Neil Finn interviewed by Brian Edwards on "Top o'The Morning" National Radio (NZ)
21 December 1996 - Part 1.
 

[BE: Brian Edwards NF: Neil Finn]

Interview starts with "Weather With You" beginning from "It's the same room..." BE: If you wanted a ready-made screenplay for a movie you could hardly do better than the remarkable story of Neil and Tim Finn. Two New Zealand brothers, both superbly talented musicians, each of whom started their own bands and who, jointly and separately, had the potential to become megastars of the music business. It's a story of cooperation and competition, of being together and drifting apart, of phenomenal highs and dispiriting lows. In the end it's the younger brother Neil who makes it to the top of the international tree with his band Crowded House and two McCartneyesque Top Ten hits, "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong". Does the movie have a happy ending? Can it end at all? Well any one of the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who attended the ENZSO concerts or the more than a hundred thousand Australians, expatriate Kiwis and others who witnessed Crowded House's farewell concert in Sydney might be inclined to say "Don't Dream It's Over". Neil Finn should know and he joins me now. Good morning. NF: Hi. BE: Tell me about that concert. I was actually in Sydney at that time but I didn't get to it. It was a phenomenal occasion. NF: It's a testimony to how much you were not paying attention to the media because there was actually a bit of saturation that weekend especially because we had to postpone what was supposed to be Saturday's concert, because of bad weather, over to Sunday. It was actually our manager, Grant Thomas's idea to mount something big once and then free - was his idea. Rather than embark on a farewell tour which becomes a bit like a nostalgic exercise and a little bit, sort of, stultifying, if that's the right word. And I was not initially into it because it seemed too grand and too big, but he pushed it forward like a bull terrier. He wouldn't let go of it and in the end we were all very grateful to him because what it was was a supremely good ritual for us to all say goodbye to the thing in pretty amazing circumstances and in probably the most spectacular setting in this part of the world. BE: Absolutely phenomenal. So there was money raised from that as well, wasn't there? NF: Yeah. Well the idea was to do it as a concert for the Sydney Children's Hospital. Again we didn't sort of want to cloud the issues of why we were doing our farewell concert. We wanted it to be a genuine opportunity to say goodbye so the idea of a free show seemed good. People have asked how do you make money from a free show [laughs]. BE: I was about to ask you how do you make money from a free show? That's a good question. NF: Well, we had some sponsors. We tried to avoid the more obvious ones but we managed to actually raise quite a bit of money among some sponsors and they got a bit of exposure on site plus there was phone lines open when the show went to air on TV, as it did, and it all actually ended up being round about half a million dollars I think, so it was a very nice result. BE: Half a million dollars for the Children's Hospital - NF: Yeah. BE: - Absolutely stunning really. Let's go right back to the beginning of this story. You told the New Zealand Herald some years ago; "I've just had an instinct since I was 10 that I should be playing music". When did the playing music actually start, or was it all part of the family or what? NF: Ah... well I played... really I was in competition with my brother even back then, because he learnt how to play "Laura's theme" on the piano... BE: Laura's theme...[hums] NF: From "Dr Zhivago" - BE: "What Now My Love" is another one [laughs] NF: Yeah - "What Now My Love"? Same era. BE: Isn't that the same song? NF: Oh I don't know... there's...my brain isn't sort of...doesn't differentiate. BE: "Somewhere My Love". NF: "Somewhere My Love" - that's the one. "What Now My Love" is something like Herb Alpert or something. BE: Yes you're right. NF: And so when he learnt that I felt immediately compelled to learn it too and I was about seven at the time and we had a piano there and I picked out the melody, and realised that actually I could do it reasonably well from ear. So then it was just a race to learn as many popular songs as we could. BE: You entered a talent contest when you were quite young, didn't you? Five, I read somewhere. NF: Well actually I think I might have been in a talent quest at school when I was five. But no, yes, a couple of notable talent quests two years running at Mount Maunganui...and the first year I came third and was beaten by a guy who sang "Quando Quando Quando" ...he was a cabaret performer from Hamilton... BE: Da da da dah da da dah...I know all these songs. This is my era you see. NF: Well unfortunately so do I. I'm not just sure it's just because of that occasion. And the second year I actually won it. And I sang a song and the irony of it didn't occur to me at the time, but I was 13 years old at the time and I was singing a song that was written by Arlo Guthrie called "Coming