Stranger Than Fiction

Revised 2019 edition: In the early 1970s, a group of impoverished students formed a rock band in Auckland, New Zealand, and planned their assault on the world’s music charts.
For a decade Split Enz fought to be understood by audiences and music critics who often struggled to accept their madcap on-stage performances and innovative sounds.

Eventually, they found chart success in the UK, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia with hits like I Got You and with best-selling albums such as Mental Notes, Frenzy, True Colours, Waiata/Corroboree and Time and Tide.

At home, they remain New Zealand’s most successful rock band. The band launched the careers of its leader Tim Finn and brother Neil Finn who later formed the hugely-successful Crowded House and joined Fleetwood Mac.

Success had its price for members of Split Enz, and founding bass-player Mike Chunn shares his inside story of the band in Stranger Than Fiction: The Life and Times of Splitz Enz, a searingly honest account of this much-loved group of musicians.