The " Time Out" Magazine supplement from the New Zealand Herald , (thurs 20 March),features full colour pic of the Enz'z in their 1978 period customes.
Titled "The Reunion Tour , MENTAL COATS,The brains behind Split Enz' crazy clothes.
Inside there is a 2 page article from Noel Crombie on the inspiration behind some of his favourite designs.Great pics,and large blk /white pic of Noel playing the spoons.
Also in this issue there is a review on the "Enz To Enz-The ultimate Split Enz box set.given 5 stars.(review by Scott Kara).

oooh ooh can someone scan it and put it up?

Time Out Article,also from Dominion Post.
Split Enz spill the beans
By VICKI ANDERSON. - The Press | Thursday, 20 March 2008

ALWAYS ORIGINAL: Split Enz returns to the Kiwi stage for three much anticipated gigs.

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AdvertisementStranger than fiction, larger than life, full of shades and echoes – for Tim Finn and Noel Crombie, Split Enz is the story of their lives.


With Finn and Crombie, I find myself talking to a couple of interplanetary musical Romeos. They've captured the hearts and souls of Australasia with their numerous hit records and tunes and, to use a word that's bandied about too often but is right for Split Enz, they are iconic.

Their costumes may be under wraps but these musical super heroes probably won't be wearing tights when they and the rest of Split Enz play at the Westpac Arena on Sunday night for the first of their three long- anticipated New Zealand shows.

Finn has joined my interview unexpectedly, in place of Eddie Rayner who is suffering from hay fever. The innovative Crombie has a rich laugh and a fair dinkum Ocker twang.

Two's company and three's a crowd when these frENZ get together. They forget about me and start interviewing each other:

Finn: "What about the new cossies, Noel?"

Crombie: "The intention is to do something. I don't know whether I should talk about it now."

Me: "Yes, go on. Now's the perfect time."

Crombie: "I would let you in on it but I haven't really thought about it except for mad moments in the middle of the night when I've thought `oh, I've got to do that'."

I mention the prospect of seeing the band in tights.

Crombie sounds quite dejected when he says that they can't do tights.

"The thing ultimately about it is, as far as I'm concerned, it can't be too weird. Where we all are now is somewhere else. It's also about feeling comfortable with yourself and performing.

"There's a whole series of filters it has to go through, although everyone's still got good legs. I think we could get away with it."

The pair then compare the shapeliness of band members' legs.

Finn: "Neil and Eddie in tights, I reckon."

Crombie: "I've got the best legs; that's why I want tights."

Finn: "Eddie has the strongest calf muscles, being an ex high-jumper, but for sheer shapeliness ..."

Crombie: "Ed is a bit clunky, that's why they were known as the Kauri stumps."

Finn: "At least no-one in the band had those thighs that rubbed together. Don't be a teacher and wear cords if your legs rub together, all that static electricity. That's something the nuns didn't have to worry about. We never knew what lurked beneath that coarse brown cloth."

Moving on to habits of another kind, the group is known for its revolving line-up.

Split Enz first formed in 1971 with the original line-up of Tim Finn, Mike Chunn, Robert Gillies, Phil Judd and Crombie, and survived 13 line-up changes in their 12-year career. The role of honour for this New Zealand tour is Finn, Neil Finn, Eddie Rayner, Crombie, Nigel Griggs and ... a drumroll please for Michael Barker who, having played with both Neil Finn and Tim Finn on their solo recordings, and also with the John Butler Trio, joins Split Enz for this tour.

"We've got a new drummer – we've never really settled on a full-time drummer. Noel was there for a while, we had Paul Hester, we've had a few of them," Finn says.

"We've got a new one now. That's a surprise. There'll be things in that which we'll enjoy, but when Noel gets on the kit there'll be fun and games going on."

In 1973, Split Ends entered the New Faces TV talent contest, finishing second-last in the contest, but their performance secured them a 30-minute concert special for Television New Zealand .

In 1974, Anthony Edward "Eddie" Rayner on keyboards joined the group and the band's name was altered to the patriotic "Split Enz". Their fans are among the most dedicated in the world, with the band's official fanclub, Frenz of the Enz, boasting 15,000 paying members from across the globe. In recent years, the membership has increased as younger and younger fans have discovered the timeless appeal of Split Enz's music.

