Center Stage 2

Neil Finn interviewed by Brian Edwards on "Top o'The Morning" National Radio (NZ)
21 December 1996 - Part 2.
 

[BE: Brian Edwards NF: Neil Finn]

BE: Split Enz. The name suggests a New Zealand band  obviously. Is that critical to Split Enz? Was that critical to its success? Was there something fundamentally New Zealand to  the band, or not? NF: It's a hard one for me to see because I was so close to it. But I think there was some unique New Zealand qualities  - I would say even particularly in the early days. "Mental Notes", the first Split Enz album has moments which to me  are very evocative of New Zealand landscape. The people, the  angst underneath - BE: The angst? NF: Well there's quite a bit of angst, within Phil Judd as a writer. He was a pretty angst-ridden teenager and young  adult. He was writing songs like "Under the Wheel" which was based on a Herman Hess book "Beneath the Wheel"  and it finished with "Death, glorious death is just another appointment to keep" which is a pretty y'know...I guess  at the age of 19 people are writing those sort of things. BE: Of course. But that angst you're suggesting is a New Zealand characteristic in some way, or was. NF: I think there still is a kind of unsettledness underneath the surface. We don't quite know who we are yet and  we're a long way away from the culture we've grown up with, which is the British culture. I think we discover at some point or  other that it's pretty hard to reconcile being British with where we are. I think that creates a certain unease. BE: Interesting, because Peter Beck, I don't know  if heard him, he was my guest earlier in the programme this morning, was saying that he thinks that we've become very focused in New  Zealand. That we're ahead of the play, ahead of the game in terms  of social reform and where we are compared with many other countries  I don't know whether you feel that or not. NF: Social reform...? BE: Well, in a whole variety of areas - homosexual law reform, and censorship and all those sorts of things. Curiously  enough this once Victorian society is now very much at the forefront. NF: Yeah. Well it's a country. I think in a way we're  fortunate compared to Australia. And I've lived in Australia for a long period of time. In the sense that between Maori and...we've  got two very strong cultures co-existing and at times there's  a great deal of conflict. But I think it's a dynamic thing every day for people. There's very few New Zealanders who don't encounter  Maoris every day and vice versa, and therefore it gets dealt with. In Australia, I mean, you don't see Aboriginals in the cities at all, and even if people are of a so-called liberal persuasion and they might sympathise with Aboriginal issues, they don't think about them because they don't see them. I mean that's just one aspect of New Zealand. I think New Zealand's  a pretty interesting mix and I think there's a lot of tolerance  here despite the fact it's a very conservative country. I think there's a lot more tolerance of eccentrics. When people like Sam Hunt is embraced as a national icon, and when his dog dies  it's front page news [laughs]. I don't' think there's any other  countries in the world that you could do that. But I'm not sure we've sorted it all out her yet. It seems like people are a bit  confused about our culture and about our arts and our music.  Certainly music, no one knows where to put it here and there's  not much support for it outside of the actual public. BE: What do you mean "there's not much support"? What do you mean "no one knows where to put it and there's not much support for it"? Are you talking about quotas, or funding or what? NF: No, no I'm not talking about quotas because I  don't believe in quotas. But I think there's a pitiful lack of New Zealand music on the radio in New Zealand generally here.  I think people are nervous of it, and it's as bad as it's ever been, which is amazing to me because there's more bands and more music being made...the figures, and I don't know, I'll bet you  they've actually improved since this figure started to be broadcast, but it was up till about a year ago there was only about only about 3% of local content on the radio here, which is a pitiful statistic. So I sort of equate that with, people don't know...they're not looking towards New Zealand music to define the landscape or to define the culture really. We're still borrowing very heavily from the rest of the world. BE: So you obviously don't believe that market forces  will take care of this. I mean the argument could be put forward that if people want to hear New Zealand music radio stations will play it. NF: Well I don't put all the blame on radio stations because I think that they are just running a business. But I think public broadcasting has got a place and I think you're  on a - we're on a public broadcasting station here which most of the listeners would defend passionately staying on the air.  