Split Enz

'My favourite band. Ever! And certainly the best dressed.' Sam Neill

Split Enz were never designed to fit. Emerging from art school mischief in early-1970s New Zealand, they turned pop into surreal theatre: costume, character and melody colliding in a rock band that refused to behave like one.

At the centre of that vision was Noel Crombie—percussionist, performer and the band's in-house visual architect. Noel shaped Split Enz's look from the inside: the angular suits, the hand-painted faces, the restless, theatrical sense that anything might happen next. Split Enz didn't just sound different, they looked like nothing else.

Years of cult acclaim, shifting line-ups and near misses gave way at last to an unlikely global breakthrough with True Colours in 1980, a record that carried their eccentric vision into the mainstream.

Created with the full participation of the band, this book gathers photographs, costumes, designs and memorabilia alongside new interviews spanning every era of the group by music journalist Michael Dwyer. It traces the songs, the imagery and the peculiar chemistry that made Split Enz singular, and still impossible to imitate.

'Split Enz rejected all of the iconography and mythology of rock'n'roll. They were really a reaction against it.' Neil Finn

'We would be in the dressing room an hour beforehand, getting dressed, doing make-up... It was a completely indivisible unit, ready to go out there together.' Tim Finn

'This wasn't just a band that made music. This was a movement.' Jenny Morris