Split Enz / Phil Manzanera: The SDE Interview

Split Enz’s Eddie Rayner joins Second Thoughts’ producer Phil Manzanera for a chat with SDE

New Zealand art-rockers Split Enz’s ground-breaking 1975 debut album, Mental Notes, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and has been reissued, remastered and remixed for the first in a new series of the band’s archive releases.

ENZyclopedia Volumes One & Two is a deluxe 5CD box set that’s also available as a 3LP version and an SDE exclusive blu-ray edition, featuring a Dolby Atmos Mix.

CD1 of the box set features a 2025 remaster by Phil Kinrade at AIR Studios, while disc two has a brand-new remix of Second Thoughts by Split Enz keyboard player, Eddie Rayner – Second Thoughts was produced by Roxy Music’s guitarist, Phil Manzanera and was Split Enz’s first album release in Europe and North America, but their second in Australia and New Zealand, where Mental Notes was actually their debut (slightly confusingly, Second Thoughts was only known by that name in Australia and New Zealand and was simply called Mental Notes everywhere else).

CD3 has a remastered version of the original mix of Second Thoughts, while the penultimate disc collects the band’s earliest singles and rare tracks from their formative years. Disc five, Wide Angle Enz, features unreleased and rare material, including never-before-heard live recordings from the 1975 Ormond Hall show in Melbourne, and rough mixes from the Second Thoughts sessions, recently uncovered in the Chrysalis archives.

In 1975/76, Split Enz were Tim Finn (vocals, piano), Phil Judd (vocals, guitars, mandolin), Eddie Rayner (keyboards), Mike Chunn (bass), Emlyn Crowther (drums), Noel Crombie (percussion), Wally Wilkinson – lead guitar on Mental Notes  – and Robert Gillies, who played saxophone and trumpet on Second Thoughts. Neil Finn joined in 1977.

SDE spoke to Rayner and Manzanera about the new box set and got them to share some of their memories of making Second Thoughts in London, at Island Records’ Basing Street Studios.

SDE: The box set celebrates the 50th anniversary of Split Enz’s debut album – does it feel like 50 years?

Eddie Rayner: It does – it feels like an absolute eternity, but it all flooded back when I revisited it. When I listened to the old two-inch multitrack tapes – the original versions from Sydney in 1975 – I could’ve been right there. I’m the same person and it feels like everyone else is the same person they were then.

In the sleeve notes for the box set, you say that when you went back and listened to the original 1976 mixes of Second Thoughts, you didn’t really need to change them because they felt right, but then you were sifting through the digital transfers from the Chrysalis archives and curiosity got the better of you, so you started playing around with them…

Eddie: I was given the opportunity to do it, and by virtue of the fact that Chrysalis sent me all the files… they did a great job of digitally sending me all the stuff that they had on multitrack.

It was just sitting there, and I wasn’t really going to do anything with it, because I thought Second Thoughts was so well recorded and well mixed by Phil Manzanera and Rhett Davies. I didn’t really think it needed changing, but I had a play, one thing led to another, and then the next minute, I’d finished remixing the whole album. Whether it’s any better… I guess the trainspotters out there will let me know.

If it had never seen the light of day, it wouldn’t have worried me – it was just me doing what I do. I spend all day, every day, in my studio, mixing, whether it’s for Split Enz or other people.

Chrysalis liked the mixes – they do sound good, but they’re not a lot different. In a way, it’s like owning a classic car – you look after it, but then every 20, 30 or 40 years it needs a complete redo, rather than just a bit of spit and polish. When you do a remix, it’s like pulling it down to the bare metal and rebuilding it, and that’s sort of what I did with the mixes.

You’ve brought out Noel Crombie’s percussion more…

Eddie: Noel’s setup was notoriously difficult to mic up because there were so many aspects to it – so many individual instruments – so I guess it would’ve been a nightmare for the mixing engineer to bring out each one.

I felt Noel’s bits were sort of underutilised – he plays percussion like nobody else you know, and he colours in every song. I felt like he deserved better acknowledgement for his work, so I used whatever I could find from him to give him a bit of a guernsey.

Was it a daunting task remixing Second Thoughts?

