Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Crowded House had one of the most enduring hits of
Speaker 2: the eighties with Don't Dream It's Over. The commercial and
Speaker 2: critical success of that song launched to the Australian New
Speaker 2: Zealand band and its esteemed KIWI songwriter Neil Finn to
Speaker 2: pop stardom.
Speaker 3: The band made.
Speaker 2: Three more critically acclaimed records before breaking up in ninety six,
Speaker 2: but over the years they've come back together at various
Speaker 2: times to put out new projects, including their latest Gravity Stairs.
Speaker 2: Crowded House is now made up of their original bassist,
Speaker 2: Nick Seymour, the American producer of their earliest albums, Mitchell
Speaker 2: Froom on keyboards, their frontman Neil Finn, and his two sons,
Speaker 2: Liam on guitar and vocals, and Elroy, who's taken over
Speaker 2: for the late Paul Hester on drums. On today's episode,
Speaker 2: Crowded House talked to Bruce Headlam about how they look
Speaker 2: to tread new ground while still honoring the group's roots,
Speaker 2: what it's like for Neil Finn to with his sons,
Speaker 2: Plus they tell some hilarious stories from the rehearsing of
Speaker 2: their new album at an Airbnb. This is broken record
Speaker 2: liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 3: I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 2: Here's Bruce Headlin's conversation with Nick Seymour, Mitchell Farum, and
Speaker 2: Neil Liam and el Roy Finn of Crowded House.
Speaker 1: We never have to do this, but because it's a podcast,
Speaker 1: could you just go around and introduce yourselves.
Speaker 4: Hello, I'm Liam Finn. Hello, I'm Nick, and I am
Speaker 4: Neil Finn, Mitchell and I'm Elroy.
Speaker 1: All right, and you are Crowded House and this is
Speaker 1: just great to have you. I'll start with you, Neil,
Speaker 1: because you did the bulk of the writing. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about writing the songs for this album how it
Speaker 1: came about.
Speaker 5: I make little demos in my writing rooms, go up,
Speaker 5: try and get a five period.
Speaker 4: I can go in every.
Speaker 5: Day just sort of turn up and some days are
Speaker 5: non productive, and then beget into a flow and you
Speaker 5: have a few breakthroughs and all of a sudden, it
Speaker 5: feels like you're in the groove. And that's how the
Speaker 5: songs come out in stages. Basically, I'll make a little
Speaker 5: demo of a verse maybe, and then a chorus will
Speaker 5: occur to me. In the process of that, I'll make
Speaker 5: another demo. Just a series of demos and it's always well,
Speaker 5: since I've got a four track cassette recorder back in
Speaker 5: the early eighties, that's been the way I've written. I
Speaker 5: very rarely sit down on a piano and just write
Speaker 5: in the old fashioned way. I kind of jam, listen back,
Speaker 5: find the bits that seem golden, and then add to them.
Speaker 1: Do you write on piano or do you write on guitar?
Speaker 4: I do right on both.
Speaker 5: But yeah, often they're just little atmospheres that spark an idea,
Speaker 5: and then I often deconstruct them at various points. I'll
Speaker 5: the band will play them and will learn them, and
Speaker 5: we'll do them a certain way and they'll be pretty
Speaker 5: really good, and then I'll decide that there's more to
Speaker 5: be had. I'll deconstruct them, and then next thing they
Speaker 5: hear they're completely different. Well, you know, it's a relearning
Speaker 5: all of a sudden.
Speaker 1: And I was Liam as well, because you co wrote
Speaker 1: some of the songs. Tell me about what was that like.
Speaker 6: It's all kind of been pretty organic because we've made
Speaker 6: music together a lot over the years, and especially in
Speaker 6: the last eight years or so. Yeah, I probably write
Speaker 6: in a fairly similar fashion to Dad, just kind of
Speaker 6: making noises and playing with pedals and stuff until I
Speaker 6: get excited by something and then stuff kind of gets
Speaker 6: birthed from that without even really realizing it. It's always
Speaker 6: the thing when you go away and you realize you're
Speaker 6: humming a malady around and around that that's probably the
Speaker 6: thing that's come out of it. And you know, for
Speaker 6: this record, I had a couple of songs. For one
Speaker 6: song that was pretty fully formed that I just got
Speaker 6: to bring to the band and I think we played
Speaker 6: it twice and that was it, and that's what the
Speaker 6: second one was to can take was on the record,
Speaker 6: And so it's yeah, I mean the next record, I'm
Speaker 6: hoping that we'll all have a bit more time beforehand
Speaker 6: to come to the table with as much stuff as
Speaker 6: we're at least a bit closer to the amount that
Speaker 6: Dad does. We get like the sixteen demos sent to
Speaker 6: us like it was kind of an unexpected session. Really,
Speaker 6: we were isolating in Byron Bay before Australian tour. We
Speaker 6: had to spend two weeks in isolation, and so we
Speaker 6: did it in a studio, made a lot of sense
Speaker 6: and fooled ourselves into thinking, oh, it's just rehearsal and
Speaker 6: maybe we'll cut a track, but we probably did like
Speaker 6: eight or nine songs and that became the sort of
Speaker 6: meat of the record really, and they were just things
Speaker 6: that Dad had and that he sort of gave to
Speaker 6: everyone and sort of see what got.
