4. Roxy MusicRoxy Music
In 1973/74 I remember Split Enz opened for Roxy Music in Australia, before I joined the band, and they were big fans and I was a big fan. Phil Manzanera took an interest in Split Enz and ended up producing them, and for me and for them it was one of those times where you think ‘we’ve made it now’. This was a band that we love taking an interest in Split Enz. It’s a slightly naïve thought but it was a period of great excitement.
That album, following on from the Bowie record, had the sophistication of inner city London and just a style about it that I had never encountered. And coming from New Zealand things were refracted through several rose-tinted spectacles at that point. It was a case of expanding worlds for me, moving beyond what I knew of music via The Beatles and singer-songwriters. The production is extraordinary on that record too, it kept coming and going, and the way they used instruments was pretty amazing.