Eddie: The task itself was OK, but the most daunting thing was telling the individual members of the band that I’d been remixing it and then just seeing their looks of total disdain and horror… particularly the drummer, who said, ‘No – why? Just don’t touch it!’ But he’s happy…

Noel must’ve been happy…

Eddie: He doesn’t say much, but he’ll let you know if he’s unhappy. He’s an affable and easy-going sort of character.

When Split Enz set out to make their first album, what kind of record did you intend it to be?

Eddie: I think we just wanted to capture the brilliance that we thought we had. We were young and naive – wet behind the ears – but there was a lot of things about the band that were great – particularly the writing.

We were still finding our way as players. I rated myself, along with the drummer, as being proper musicians, because we’d been playing prog rock – your trademark is you can play things faster and more complex than anybody else in the band… and that’s what it was like with Split Enz, but they were all good musicians.

It wasn’t until I remixed Second Thoughts that I realised how great they really all were – and they were so tasteful and inventive. Back in ’75, I thought they were good, and I loved the music and being in the band, but I just didn’t rate them as musicians. I didn’t think they were bad, just alright, you know… So, hey, you live and learn…

We had to leave New Zealand to be able to play the number of gigs we needed to play to become a good band – it takes hundreds of gigs for you to hit your straps, and to be able to compete with the great bands of the world.

With that first record [Mental Notes], we recorded it, and it was all fine – we thought we’d done a good job – but once we received the final mixes, Tim and I were just not that happy with them. We thought they didn’t really match the power or the feeling that we used to get on stage – we felt it was a little bit limp compared to how we thought we sounded. Whether or not we did sound like that was another thing, but that’s why we decided to go to England – once Phil Manzanera asked us.

[To Phil Manzanera]: When you produced Second Thoughts, you were impressed by how together and accomplished the band were with their arrangements, but you didn’t appreciate how long they’d been gigging…

Phil Manzanera: They’d been going for four years, so by the time they came to England, they had played all those tracks quite a few times, so no wonder they were bloody good! They were incredibly good musicians, and I hadn’t really appreciated how fantastic they were.

When I went to hear the Dolby Atmos version at Dolby in Soho Square recently, I thought ‘Wow – they’re incredible! Did I produce that?’ It’s so bloody good, I couldn’t believe it!’

What attracted you to Split Enz in the first place? Was it their off-the-wall look and feel, and their mix of styles?

Phil: Yeah – it’s got everything, and it’s like going on a magical mystery music tour. When I listen to it now, you’ve got whimsical lyrics, like Ray Davies, you’ve got psychedelia, you’ve got prog, you’ve got The Beatles – it’s a mixture of stuff.

Interesting bands are made up of people who all have certain musical things in common but who have different interests, so what you get is a strange brew, to quote Cream. You won’t hear it anywhere else, and you won’t hear it again.

Listening back now and trying to make sense of it, it’s a unique album. Even though there are versions of some of the tracks on Mental Notes, the big difference [on Second Thoughts] is you’ve got Robert Gillies on brass, which brings out the Beatlesy influence a lot – there was a richer sound palette to work with.

So, what was your production approach?

Phil: It was from the George Martin school of production – and I’d learnt that from Chris Thomas, who worked with George Martin.

You’re playing together in a room, doing backing tracks and then overdubbing bits, and making sure everyone’s parts are great and in tune. You’re picking a take – it’s not like using Pro Tools where you can do hundreds and chop them all up… I don’t remember chopping any different takes together…

I applied what I had learnt making all the Roxy albums – working with that Abbey Road method and the quality of microphone placement. It’s an old-fashioned way of producing, but you had to make sure that you captured a performance.

It’s different when you’ve got songs that are already written and they’ve been performed, as opposed to building up tracks in the studio that haven’t really been written properly, or when you don’t have any idea of where you’re going.

We started from finished stuff, so my job was not to interfere, but to try and make Split Enz come to life on record, sonically, in the best way that was available at that time.

[To Eddie]: How was it when you arrived in London for the first time to make the album with Phil?

Eddie: It was like coming home – our affiliation with England and that part of the world. I guess it was deep in our DNA. When we went to England, the National Geographic magazine was vindicated… whereas when we went to America for the first time, it was completely the opposite – it was nothing like I’d pictured it being.