I think there's a big gap for a younger New Zealand audience for the same kind of thing. And I think that would expose a lot  of New Zealand music without the risk of commercial...I mean  I don't think it's a risk anyway but I think naturally people  go for the lowest common denominator and are naturally conservative when it comes to money. I think in a lot of areas market forces  do create good products, but broadcasting - there's an obligation to broaden people's horizons but also to represent the country. Same in TV, TV's chronic here at the moment, I think. BE: Well it's worse in Australia. NF: It's worse in Australia? BE: I think so. NF: Well SBS and ABC I would disagree with. BE: I agree, you do have SBS. Mind you SBS is right  at the other end of the scale. That's heavy, heavy stuff. [mock European accent] "The next programme will be on Latvian  veaving..."- NF: There's great stuff on SBS! There's fantastic  stuff! BE: -"and I'm vetting my knickers vith enthusiasm  for this programme". SBS is a little bit like that. NF: Some of it's a bit sort of uninteresting. But  there are some great things on there as well and there's just a lack of that kind exposure for good documentaries. Anyway,  it's my pet peeve at the moment. BE: No, I'm with you. I'm a strong believer that we  should have at least a semi-commercial TV1 and we should sell off TV2. That's been my belief for a long time. NF: Well I'd go along with that. I think Winston [Peters;  recently elected Deputy Prime Minister] probably thinks like that too. I don't know if he's going to do anything about it. BE: I'm not saying anything. [laughter] Now I'm talking  to Neil Finn if you've just joined us. So what happened to Split Enz then. You broke up in what 1984. What was the reason for that? NF: Well Tim left first. And he at the time had just been in Split Enz for 12 years and needed to get away from it. It had been the best part of his young life. And he fell in love, and then at the end I had the choice then of saying well do I  continue Split Enz on without Tim and try...with all the baggage  of the past, and try and redefine it, or do I start afresh. And  it seemed obvious in the end. Starting afresh gave me more options...y'know more of a sense of adventure with the whole thing. BE: And out of the ashes of Split Enz came Crowded House... [technical difficulties - question about phenomenal  success in America] - which Split Enz never did. What was the reason for that, I wonder? NF: Many reasons, as there always are. It sometimes  seems when you have success that the stars line up and you just  suddenly get a break. But what it is is that you've put in quite a degree of work and you're on the spot and you're available when opportunities present themselves. And all of a sudden a few fortuitous events happen and you happen to be in the right place because you've been working. And all these things you've done start to stack up. So I don't really believe in fate or fortune. I believe that you make your own. And in those days we worked very hard on America. We went there a lot. We did all  these great busking shows where we stripped down to what is now called unplugged I suppose. Because we couldn't get gigs anywhere  else we went around all these restaurants and they invited people. And we played a seafood restaurant in Seattle, an Indian restaurant  in New York, a Japanese restaurant in LA, and they invited all these various media. And they really went off in a big way. They  were very exciting nights and I think that was the catalyst for some of it. Look, there's many, many reasons [laughs]. I don't know half of them probably because there's all sorts of stuff goes on behind the scenes in America... BE: For quite a major part of your Crowded House days  you lived in Melbourne. I think for about 10 years. Was that necessary - to work from there, to have that as a base? Why was  it not possible to come back to New Zealand? NF: Well, I don't know. We'd decided to move to Melbourne  because our record company was based there - Mushroom Records. We had a manager that was also based in Melbourne and Australia  has traditionally had a larger industry with more support, more  of a network. It's still small compared to the rest of the world  and in many ways we probably should have lived in London or LA. BE: What did you miss most about not being in New  Zealand? NF: We were here quite regularly so we got a dose  of New Zealand fairly often. But I mean the landscape really  and the people's attitude. I find myself I feel really comfortable here. I'm a New Zealander and I feel comfortable relating to other New Zealanders, more so than Australians. And the landscape  I missed and really the catalyst for coming back was doing an  album at Kare Kare and I was there for two months, a lot longer than I normally visited New Zealand. And I just got totally drawn  into it again, and my wife had the same reaction so that's what drew us back. Melbourne didn't have much advantage over New Zealand really and it was kind of just coincidence that we ended up there. BE: You have this interesting situation then where Crowded House just has this phenomenal degree of success and in a sense Tim is in the background a bit there. Did you feel guilty about that? About your relative success compared to your brother? NF: Oh yeah, I had my twangs of guilt about all of the band in a way, all of Split Enz really, because I felt we'd  done a lot of work and it probably was our due at the time. So it took a little bit of the shine off the American success. I  do tend to dwell on these things. And I was conscious of how  Tim would be feeling about it