Speaker 4: Responded to and stuff.
Speaker 6: But it was all kind of half halfway there already
Speaker 6: with as far as the atmosphere and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think presenting songs to the full band
Speaker 1: would be a really intimidating situation. I would think presenting
Speaker 1: songs to my father in a band would be which way.
Speaker 3: You're talking about it, and like, it is really intimidating.
Speaker 3: But I'm never sure that he feels just as intimidated
Speaker 3: presenting his songs as as I do, actually feeling like
Speaker 3: I don't know his songs as well as he knows.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the main thing, is that when
Speaker 3: somebody presents an idea, a demo or whatever, it is
Speaker 3: everybody's obligation to know it as well as the person
Speaker 3: who's actually formulated the thing before you actually try to
Speaker 3: add or converse about any ideas you might have to
Speaker 3: help that song, you know, if we're going to actually
Speaker 3: play it together. And that's probably the most intimidating thing.
Speaker 5: Is, let's wish for thinking in some cases, because obviously,
Speaker 5: even to make a demo, you get deep inside your
Speaker 5: idea you have very kind of fixed ideas about certain things.
Speaker 5: And you know, and el Roy had a couple of
Speaker 5: things that I picked my ears up demos of his
Speaker 5: that we actually kept relatively intact actually because they have
Speaker 5: they had a kind of untouchable mystery about them that
Speaker 5: we couldn't really we didn't want to break down. Sometimes
Speaker 5: with my stuff, I'll have a feeling on a demo too,
Speaker 5: that's very hard to recapture. But what happens with the
Speaker 5: band is that it doesn't sound like you imagined it would,
Speaker 5: but actually it lets light into the arrangement a little
Speaker 5: bit and actually in a way makes it, i think,
Speaker 5: more approachable and you know, surprising in a good way.
Speaker 5: So I but you know, not expected when I've seen
Speaker 5: demos out that everyone learns the demo exactly as it is.
Speaker 4: A familiarity is nice, right. Yeah.
Speaker 5: The first song we did on the record was Magic Piano,
Speaker 5: which is the opening song on the album, and it
Speaker 5: was quite a different demo if you heard it now.
Speaker 5: I mean the song itself had very familiar parts, but
Speaker 5: we worked. It was really quite a complicated song to
Speaker 5: start first, we took two days to learn it and
Speaker 5: we've got a really really good take on the floor.
Speaker 5: We sort of knew we were onto something at that point,
Speaker 5: but in a way it was, you know, counterintuitive to
Speaker 5: start with one of the most complicated songs.
Speaker 1: But what made it a complicated song.
Speaker 5: Just as unusual, well a the demo. We had to
Speaker 5: reconstruct the demo. We took out several bits from the
Speaker 5: demo and just found our own way with it, and
Speaker 5: there was still familiarity in there, but and it had
Speaker 5: some unusual time changes in the end, a great deal
Speaker 5: of interplay between bass and guitar that was really beautiful
Speaker 5: and took a while to evolve, you know, just it
Speaker 5: just had a thing. And our engineer, who we'd never
Speaker 5: worked with before, was probably incredibly happy that we took
Speaker 5: two days to get to that point because he was
Speaker 5: able to get the most kick ass sound over two
Speaker 5: days by moving MIC's around, and by the time we
Speaker 5: got the take it sounded really really impressive as well.