"When we broke up, we did the Enz With A Bang tour," says Finn. "When we were in Perth some guy who worked at a radio station said to me: `We'll still be playing these songs in 20 years time' and I thought it was the silliest thing I'd ever heard. I thought it would all be over in 12 months."

After more than three decades, the magic is still there. In 2006, Split Enz reformed for a tour of Australia which attracted universal praise.

"I think from the 24 songs from the set in Australia, people were surprised by how many they knew, not just going out with the three hits. They're still in people's consciousness which is great from a performance point of view. It makes it really enjoyable," says Crombie.

"When we were at the height of our popularity, people really bought into albums so we can play album tracks that were never released as singles."

Poor Boy was a single written by Tim Finn and recorded by Split Enz for their 1980 True Colours album. It was only released in the UK as a single.

"Yes, that was never a single here, but it was played on the radio – and it still is – so we've got that legacy and that part of the music. One of the great things about the Australian tour was the broad make-up of the audience. It wasn't a total nostalgia trip. There were a lot of young people there seeing the band for the first time and it was exciting.

"I always liked the story from the Melbourne show. There was a young lady texting her parents saying `guess where I am?' and they texted back: `Well wave. We're sitting opposite you'," says Finn.

Despite the wealth of material to choose from, Finn says the bulk of their setlist came together easily.

"There are six or eight songs around the fringes we might go back and forth with. We have the great advantage of having a bass player who's obsessed with lists. Nigel always used to do the lists; he's quite scientific. Given, also, that there are songs we have to play, they form the cornerstone from the beginning to the end and it's just a matter of filling in the gaps. It almost writes itself; there's just the matter of how diverse we want to be. We did a couple of quite early ones which we'll be doing again. I won't say what they are."

Crombie isn't quite sure when his talent for playing spoons was first stirred. In terms of Split Enz, it began as a way to replace a routine which featured a tap-dancer – Rayner's aunt. "I think I saw it on a film, some vaudevillian thing, and I just picked them up really."

"It was unique in the history of rock 'n' roll," says Finn. "You can imagine it happening in a small way, but Noel can come out in front of 10,000 people and played the spoons and there's something really delightful about that. There's something really Split Enzish and really unique."

Crombie breaks the reflective moment with a booming laugh.

"I tried the electric spoons but that was awful; that had a short life. I thought it might be a natural progression. I haven't learned how to play knives which is probably a good thing."

Personally, I've always pictured him making a cup of tea, tap-tapping away in the kitchen.

"That's probably where I started, at home. I used to drive my mum mental. (Adopts motherly tone): `Have you finished stirring yet?!'."

The pair credit their success with a group ethos of prolific writing and a brutal approach to culling would-be-hits.

"Tim would come along and play something and we'd say `no, that sounds like something' – the minute anything sounded like something else it was immediately damned," Crombie says.

"It was a really strong position to be in. We always went in to record armed with a lot of songs."

Shortly after they moved to Melbourne in 1975, Michael Gudinski signed them to his independent label Mushroom, and they began work on their first album, Mental Notes. Gudinski, of the Frontier Touring Company, says he's thrilled to be promoting this tour.

"They were one of the greatest acts of all time on the Mushroom label. Split Enz define the '70s and '80s for so many Kiwis, so this is going to be the ultimate gig for these people."

The respect is mutual.

"We did one show with Roxy music and it led to us going to London, so it was more of a monumental evening than we knew at the time," remembers Finn. "It gave our record company belief that they should spend all that money to ship us across because we had a producer waiting so, therefore, we had an in to getting a label deal which did happen. But it could quite easily have not happened, so essentially it was quite a tenuous thing. I don't see how they were so confident – aside from a guitarist in a great band (Phil Manzanera) wanting to produce us. It does show the belief Mushroom had in us.

"I don't think Michael fully understood us, and in not doing so, it gave him some other level of belief."

Backstage there are sure to be a few practical jokes among these men who've known each other since art- school days, although Crombie says he has reformed.

