KEY POINTS:
When he wasn't bashing gongs or clanging spoons, Split Enz percussionist Noel Crombie was making the outlandish outfits and props that would define the band as New Zealand's most creative live act. Crombie kept their image evolving, from the flamboyant Vaudeville look of Mental Notes in the mid-70s
to the bold geometric designs of Frenzy in 1979, making three sets of costumes or "cossies" for each of their 10 albums.
Crombie's design approach was more Fred Dagg than Versace, brilliant ad hoc creations and wacky statements cobbled together from headcloth, cotton and whatever materials he could find; to save time sewing the trousers had elastic waists rather than flies.
"It was always a tricky balancing act to knock something up quickly but not have them so shoddy that up close they looked crap," he laughs on the phone from Melbourne on the eve of their New Zealand reunion tour.
It was just as much a balancing act keeping the band happy. As long as the hairspray didn't smell too girly, the band didn't mind him cutting and backcombing their hair into weird shapes. No one flinched at wearing eyeliner and lipstick, either. But even Mike Chunn and Eddie Rayner, who Crombie recalls seeing in drag at a Sherbet gig in London, wouldn't wear a dress on stage. The closest he got was putting Rayner in a pair of culottes known disparagingly as "the hostess gown".
"I'd usually end up taking the one that I thought was closest to the reject and then there'd be this weird sort of cossie envy. We'd put on the outfits for first time and they'd all look at me and say, `You bastard, you got the best one'. So a few times I asked what they wanted to wear. One time Neil [Finn] said `I want shorts' and I made him shorts that he only wore twice. It might have been the fact that I'd given him tights to wear with them."
Below, Crombie explains the inspiration behind some of his favourite designs.
1. THE VAUDEVILLE-MEETS-CIRCUS LOOK, MID-70S
That's harking back to the pretty full-on white pancake base. I've actually got a bit of nose putty on in this shot. We got into doing subtle alterations - getting our eyebrows waxed and just drawing them on. The hairstyles then were about as extreme as they ever were. I did a couple of sets of black and white costumes. I always liked the look of them from a starkness point of view.
2. THE MILITARY LOOK, MID-70S
I mined that vein for a while. That's the influence of the 1700s and military regalia - the pantaloon and waisted-top look. They were all hand-painted.
3. THE MILITARY LOOK LIVE, MID-70S
That's a different set but a similar theme. Mike Chunn has a wacky orange coat on that was inspired by a Beefeaters outfit. The one that Tim's wearing is loosely based on a 1600 or 1700s Chinese infantry uniform. But it was all whacked together in an ad hoc way.
4. THE JIMINY CRICKET OUTFIT, CIRCA 1975
I made it for Robert Gillies, our sax player but I'm at a loss to remember the rest of the set. He was a skinny bugger. Sometimes there were floating cossies that anyone could wear but that wasn't one of them. That was Robert's and he was in and out of the band a couple of times so it didn't have a long life.
5. THE UVS, CIRCA 1977
When we were in London, wide-eyed Kiwis, our image attracted fashion people to us who said, `You've got to go to this shop in Soho, they've got all this theatrical fabric'. It was this funny little Dickensian dive stacked with all this stuff. And it had this fluorescent material you see there, way before fluoro was fashionable. Under the black light it glowed with a neon effect. It's based on classic artists' work. I always liked the sense of something emitting light.
6. THE BLACK, WHITE AND GREYS, CIRCA 1978
That's a very enduring set, everyone liked it. I'd done a lot of hand-painting on the early stuff with fabric dye and I'd found they weren't that durable, especially if you needed to dry-clean. That set was one of the first times I ventured into applique so all the patterns were cut out and stitched on. It wasn't until after I'd done it I realised they caught a bit of light. They were big and bold and stood out with the wealth of stitching. So it was quite a successful technique I used a few times after that.
7. THE 80S LOOK, CIRCA 1980
We did that shoot somewhere in LA, around the True Colours era. It was short-lived, one of three sets that year. It didn't seem like it at the time but looking at it now it was very 80s, the hair and everything. We were at a point where we were heading away from the wildly theatrical style of the early days.
8. THE REUNION ERA, 2006
We did an Aria awards show which led to the Australian tour in a sense that it was the first time we'd been together in quite a while. We basically got a whole lot of op shop suits and shredded them. They had bits coming off, looking like we'd just come out of an explosion. Then when the tour was finalised we had to do a bit of press and and a little live performance so I got the suits and stitched them all back up again. It's kind of like our informal look, not too costumey.
LOWDOWN
Who: Split Enz - Tim Finn, Neil Finn, Eddie Rayner, Noel Crombie and Nigel Griggs.
What: Reunion tour
When & where: Sunday, March 23, Westpac Arena, Christchurch; Tuesday, March 25; TSB Bank Arena, Wellington; Friday, March 28 and Saturday, March 29, Vector Arena. Tickets from Ticketmaster.2
* The Ultimate Split Enz Box Set reviewed, page 9