into Los Angeles", which apparently was about importing cocaine into Los Angeles in the 60s. And I had no idea of course that this was what it meant. BE: [laughs]. No. NF: But nevertheless it won me the talent quest so obviously the judges didn't care. BE: They tell me that you were sort of more or less forced to perform at beach parties and things in your family. NF: Yeah. Well sort of coercion...My uncle George was the main culprit and he was a man who wouldn't take no for an answer and we were the cute little nephews who could actually sing. And he'd drag us out and my party piece was a song called "Terry". Which was again a bit incongruous for a five year old because it was about a girl sort of bemoaning the fact that her motorcycle-riding boyfriend had just been killed in a car accident. So all along I've been singing songs that don't really make sense! But I'm grateful to him because he really cured us of stage fright. But anyway at parties in those days everyone sang, everyone had their item. It was usually the same song and it didn't matter really if people had heard it a hundred times. BE: And your item was? NF: Well that song "Terry". And also Tim and I used to sing "Jamaican Farewell" - that was our little harmony piece. BE: You used to sing with a couple of priests as well, didn't you? NF: Yeah, the Durning priests, yeah. BE: The Durning priests? NF: The Durnings. They were both Scottish priests and they both had very fine voices and sang in beautiful harmony themselves. They were Jesuits and one used to stay with my auntie and one used to stay with us. So every summer holiday they would be part of the carousing and general...they were priests but like most Catholic priests they knew how to party. It was an intriguing mix because we discovered pretty early on that when...if everyone had had a couple of drinks and everyone had started to sing a lot of the barriers came down and kids got away with a lot more, and we could run into the kitchen and grab whatever we liked, and no-one would stop us. So music was a powerful force. BE: Your parents were quite critical listeners though, weren't they? I mean they rated you. You got a rating for how well you sang. NF: I'm traumatised by it to this day [laughs]. BE: Well I can imagine [laughs]. NF: My Dad used to...well he just felt it was only right that we'd spent all this time working on this stuff and that he give it some kind of detailed critique, rather than just a "Oh, sounds good son" y'know. And so he would genuinely sit down and go through and actually pick out his favourites and mark them. I mean he was a very generous marker. Very rarely did anything get less than 7 or 8...it wasn't that - BE: Yes. But no 10s... NF: Oh yeah there were - BE: ...occasional 10s... NF: - numerous 10s. Actually now there's 11s. [laughter] BE: Oh he gives you 11s? NF: Yeah he's gone up to 11s because he realises that he has to keep upping the ante for us or else we'll just think "oh, just another 10". BE: [laughs]. Does he like your music, your father? NF: He has a pretty good appreciation of ...some of it...some of it is probably a little mysterious for him in as far as where it comes from but the more obvious tunes he responds to very well. And my mother too. She knows how to play some of the songs on the piano. She used to learn Split Enz songs and they would all be in the same key and all in the same feel - swing feel. So it was pretty good. She'd do...no matter what the key or the feel of the song was it would all end up as a swing song. BE: Possibility of an album there perhaps? NF: Well, Tim and I have always discussed this. We thought that...I mean Dad has got a great voice but he's not always that tuneful. He's probably listening now, squirming in his seat - [laughter]. BE: So where will you be staying for Christmas then? [more laughter]. NF: - But he's got beautiful tone. He's got a beautiful tone in his voice. In the shower it's like this glorious sonorous sound comes out of the shower when he's in there ...so we thought...a live extravaganza where the whole Finn family can come. And we'll put a shower on stage for Dad and put Mum behind the piano, Tim and I on various things - BE: It's platinum. It's definitely platinum. NF: - It'd be a screamer, wouldn't it? BE: It would go platinum within a week, I would say. NF: Yeah I would say, [it'd] go off. BE: Your careers could be relaunched. The Tim Family - no, not the Tim Family - the Finn Family. NF: [laughs] The Finn Family. BE: That's not a bad title for a group - The Finn Family. NF: Well, it's better than the Von Trapps, I think. BE: [Laughs]. The Finns, yes. Jenny Fenwick [producer] says "Or a sitcom". Anyway, you sort of all went to school together - you and Tim and some of the Split Enz members - you were all at the same school weren't you? NF: Well Tim went to school at Sacred Heart for all his secondary school education, as did Mike Chunn, the original bass player on Split Enz; Eddie Rayner, who was there only for a couple of years. In fact I think he only spent a week in total `cos I think he used to wag school so much. And who else? Oh yeah, Paul Wilkinson who used to be...was the original guitar player. Yeah