and y'know as it turned out we sorted it out pretty quick- early on. BE: How was he feeling? I mean he must have felt a bit jealous. I mean I would have thought that would be just absolutely natural. NF: Well I think he did. He's admitted that he did at the time. But we kind of dealt with it quite well. We didn't...we  both sort of knew what was going on. I gave him a call and suggested that he came out on the road with us in America when the record was going off and he came over and did a few shows with us. We  jumped up and jammed and I think it really helped to y'know get  it settled in his mind to be there. And rather than watching  from a distance. BE: You did an album together and even with the Finns  didn't you? Though wasn't that just the two of you? NF: Well, this is recently, Tim and I did an album together. We had done quite a bit of stuff even throughout the  Split En- Crowded House thing. I get so confused these days, I don't know what band I'm in. Or not in. BE: Are you in a band at all? NF: Not now, no [laughter]. But I'm still part of  all these entities. Y'know there's ENZSO's bubbling away, there's  Finn brothers, there's Split Enz, there's Crowded House. I get  very confused. People bring records along and I forget which  one it is y'know. Umm, so...what was I talking about? Now I've  lost my train of thought. BE: We were talking about whether Tim might have had a degree of jealousy about your success. NF: Oh yeah. Well I mean I think there was a bit there,  but we sort of dealt with it and talked about it. Y'know we've  heard some amazing stories about sibling rivalry that make us  realise that we've probably got a pretty reasonable degree of  rationalism about the whole thing. There was one story about brothers in South America where they were both in the same band and one of them left. They had an argument - one of them left  and the band went on to become massively successful and the other brother that had left could not deal with it at all and threw himself out of a window. Tried to commit suicide, was unsuccessful however and ended up in a hospital bed for three years [laughs]. It just went on. I can't remember the end of it now but it was...it just went on and on, and then he tried to stop the other brother  from working and the other brother felt so guilty about...I think we're really dealing with it quite well y'know. We don't really need analysis at this point I don't think. BE: How did you deal with the enormous fame that you suddenly attracted. I think on the Finn album there's a track  called "Fame Is" - "in your blood" I think it says. How did you cope with all of that? Was it good, is it  good to be enormously famous, especially in the pop world? NF: Well I think I've always stepped back from embracing it as a lifestyle. There's people out there who enjoy flitting around the nightclubs with beautiful models on their arms and then the Sunday papers get interested in you, and you live your life in a fairly public sphere. I've kind of avoided that like  the plague. I sort of hate all that part of it. But I'm not resentful  or in any way angry about having a profile `cos I think it's obviously the proof that things have gone well. There's a lot  of people fighting it out there I think. Ideally I'd like to  be quite anonymous. I really don't crave much of a profile here in New Zealand. I don't want to be a celebrity. I don't want  to turn up at the Christmas in the Park and be waving a tambourine and singing Christmas carols particularly. That's not what I'd like to be doing. But I'd just like to make sure, and it's very  hard, but as time goes on, that every time anybody sees me I'm  actually giving them some good entertainment, rather than just being Neil Finn. BE: Yes. And as New Zealanders of course we have an  ambivalent attitude to this sort of success, don't we? I mean  the Tall Poppy Syndrome still really is alive and well in New  Zealand it seems to me. NF: Sort of. It's worse in Australia I think. BE: Is it? NF: Yeah. BE: How does that express itself? NF: Well there was a classic example over there of a band called INXS who had massive international success and  then they went off the rails a little bit and looked like they  were getting up themselves. They were shut down by the media...launched this huge kind of anti-INXS campaign and it was amazing to watch.  They did a free show, a charity show in Sydney and it fell apart  and didn't work out very well, and they were just absolutely  massacred for it. I think in New Zealand there's fewer people out there doing it internationally and so those that do...people  respond to quite well. I think the main thing is here is that if anybody's going to be making too much of it themselves then they're going to be put in their place. But as long as people show a reasonable degree of humility [laughs] then New Zealanders  are pretty cool about it. And I find anyway being recognised a lot, as I have been recently since this Crowded House concert  was aired, it always goes according to how much TV you've had  recently. But, that people are just very relaxed and no one gets over excited. They go "Oh, great record mate" or "y'know, good concert" and I quite like it. It feels like I know a lot of people. BE: Your image is very clean isn't it really? I mean really there's a magazine that somebody keeps sending us here at Top o'The Morning. It's called Who, it's an Australian magazine. It's full of all this scandalous stuff about people, including of course an awful lot of people in the pop rock line. I suspect  your name will never appear in there - at least not in that connection. NF: Well we've just had a story in there actually. BE: Oh did you? What was that about? NF: But it wasn't anything particularly outrageous.  