Twenty years ago, Sam Neill heard through mutual friends I was writing a book about key New Zealand albums (Soundtrack: 118 Great New Zealand Albums, Nelson: Craig Potton, 2007) and it was going to feature a bunch of guest essays. He offered a piece for free if I was interested. Yes, I said. Yes, please. He duly sent it through, and it’s great, drawing parallels between his burgeoning fame after relocating to London and some brash, shiny pop emanating from his distant homeland. This is that essay, and a short bio he tagged on the bottom. Go well, that man. – Grant Smithies

True Colours by Sam Neill

Some records, the best ones, are time machines – portals to another place and another life. True Colours is that for me. Where was I? You might even ask, who was I?

A younger man, certainly, hitting my straps in London. A new girlfriend (blonde), a new car (convertible, albeit modest), and a new album cranked to the max on the Blaupunkt. Split Enz. It was summer; for the first time in my life I had money in the bank, I had work and friends and I was, unbelievably, in the movies. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was probably insufferable, but God it was fun!

And what a soundtrack. There was other stuff in the glove box – I dunno – Eurythmics, Joy Division, Talking Heads, Police, the Cars – fun pop, and good loud, but somehow none of it meant as much or worked as well as Split Enz, and this record.

A friend had sent me the tape – you’ve got to hear this, she wrote. It took a week or two before I put it on. Of course I knew the Enz (not personally, that was later). I’d seen them live on occasion in the past and I liked them a lot, admired them, but I was a little short of being a FAN. And here I was in Europe, not starving like six years previously, but flush. And I didn’t need music that was complex or arch or brainy. I needed something that was full throttle. I needed to dance. I needed a record that felt like I did.

And then I played it. I had to stop my car on the Edgeware Road. What was this? Oh my God, it was wild and joyful, rip-shit-or-bust rock. This was it! More than that it was ours; my wee New Zealand heart swelled with a little reflected pride. And beat at 180 bpm. It stayed that way, I think, all that long summer and into the next.

I play it still and, every time I know that I, that previous person, was right back then. It is a great album – a glorious headlong ride with a band at the height of its powers, fuelled by testosterone and ambition and vivid talent.

Like everything that Split Enz did, it is wracked with contradiction. Above all, I love its recklessness – it is far too fast for safety. But for all the high-octane bravado it is as fearful as a novel by Kafka. ‘Shark Attack’ is an extraordinary screaming terror of a certain kind of predatory female while at the same time has a hint of a thrilled masochism. ‘I Hope I Never’ may be the most beautiful love song ever from our shores, but turns out not to be about love at all, or even a lover, but about a former band member. Oh yes, there was angst in the ranks of this band! (A pale reminder of the outrageous triple rhyme “there was slaughter in the water when I fought her.”)

There are so many strong songs on the album (‘Poor Boy’, ‘I Got You’, ‘What’s The Matter With You’, etc) but more than that is the wild way they are treated – delirium with precision. Witness the mad outros on ‘Nobody Takes Me Seriously’ and ‘I Wouldn’t Dream Of It’.

Here I think you have to take your hat off to Eddie Rayner. Like Garth “Honeydripper” Hudson of The Band, he gives the Enz, and this album, much of its tone and flavour – somewhere between a circus and a spaceship. Likewise to Neil Finn, whose guitar drives the record with force and finesse and whose two songs, particularly ‘I Got You’, are known in the trade as “ball-tearers”.

But above all it is dominated by the ferocious breakneck brilliance of Tim Finn, and its vertiginous dives between arrant self-confidence and despairing self-doubt are as much the man as they are the band.

Years have passed. The blonde didn’t last long. I drive a sensible car now. The friend who sent me the tape died long ago. And London … well, London is a foreign city. Split Enz is history.

But the music survives. Recently I saw the New Zealand Ballet, of all things, choreograph many of these songs at the Regent Theatre in Dunedin. It was sublime: funny, touching, sexy, innocent, knowing and yes, reckless. It was one of the great nights of my life, but I watched it through tears.

Sam Neill’s Top Ten Albums (2006)

Split Enz – True Colours (1980)

Split Enz – Time and Tide (1982) 

Bic Runga – Birds (2005)

Annie Crummer – Shine (2002)

The Muttonbirds – Rain, Steam & Speed (1999)

SJD – Southern Lights (2004) 

The Chills – Heavenly Pop Hits (1994)

Che Fu – The Navigator (2001)

Crowded House – Woodface (1991)

Tim and Neil Finn – Everyone is Here (2004)

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Sam Neill emerged unscathed from Dunedin and now acts, more or less, in movies and television. Produces New Zealand’s best wine: Two Paddocks. Drinks most of it himself. When sober, has been seen involved in politics, particularly pertaining to the environment. Not often sober.