there was a number of them. And I went for a year and a half and really didn't take to it as much as Tim had - BE: Is this boarding school we're talking about? NF: Boarding school, yeah. BE: You didn't like boarding school? NF: Well I didn't like boarding school much. And I think also to some extent I became aware after a year or so that I was following this kind of path of Tim's and trying to have the same sort of experiences as he did, and also the brothers were relating to me like Tim's little brother and I wanted to carve out my own - BE: Oh, that's tough - NF: Well, sort of. I thought it was good to have my own experiences and so I went back to Te Awamutu and went to a co-ed state school, which I'm really grateful for. BE: Tim was a Marxist in those days, wasn't he? NF: A Marxist? [laughs] BE: Well, I heard he was a Marxist. NF: I think he went on a couple of demonstration marches. I think that's about as good as, as close as it came - BE: I read that he scrawled obscenities on the chapel wall. NF: No, no, no. He used to encourage me to do that. BE: Oh, he encouraged *you* to do that - NF: He'd never do that himself. BE: - he sounds like a Marxist then. [laughter] NF: He was just trying to get me into trouble basically. He actually bought me "The Little Red Schoolbook" - you probably remember it - BE: I do. Alistair Turner. NF: Yeah. The 70s - caused a great deal of controversy. But it was actually quite a reasonably good practical guide for a young teenager. BE: Absolutely. NF: And Tim bought it for me unbeknown to Mum and Dad, or any of the brothers. And I used to...it sort of got me all hot under the collar about certain...civil liberties, which of course, third formers at boarding school don't have any. So it was a bit of a waste of time really. And they discovered it, the brothers, anyway and confiscated it off me, and at that point Tim said [mimics Tim's voice] "Oh go and...write swear words on the chapel wall", which I never did. [laughter] At the time he was going on demonstration marches and discovering his alter ego - BE: What is the age gap between you, by the way? NF: Oh, six years between us. BE: "The Little Red Schoolbook" - there's lots in there about all sorts of things...girls - how did you get on with girls when you were young? NF: I was pretty shy really - BE: Were you? NF: Yeah...I mean I had lots of friends that were girls but I never really bought in to the whole y'know doing the leg work, chatting them up. So I was a bit of a slow starter really...but I wasn't painfully shy. I just...saw all these guys around me having these hero weekends with girls and I just didn't really know - BE: Hero weekends? NF: Well y'know, they'd come back to school...I was saying hero weekends...they'd come back to school and tell you all about it, and it sort of always seemed a bit off to me y'know - the intimate details of somebody's weekend being related on the playing field. So I kind of think it put me off a bit but - BE: - Well probably about 1% of it was true - NF: - Oh I dare say, yes, but at the time you always think it's all true. BE: You do, yes. We've discussed this with other guests - everyone else is getting it except you is what most people think- NF: Yeah, so, no I - BE: - in fact nobody's getting it really. [laughter]. NF: Well there's the odd one possibly. I had a friend in Tauranga who was... when we were in third form he was relating these amazing stories of older women coming over to his house. We all thought he was lying as well, but I actually went to his house once in Tauranga - BE: - and there were all these older women - [laughter] NF: - the time I was there, there was three or four women turned up, y'know ...He was tall for his age and quite mature. He had, y'know, very good stubble on his chin- BE: Is that important? NF: - So I put it all down to that. BE: Stubble, yes. You were probably right - can't go without stubble. NF: Yeah I was a bit...peach fluff variety y'know. [laughter] BE: Your musical tastes might not have done a lot - you were an Elton John fan in those days weren't you- NF: Ah yeah- BE: - was Elton big in those days? NF: Well it was his first and second record- BE: -cool? NF: Well he was enormously cool when he first came out. I remember seeing him at Western Springs [Auckland]. In fact I was at Sacred Heart at the time and I was allowed out for the night [with] Mike Chunn...we went to see him play. And there was plastic chairs at Western Springs... I've never seen that si- before, - oh actually I have seen that since, but not for a while. And that was an amazing concert. It was just a three piece band he had and his first two records I think had just come out...yeah he was very hip in those days. BE: Did Split Enz, did it begin as a school band? Is that how it started? NF: Tim and Mike [Chunn] used to play at Sacred Heart, but it wasn't really Split Enz then...I think the beginning of Split Enz was when Philip Judd and Tim met at university and started to write songs together. That was really the genesis of it. BE: Hmm. And umm, the interesting thing he said about...I'm interested in your relationship with Tim of course. Tim said about you; "Neil was always