"Noel and I being on the phone together makes me remember one night involving Noel and I and a lift," says Finn. "There was some belief in the band that I was especially vulnerable to practical jokes so Noel managed to find a compartment inside the elevator ..." The pair of them are suddenly roaring with laughter and tumbling over each other to tell the story.

Crombie: "It was like a service compartment. We were staying in this hotel in Kings Cross and it was where the maids used to push a little trolley. I hadn't noticed it until I saw somebody open it up."

Finn: "You thought `that'll be handy when Tim gets in'."

Crombie: "We were recording down the road and we got back really late, around three in the morning, so I knew there was no- one else around. I got in the compartment and I waited for the door to open because I knew Tim was behind me. I waited for a while then I just burst out of the thing."

Finn: "A moment of complete terror is one way of putting it."

Crombie: "Yeah, it was a bit cruel. Unspeakable acts were performed on tour. It got to be an out-doing thing. It got very base. I won't go into any details. No I can't, it was just disgusting. Just imagine boys in their adolescence and the worst thing you could ever imagine them doing to each other and you'll come close."

Toilet humour?

"There was definitely a toilet aspect ... and a glass," Crombie says. "It's always the same when we get together. The lift fright thing, that was one of my last ones. That was so successful I retired. I've scared my wife a couple of times and got into trouble. I know better now."

Tim adds: "We were never quite sure of each other. That was one of the energies in the band that I think was important, that creative tension. We never quite worked each other out. We never got bored with each other. Right to the end, we were always interested in each other."

Finn believes that rather than ahead of the times, they were outside the times and Crombie agrees.

"We had an aesthetic that was driven by not wanting, certainly from my part, of not wanting to be part of a fashion or trend, just making our own statement. It didn't relate to the times so much as our commitment to individuality."

Crombie says his notorious costumes and elaborate sets came from the freedom he felt at the time.

"It's just the energy you get from being in that environment. I made a lot of costumes on the road, in the studio. I made a set in someone's garage in Taradale once – just asked if I could borrow his mum's sewing machine. Now I'm still making things like sets for TV shows but I don't chase it. The older I get, the less inclined I am to deal with the politics. I suppose in a way we were spoilt with our whole experience, all of us in a way, of just doing what we wanted to do.

"I can honestly say I don't remember someone from a record company coming in the studio and sitting down and waiting to hear the single. There was incredible freedom."

Crombie and Finn say that they're concerned about the amount of hairspray they breathed during the band's heydays.

"I still worry about it. The hair was very sculptural, maybe 12 inches to a peak at points. Noel had several peaks," Finn says. "If we develop a strange lung disease that'll probably be the cause of it. I used to try to hold my breath but after about 15 seconds of spraying you have to breathe."

This time around?

Crombie: "I was trying to get everyone to shave their heads for the Australian tour – sort of a perverse anti-hair statement, but that didn't go down too well. Some people have got so little that they're going to hang on to it at any cost."

Finn: "Who's that? Oh, Eddie for one."

Crombie: "Eddie's got a healthy thatch."

"Finn: "No, he's receding badly."

Crombie: "Nigel, the old codge, not a lot left up there."

Finn: "Codge hasn't got much left. It's just you, me and Neil."

Crombie: "The Finns are still pretty dense. There's topiary potential. Everyone's gone past it, I think. There is a certain aspect of pain involved."

Well, that's one idea down the drain like molten toothpaste.

The pair are anxious that they perform for an enthusiastic, noisy crowd on Sunday night.

Crombie: "How are we going to hit those high notes, Tim?"

Er, tights anyone?

Dominion Post.sat 22 march.
Full page on the Enz with great early colour pic.features in the "long weekend" lift out.

no link on dom post website.

Great read - thanks for posting the article!

I found the magazine with the Mental Coats article in a little Korean restaurant on High St in Auckland City on Saturday (so by then it was a week old) and I showed it to my dad who read it while I waited for my takeaway dumplings and kim chee (perfect fuel for a night of dancing to the Enz) and after we left, about 10 minutes, he showed me that he'd stolen it for me. isn't he a good father! I'll try and scan it to put up when I get back to Melbourne.