Speaker 4: So it was that the first song we did, Yeah,
Speaker 4: Magic Piant Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I guess when you move into a new space
Speaker 3: and then you're actually trying to get sounds together, and
Speaker 3: one of the songs is suggested or a thing is
Speaker 3: suggested in a way to try to break the threshold
Speaker 3: of collaboration and everyone actually, you know, gelling, and that
Speaker 3: goes with the engineer as well. The engineer is probably
Speaker 3: really under so much scrutiny and can be quite anxious
Speaker 3: to have the band break through because it's partly their
Speaker 3: responsibility to get a great sound. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: a song. Sometimes a song can end up being the
Speaker 3: sacrificial lamb for finding that threshold, you know. So, but
Speaker 3: that was it was really encouraging when we actually got
Speaker 3: that taste and suddenly we went, oh, okay, we're in
Speaker 3: the right zone hopefully.
Speaker 1: Now are you set up in the studio to rehearse
Speaker 1: or are you set up to record?
Speaker 5: At that point, it depends if you talk to my
Speaker 5: guitar Tick at the time, he thought we were there
Speaker 5: to rehearse. The engineers we were there to record. We
Speaker 5: were trying to keep the pretense that we were just
Speaker 5: rehearsing so that we wouldn't get red light syndrome and
Speaker 5: put too much pressure on ourselves. But yeah, so somewhere
Speaker 5: in the middle there we were kind of it was
Speaker 5: an unspoken thing. I was thinking it was. We'd planned
Speaker 5: it so that we found a good engineer, had a
Speaker 5: proper studio, and it was always in my mind the
Speaker 5: possibility of getting some new songs going.
Speaker 7: Yet, yeah, we were in a fully functioning recording studio
Speaker 7: and everything was miked up, and so it was all
Speaker 7: going to be usable. But it is something. There's something
Speaker 7: to be said about the semantics of believing you're not
Speaker 7: doing a take. It's got a real irreverence or a
Speaker 7: little bit of a lack of self consciousness that can
Speaker 7: sometimes be a lot better than when you're like, Okay,
Speaker 7: we're going for this specific song version, like we're going
Speaker 7: to get it now. It's like there's a subconscious pressure
Speaker 7: on it that sometimes it works and it helps the performance,
Speaker 7: but sometimes it's just a bit more thought about than
Speaker 7: it needs to be.
Speaker 1: We're not taping now, by the way, so you can
Speaker 1: to say, so, Mitchell, you're you're both the keyboard player
Speaker 1: and the producer.
Speaker 8: Well, no, I'm not the producer of this band. No
Speaker 8: you don't, now it's a there is no producer. Well,
Speaker 8: the engineer was a co producer, but this is not
Speaker 8: a band that needs a what I would call a
Speaker 8: proper that kind of everyone here is very skilled and
Speaker 8: everyone here is a producer.
Speaker 1: So but you you produced their first few album, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first three I worked on. So what was what
Speaker 1: did you do then that you don't have to do now?
Speaker 1: Or what do you do now? You didn't do that?
Speaker 8: It was a completely different time in music. It was
Speaker 8: a different time in Neil's life as a writer, and
Speaker 8: so I could bring well, you know, we were both
Speaker 8: just starting off, so we just threw anything in the
Speaker 8: pot that we could and and.
Speaker 1: That was.
Speaker 8: It was more of that kind of proper situation. But
Speaker 8: now has made so many records. Any of that kind
Speaker 8: of guidance or anything. It just I mean, I'll speak
Speaker 8: up if I feel something, but yeah, but it's not
Speaker 8: we're not looking for the leader to.
Speaker 5: You know, Mitchell's fully engaged with the production but with
Speaker 5: us all and he's in the room with.
Speaker 8: Us, But they don't look to me, which I'm very
Speaker 8: grateful to, you know, like you're the producer.
Speaker 3: I look to you, Mitch. I study your left hand.
Speaker 5: It's a very funny dynamic actually, because Mitchell often gets
Speaker 5: involved in helping Nick complete his base parts, and it's
Speaker 5: like an old married couple that just really, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of just beyond just about getting shirty with each other.
Speaker 4: But not not quite.
Speaker 5: And Mitchell's very good at just you know, reinforcing the
Speaker 5: important beats that the bass has to land and gets
Speaker 5: get some over the line, doesn't doesn't.
Speaker 4: He's still got some production now.
Speaker 5: Used to be in the control room with Chad most
Speaker 5: of the time, playing a few things the control room,
Speaker 5: so there was a there was a physical.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you look too for a different role, but I
Speaker 8: don't think a person could come into this band with
Speaker 8: that role and be welcome. They'd have to They'd have
Speaker 8: to be very gentle with the way they move things around.
Speaker 8: You're not going to say, oh, Neil, like that form
Speaker 8: is all wrong. You should be doing this because Neil's
Speaker 8: got his own way of writing now and it's it's
Speaker 8: it's unique to himself. So it take a real delicate presence.