They interviewed us, so it was just us talking about ourselves. Umm, look I mean people say that and we have got the image of the clean-cut boy next door and all that stuff. But I think we used to subvert that quite well on stage, particularly Paul Hester  who had a fairly wicked sense of humour. And we used to undercut the seriousness of the music industry and certainly in media  terms in America, when we first went over there we were messing with them quite a lot and actually bringing a sense of anarchy to our interviews and things. So to me that's kind of...we may be clean in the sense that we don't have drug scandals going  on and we choose not to really get involved in all that, certainly  as far as the public's concerned. But I think in our performance and the way we conducted ourselves we actually were pressing  some boundaries y'know, pushing some boundaries. BE: I think it was Q magazine that had a picture of  Crowded House once with the caption "lock up your slippers". [laughter] NF: Yeah, well y'know. It's just the way it goes.  I mean we have this vague, strange notion that maybe it's only the music that's important, but it seems like out there it's not, in this post-modern age, the performance is, the image is, the public persona as much as the music. Perhaps we're missing  the boat in that area, I don't know. BE: Doesn't seem to matter really. Did you enjoy the ENZSO concerts? NF: Umm, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. BE: Oh really? NF: I don't want to go into it too much `cos there's so much mateship involved in this that I...At the moment it's  actually, for me, it's quite difficult to go into it because in a way I just want to break with the past. I've broken up my band Crowded House, and Split Enz has gone many years ago and yet for this whole year I've been doing nothing but acknowledging the past with the Best of Crowded House and ENZSO. And I'm really looking forward to just having that in the past where it is and be moving forward. So ENZSO at the moment is a kind of a reminder  of where I've been. BE: But you're probably under a certain pressure perhaps from New Zealanders, a nostalgic pressure, to have that happen  again. NF: Yeah. BE: Even to bring Split Enz back together again. NF: Oh, I don't think that that pressure is going  to really result in much. I just have mixed feelings about the  classical world and the rock world being mixed together and there  was... BE: A lot of people have done it of course Paul McCartney  did it. NF: Yeah well a lot of people...well he did it on  a more classical - BE: But that wasn't hugely successful either. NF: No, it very rarely is, y'know. I think as it said  in the paper this morning [New Zealand Herald] I think it's hard  to satisfy either audience with that kind of thing. It's not  pure enough to be classical music and it's not rockin' enough to be...and I mean orchestras can't swing like a rock band can.  That's the problem with an orchestra and rock bands can't get the same - BE: Very true. Well it's fascinating. And Kiri Te  Kanawa cannot sing pop music to save her life. NF: Nor should she. BE: But she'd like to. But she can't. NF: Well I know. Actually I met her a while ago and  she said that's all she wants to do is sing pop songs. BE: She can't do it. NF: Get it straight Kiri! [laughter] NF: Do what you do, do well. BE: And all these opera singers, Carreras and all  that, singing these pop songs, it sounds absolutely dreadful. NF: Yeah well it does. But there's a huge audience for it and I don't want to be too high-brow about it either because in a way it's kind of, when we were doing it it was fantastic fun, to be sitting in front of an orchestra and hear the breadth of sound that they can create, y'know, it was great. I just don't know whether it's something I'd like to do a lot of, that's all. BE: So, what's next? What are you doing now actually?  When's your next gig? NF: Hey! Well we're actually doing a show, Tim and I are doing a show in Marlborough for the Wine and Food thing  down there [Marlborough Wine and Food Festival]. We take the  opportunity to do a Finn show on a semi-regular basis `cos we  really enjoy doing them. It's just the two of us on stage, it's  quite liberating [and a] wonderful thing. So we're keeping our hand in there but that'll be sporadic. We've got some ENZSO stuff  coming up. I'm just looking forward to getting to March `cos I've built a studio in my basement. I'm going to make a record at home for the first time. And when I clear the decks and apply  myself to some new music. BE: Right. Do you want to be hugely famous again? NF: Well it's not part of the ambition, to be hugely famous. I'm familiar enough now that it wouldn't put me off. BE: Right [laughs]. Neil Finn, as ever it's been delightful  talking to you. Thank you very much. NF: Thanks Brian.