door. But for those interested, as I intensely was, Tim Finn’s Best Of Split Enz album as at late 1979 was “So Long For Now”, "Titus”, the Mental Notes version of “Under The Wheel”, “Stranger Than Fiction” and “Time For A Change” from Second Thoughts, “Sweet Dreams”, “My Mistake”, “Charley”, "Without A Doubt" and “Another Great Divide.” ■ LIVE ISSUES * v-‘v>y:%Wj; w " v ' ‘ -/• - - Split Enz were excellently received at Sweetwaters, and the band seem pretty happy with the way they played (one not always following from the other). "I thought Rip It Up was a bit unpatronising towards us” says Tim Finn wryly. "We’ve always done new material. That’s the thing about Split Enz we’re never the same. We loved Sweetwaters.” “There wasn’t a very good sound on stage, but the audience was amazing” says Rayner. “There was a certain joy about the whole thing” says Neil Finn. “And it was very wellrun.” Finn is incidentally delighted to see Rip It Up is still going. “It’s great that it’s survived. I know how hard it is to keep such a magazine going I don’t think the masses give a stuff about rock music, and there really aren’t that many hardcore rock fans. It’s important to have these things, they’re our voices to the world. I remember when we started out, we were jubilant when we got into print.” Last year Finn was thinking of putting together a live Enz EP with 5 tracks he wasn’t too happy with the early Australian live tracks which had alread come out. In 1980, plans are really no further on. If the band go overseas, there will obviously be a gap, and a live album would fill. that gap, but there really isn’t a whole album of good live material available at present. “Ideally a live album should be one magic night, but bands only have one of those every 100 gigs” says Finn. “And I wonder about the facilities here for recording concerts well.” And will the band go overseas? "There are nibbles at the moment. We know it’s going to happen we believe it’s going to happen” says Finn. “When we went over the first time we made a lot of mistakes, but it’s timing too. We had a great band, but it was the wrong band at the wrong time. Now we’ve got a good producer and we’re really strong. For a while we were just holding our own with the old fans, but we’re getting across to so many more people now.” “Suddenly everything is coming together” concludes Green. •In 1980, Tim Finn’s burning ambitions seem as vital and as unshakeably strong as ever, It has never been doubted in Australasia that Enz iare ‘good enough’. Now they ‘fit in’ as well, the next overseas trip should be the one. Here’s hoping.