Speaker 5: I could benefit from that sometimes. Yeah, I think remaking
Speaker 5: them the structures about five times.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but that's to get it to where you want it.
Speaker 8: No one else can get it to where you want it.
Speaker 4: Well, someone else could come along.
Speaker 8: I tried once. Yeah, on the last record. I tried
Speaker 8: once or twice, but I just ended up straightening it
Speaker 8: out too much and it was a failure. So it's
Speaker 8: you know, it's just different.
Speaker 1: And you're the base wrangler and I'm not even the
Speaker 1: full keyboard PA because I play.
Speaker 8: But then these guys all go away and play some
Speaker 8: stuff too.
Speaker 1: So then I'm interested about in the sound of this
Speaker 1: album because it is a very distinctive sound. It's not
Speaker 1: each song has its own kind of pace, in its
Speaker 1: own feeling. That's got a very experimental sound. How did
Speaker 1: that emerge out of these songs?
Speaker 8: I think that was more with the engineer and in
Speaker 8: Neil's area because we how many times do we get
Speaker 8: together three times and to cut tracks?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we wait to ten days three times to get
Speaker 5: all the tracks done because we.
Speaker 8: All live in different places. When it came down to
Speaker 8: the actual full formulation of the sound, it was mostly
Speaker 8: done in New Zealand with Neil and Stephen Shram and
Speaker 8: we get things and we contribute, but they were mostly
Speaker 8: getting that down. I mean, everyone says things. Everyone has
Speaker 8: an opinion and might say one thing that people respond
Speaker 8: to and then keep that in mind. But it's more, Yeah,
Speaker 8: I don't know I just think it's more relaxed. It's
Speaker 8: not like there's no guru in the room colon things out.
Speaker 6: And I think the atmosphere and the sort of the
Speaker 6: vibe of the record was very much formed in those
Speaker 6: that first by and Bay Thing And maybe it was
Speaker 6: a combination of working with Stephen for the first time
Speaker 6: and the way we were all playing. But there was
Speaker 6: something happened which was really kind of languid and kind
Speaker 6: of lush and something we were responding to in the
Speaker 6: rainforest of you know, northern New South Wales or something.
Speaker 6: And it really like when we took it away, I
Speaker 6: was really excited by this relatively unseelf conscious sound that
Speaker 6: we were making. It felt really different from the last
Speaker 6: one and really cool, and I think that was retained
Speaker 6: when I listened to it now. I can still hear
Speaker 6: that as the essence of it, but it did certainly
Speaker 6: go in many different directions over the next year.
Speaker 5: Well, you can hear the crickets and the rain at
Speaker 5: the beginning of the end of songs and a couple
Speaker 5: of them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we got to record with the doors open to
Speaker 7: the forest, you know, and so it was kind of.
Speaker 3: Hot. I mean, what time of year was. It was
Speaker 3: it January March, okay, so it's the end of summer.
Speaker 3: But they were they were inundated with biblical proportions of rainfall.
Speaker 3: There were floods. There's actually a town now that's been
Speaker 3: declared a disaster zone that the government, Australian government is
Speaker 3: buying compulsory purchasing people's houses because they can't keep there anymore.
Speaker 3: From you know, there was so much rain fell in
Speaker 3: that period and we were kind of isolated by the
Speaker 3: quarantining of the compulsory two weeks that you have to
Speaker 3: have when you arrive in Australia at that time, and
Speaker 3: also the fact that we couldn't leave the studio because
Speaker 3: of the rain it was. And then one night actually
Speaker 3: I got my room was flooded. My bedroom was flooded
Speaker 3: up in the middle of the night and know it
Speaker 3: was knee deep deep in water when I put my
Speaker 3: feet out of the bed, you.
Speaker 4: Know, And you can hear that on the record.
Speaker 3: You can hear it on the very wet ankle deep
Speaker 3: bass tone.
Speaker 1: It reminded me a bit of Temple of the Lowman.
Speaker 1: Of of all your albums, it was the album that
Speaker 1: kind of in it sort of sounds. It also reminded
Speaker 1: me of an album and I didn't realize till this
Speaker 1: week that you had produced because it's one of my
Speaker 1: all time favorite albums, which is Keiko Oh Rights Lobos.
Speaker 1: Someday I'd love to talk to you about that album because.
