Stranger Than Fiction: The Life and Times of Split Enz

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. But success had its price for members of Split Enz and founding bass-player Mike Chunn shares his inside story of the band in this searingly honest account of the life and times of Split Enz.

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. But success had its price for members of Split Enz and founding bass-player Mike Chunn shares his inside story of the band in this searingly honest account of the life and times of Split Enz.

Mike Chunn has a legendary status within the New Zealand music industry. A founding member of two iconic Kiwi groups, Split Enz and Citizen Band, Chunn is now an accomplished author with titles including Stranger than Fiction, I'm With the Band, The Mechanics of Popular Music, A New Zealand Perspective and Seven Voices - Tales of Madness & Mirth. Chunn has worked at all levels in the music industry, including roles as a record company executive, CEO of the artists body APRA and as the CEO of Play It Strange, a charity that promotes songwriting to young adults.