You made the album at the Island Records studio in Basing Street, Notting Hill – while you were there, Bob Marley and The Wailers were making Exodus in the downstairs studio…

Eddie: Yeah – we could hear the bass. It was bleeding through from downstairs onto all our tapes. But recording the album was a great experience and it was all new to us and very high tech – a dream come true.

Phil was somebody that we looked up to musically, and he was a very good set of ears, and a very calming influence. There were certain members of the band, who shall go unnamed, who tended to get a bit worked up and a little bit nervous about recording…

Phil: They pitched up. I was 24 – I’d worked on two Eno albums, and Bryan Ferry and Andy Mackay’s solo albums… I had quite a lot of chops, and I’d learnt so much from Chris Thomas and from working with Eno… I thought ‘Let’s do it!’

So, we went to my safe place, which was Basing Street, and I used Rhett Davies, the same engineer that I’d used on my solo albums and with Eno – he’d been promoted from a tape op to an engineer. He’s worked with Roxy and he’s still working with Bryan Ferry.

We went for a rehearsal in Brewery Road – I recorded it on my cassette player – this little Pioneer stereo thing I had – and I still have the recording of it. I discovered it amongst all the junk in my so-called memorabilia archive, so I had it digitised a few years ago, and I sent it to Tim and Eddie because it was extraordinarily good.

I was pleased that at the age of 24, I could spot talent, and I was very happy to be associated with them. I’ve had an ongoing relationship with Neil, Tim and Eddie over the years – they are all incredibly talented. It will be nice for some new people to listen to Split Enz and to get their reaction.

Those early Split Enz albums still stand up now – there are very inventive, with a mix of rock and pop and some weird, quirky and experimental stuff…

Eddie: Yeah – I think of it as being like kids in a sweet shop or playing with a chemistry set. We were always very open. That was one of the things I loved about Split Enz in the early days – everybody was very encouraging of everybody else, and the wilder the better… When it came to things like my synthesizers, I was always encouraged to make the wildest sounds and do the most off-the-wall stuff I could. That was our kind of mantra with everything we ever did, and in terms of how we looked and dressed, and even our mannerisms. We sort of had our own little culture and it was quite elitist.

Looking back now, how do you feel about some of those costumes you wore?

Eddie: I mean Noel…. really? I hate to think what he’s going to come up with for the gigs we’re doing next year. One of the things I’ve learned is that as you get older, you start to look silly in clothing that isn’t becoming of your age. Noel’s got his work cut out, but he’ll definitely come up with something…

I remember when we first started playing around London, and we went to our digs in the King’s Road, there were punks everywhere, and mods and rockers. They were quite taken by the way we looked, but they were very suspicious of us.

When we played at Imperial College, all the punks were there. Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux were in the front row, and they were checking us out. I don’t know whether they liked us or hated us… They might’ve liked bits of us, like our hairstyles, which were pretty extreme…

Noel used to do our haircuts – we used to call him the Paekākāriki Butcher… Paekākāriki is a town near Wellington. His haircuts were notoriously over the top, but we didn’t care – we’d walk around with them in broad daylight…

Phil: We were entering the full Sex Pistols punk mode, with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood and that kind of image, which couldn’t be further away from what Split Enz were wearing… I went to the [Split Enz] gigs in the pubs… The timing wasn’t brilliant – if the whole thing had happened three years earlier, maybe they’d have been a lot more successful in England…

I introduced them to my friends, who became their friends – Eno popped in and they met Andy Mackay. There was a club called Zanzibar that was difficult to get into – lots of Roxy people went there, and the fashion designers…

Split Enz felt plugged in, but, ultimately, they hoped, that, naively, by coming to London and having that association with Roxy, it was going to instantly make them famous, but it doesn’t work like that. They didn’t have a single to get on Top of the Pops – if you had that, you were 90% of the way there. With Roxy, we had ‘Virginia Plain’ and it worked – we were on Top of the Pops and boom! Timing is everything – that’s why it took a bit longer for Split Enz to become big.

Split Enz were a difficult band to pigeonhole – they had their own sound, but also elements of art rock and prog, like Genesis, 10cc and Queen…

Eddie: One of the words that was bandied around a lot was ‘mental’ – we used to say, ‘Oh, that’s really mental…’ These days it’s used by everybody all the time, but back then we used to say it – we just wanted everything to be ‘mental.’