pretty cool. He knew how to be around older guys. To most people it'd be `Oh God, here comes my younger brother. I've got to look after him for the afternoon'. It wasn't like that". What was the nature of your relationship with him? I mean you said that for a time you sort of followed him around but he seems to have a more positive view of that relationship. NF: Oh no, I think I did very well because I've since obviously discovered a lot of sibling relationships where the younger brother got beaten up. And I in fact never got beaten up by Tim. In fact I saved him from a beating once with a tennis racket. BE: Oh? Tell me about that. NF: Well he was getting done on the playground at the Saint Pat's Convent, and he was not faring too well. I happened to have a tennis racket in my hand, so I just went and whacked the guy round the head and he released his grip on Tim and we got away. So maybe if Tim was... aware of that and didn't beat me up as a result so...But he was always very good to me. In fact he used to fill myself and my friends with all these dreams of how great we could be. And he'd come in to the room and say [mimics Tim's voice] "You guys can do anything you want to do", and do these motivational speeches to us, which were quite effective at the time... used to fire us up. And he of course later on applied some psychological significance to it where he said he had to dominate me, he had to [laughs] make me idolise him. But I think he was just being facetious. In fact I did really I suppose. He was six years older and everything he was doing seemed very glamorous. He was in Auckland at university and doing all these amazing things - BE: But you weren't originally a member of Split Enz. You joined a bit later didn't you? NF: No, well I was too young. I was only 14 when the band started. As it was I got the call when I was 18 and I was very young to be plucked out of Auckland and taken across to England. BE: Yes, Split Enz was in London when you got the call, wasn't it? NF: Yeah. BE: What was that all about? Why did they need you? Why did they want you? NF: Well Phil Judd left during an American tour. He probably had the lowest threshold of tolerance for the shenanigans of being in a band. And he left during an American tour and Tim...I think Mike Chunn had just been home and seen me do a show with his brother in fact, here in Auckland. And he thought, well he's raw, can't play the electric guitar but he's got some potential. So they discussed it and Tim rang me up. I didn't immediately say yes but I rang back five minutes later. [laughter] BE: This was the time of the weird hairdos and the crazy outfits and everything else presumably. What was your feeling about that? Were you comfortable with it? NF: Well it seemed perfectly natural to me because I'd seen it all evolve. And Noel Crombie who'd designed the costumes and in a way had really steered the band into that look was such a genuine eccentric and in a wonderful manner, that I didn't question it at all. I thought this is just another part of their beautiful originality and eccentricity, which I loved. Of course when the band got to England it started to become the thing that everyone was talking about, to the detriment of the music. And also there wasn't a history to it so no one had seen it evolve. They thought it was a giant gimmick. BE: Split Enz was really in trouble when you were called over to London wasn't it? They were going through a very difficult time. NF: Well certainly business-wise. We'd lost management and we didn't have a record company for a time and we were banging our heads against a brick wall. However live the band did have a very strong following. We couldn't translate it into record sales. But y'know, when I look back now when I was getting on to stage with Split Enz in those days...because I couldn't play I just spent my time leaping around like an idiot with my mouth open the whole time and falling over, `cos I thought that sort of brought me into...that was what Split Enz was. Of course I look back now and think I should have just stood there and played y'know. BE: Well you're being very modest, because you were of course writing songs, and had been writing songs for some time. Of that period Tim has said "Basically he saved my arse" he told the [New Zealand] Listener, this year actually. And in fact that's true. You wrote the song "I Got You" that was to set Split Enz on its road to international fame really. NF: Well, yeah, y'know we both did each other some favours in those times. He brought in a pretty raw recruit at the age of 18, and I'm very grateful for that pretty big leg-up. I would have been a musician anyway but it certainly was a good way to start. And yeah maybe - the songs that I was writing at the time were very simple, and as it turned out very hooky and they did the job. But I think it reflected also a move in Split Enz to more simple kind of music. We were kind of a bit convoluted and a bit over-complicated in those days, and it wasn't really helping connect with people. So we simplified, and stripped it all back, and simplified the look and everything and I think it helped a lot. Teil 2 des Interviews...