Oct 12, 2026 · 13 min · 8 segments
Member for Split Enz, Noel Crombie & Co-Author of *Split Enz: An Aventure in Music & Design*, Michael Dwyer joined Leith Forrest on FIVEAA. Listen live on the…
Noel CrombieGuest
Leith ForrestHost
W- well, what makes him such a genius when you look at the visual architect as he's been described about this? What is it that you, from all your writing and work have, have noticed?
I can only imagine how isolated you would've felt growing up as an artist in Auckland in the 1960s.
And I think that what that gave Noel and s- other founders of the band, Rob Gillies and, and, and Phil Judd, I think it sort of gave them carte blanche to be whatever they wanted to be.
And what surprised me when I first started talking to Noel was I was asking those sort of questions, you know, "So where did this come? Where did that come from?" And the answer was always pretty much, "I don't know.
We just wanted to do something different." There's an early chapter in the book where Noel talks about just the, uh, the Clear Pacific light, as they call it, of New Zealand.
And it sort of struck me that it was all just grounded in the surroundings that, that he found himself in, and this sort of wide-open slate of possibility.
So there was no kind of, you know, we can identify things, you know, I thought he was gonna talk about, you know, various art movements and stuff, which obviously did filter into his sensibility.
But it was really just an active imagination and, and the permission that, that, that environment gave to them to be whatever they wanted to be.
W- well, what makes him such a genius when you look at the visual architect as he's been described about this? What is it that you, from all your writing and work have, have noticed?
I can only imagine how isolated you would've felt growing up as an artist in Auckland in the 1960s.
And I think that what that gave Noel and s- other founders of the band, Rob Gillies and, and, and Phil Judd, I think it sort of gave them carte blanche to be whatever they wanted to be.
And what surprised me when I first started talking to Noel was I was asking those sort of questions, you know, "So where did this come? Where did that come from?" And the answer was always pretty much, "I don't know.
We just wanted to do something different." There's an early chapter in the book where Noel talks about just the, uh, the Clear Pacific light, as they call it, of New Zealand.
And it sort of struck me that it was all just grounded in the surroundings that, that he found himself in, and this sort of wide-open slate of possibility.
So there was no kind of, you know, we can identify things, you know, I thought he was gonna talk about, you know, various art movements and stuff, which obviously did filter into his sensibility.
But it was really just an active imagination and, and the permission that, that, that environment gave to them to be whatever they wanted to be.
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