It wasn’t meant to be disparaging of people who were intellectually challenged – it was just to be out there and not follow trends. We just tried to be ourselves and create our own style – and it was fun.

There are more Split Enz box sets planned, aren’t there?

Eddie: There’s probably going to be another two, three or four coming out as part of the overall ENZyclopedia. This is the first one and there’s not a huge amount of bonus material because back then we hadn’t done much recording – there wasn’t a lot of old material lying around. In the other box sets, there will be a lot of bonus material and live stuff that no one’s heard before.

And you’re reforming to play your first gigs since 2009 next year – there are shows in New Zealand and Australia…

Eddie: Yeah – I’ve gotta learn all those songs again and programme them up.

Do you think Split Enz will play in the UK again?

Eddie: It may happen – we’re talking about it.

Phil: I think it would be fabulous – they’ve got loads of hits now, and they could throw in some of their solo things, which a lot of the fans know. Plus, there’s the songs Tim and Finn wrote for Crowded House… You’ve got wall-to-wall fun! I think it would be a winner, and I hope they come to London.

So, what else are you up to?

Eddie: Tim and I have a project called Forenzics – Chrysalis are going to release our second record early next year, so that’ll be good. The thing about Forenzics is that it’s delving back into our old Split Enz material, taking snippets from it and reforging them – those snippets that we felt were maybe not capitalised on enough. They were overlooked as good pieces of music, so we’re turning them into new songs. We’ve done two albums and I think they’re great – I’m really proud of them.

I also have a band called Double Life – and we’ve done a lot of stuff, which is up online. Tim writes lyrics for us as well. We’re always working, but [playing] live is hard – we’ve chosen to come and live back here in New Zealand, but it’s a very small place and there’s not a lot of opportunity to play live here.

[To Phil]: Are you working on new material?

Phil: I’m always busy. I’m doing a new album with Quiet Sun – the band I had before Roxy. It’s 90% done and it will be out next year. We’re hoping to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the longest time between a first and second album – 51 years!

And in September this year, you released a new live album with Andy Mackay – AM PM Soho Live…

Phil: Yes – it’s from an extraordinary 90 percent improvised event. We did three nights at a screening theatre in Soho. There was a lot of jeopardy – I had no idea what it was going to be like, and I didn’t want to do it! Andy forced me – and I said that I could always blame him… But the reviews were fantastic… It’s what I call ‘avant-rock’, and when I answered the ad to join Roxy, which I still have, it said: ‘Avant-rock group…’

I’d forgotten all about that for ages, and I was thinking, ‘What the hell is avant-rock?’ I realised that what me and Andy were doing was returning to our original mission statement for Roxy, which was to be an avant-rock group.

[To Eddie]: You played on Paul McCartney’s 1986 album, Press to Play. How did that come about? Had he been to see Split Enz play live?

Eddie: I think so – he was in and out of AIR in London when we were recording our album Dizrythmia. So, he was aware of us, and Hugh Padgham was producing his record. I’ve done a lot of work with Hugh – we first met in ’77, when he was the assistant engineer on the [Split Enz] Frenzy album. He suggested me to Paul – I guess he needed a keyboard player. So, I hopped on a plane and stayed for a few weeks…

And you got to play with Pete Townshend and Phil Collins on that record…

Eddie: Yes – I did. And Eric Stewart and Carlos Alomar.

How was it?

Eddie: It was daunting, but it was fun – I didn’t have anything to lose. I’d just been working on all Crowded House’s demos – ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’, ‘World Where You Live’… all those amazing songs from their first record.

I’d been demoing a lot of them at my studio, with Neil Finn, and he had been out shopping them around, so I took them over and played them to Paul, who I think was mightily impressed. It wasn’t a big job for me, but it was an amazing experience playing with those musicians.

Thanks to Eddie Rayner and Phil Manzanera, who were talking to Sean Hannam for SDE.

ENZyclopedia Volumes 1 & 2 on SDE exclusive blu-ray, and the other formats, is out now, via Chrysalis. Phil and Andy’s AM PM Soho Live is also available now out via Expression Records.

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