Speaker 8: That was Yeah, I would say if there's a similarity,
Speaker 8: because I was there for all of them, was there
Speaker 8: was a free spirit. It was an open kind of
Speaker 8: creative spirit going on that was backed up with a
Speaker 8: lot of confidence, and if you have that, you can
Speaker 8: get a long ways. In the case of this record,
Speaker 8: for me, that one of the most difficult things is
Speaker 8: if you have a a demo that's attractive, and now
Speaker 8: you bring it into a band, and now the band
Speaker 8: interprets it, and sometimes it doesn't get better, but magic
Speaker 8: piano it got a lot better. And it was just
Speaker 8: one of those things where like for Neil bringing that
Speaker 8: song into the band, it was kind of clear to
Speaker 8: all of us that it was what we were doing
Speaker 8: was just of a high level. Maybe it was the
Speaker 8: best track we had cut up as a band up
Speaker 8: to that point, so that certainly got us going and
Speaker 8: gave us confidence because you can hear a demo I mean,
Speaker 8: Neil can bring in a demo and you think, whoa
Speaker 8: that that just sounds really good. But what should we keep?
Speaker 8: What should we just try it and not think about
Speaker 8: what's there already or you so you have a small
Speaker 8: window in which you better get to some kind of
Speaker 8: improvement to make you feel like, let's just let go
Speaker 8: of this demo and move forward as a band. And yeah,
Speaker 8: so it's tricky, and it's also for writers, at least
Speaker 8: in my experience, that's when people are the most vulnerable,
Speaker 8: like Neil or Liam or oh where they can write something,
Speaker 8: but if people haven't heard it before, the way you
Speaker 8: react when you first hear it is much more has
Speaker 8: a much greater effect on them than if the song's
Speaker 8: already released. And then someone will come up to Liam
Speaker 8: and say, oh, I love that, you know, I love
Speaker 8: how Yeah it's insecure. Yeah, so you've got to all
Speaker 8: keep a very positive outlook on it and try just
Speaker 8: try not to feel pressure and just just try and
Speaker 8: see what happens. And all those records, it was like
Speaker 8: that temple Ment. Some people said was a bit dark,
Speaker 8: but we had a lot of fun doing that record,
Speaker 8: and my memory, you know, it was it's much less
Speaker 8: stressful than the first album, and you know it was
Speaker 8: it was fun to do.
Speaker 5: It's always weird to react when you see reactions to
Speaker 5: an overall body of work because people make assumptions that
Speaker 5: you were sort of going for that. Yeah, you're not
Speaker 5: really going for anything. You're just going to try and
Speaker 5: make the songs sound as good as they can, you know,
Speaker 5: And maybe we're in a point now where we're attracted
Speaker 5: to more more dreamy landscapes than we would have been
Speaker 5: as we were a more rollicking pop band in the
Speaker 5: early days, you know, because that's what we just that
Speaker 5: stage of our lives, and people do sometimes compare our
Speaker 5: new records to what we were like then, and you
Speaker 5: sort of go, well, that's just beside the point. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's not. We're not trying to be or wanting to
Speaker 5: be a rollicking pop band every now and again. It's fun,
Speaker 5: and there might be one that comes along that works that,
Speaker 5: but we're interested in exploring the atmospheres that we're capable
Speaker 5: of creating, which you know, if you listen to Alroy's
Speaker 5: demos for instance, and the ones that are on the
Speaker 5: record Blurry Grass and Thirsty, the music that he had
Speaker 5: made which had just a great sense of atmosphere and
Speaker 5: the way he approaches drums is he's not a big,
Speaker 5: you know, Keith moonstyle guy. He's got a really nice
Speaker 5: feel going and beautiful fills here and there. A Liam's
Speaker 5: got incredible atmospheres that he makes with his pedals on
Speaker 5: the guitar. We want to embrace all of that and
Speaker 5: make it part of what and we're getting really better
Speaker 5: at doing that too. I think on stage you might
Speaker 5: have noticed the other night, but we're starting to feel
Speaker 5: the freedom to be able to jump off the script
Speaker 5: like we used to back in the day and utilize
Speaker 5: all of that, you know, those beautiful attributes, knowing that
Speaker 5: if I go into a strange moment, Liam will engage
Speaker 5: a pedal somewhere and it will suddenly make me feel
Speaker 5: okay about it, and Nicole will always join in, you know,
Speaker 5: and Mitchell'll be standing by with some cool keyboard thing.
Speaker 5: And that's a really beautiful feeling that bands only get
Speaker 5: when they've been playing together for quite a while, I think.
Speaker 5: And some bands don't ever want that, They just want
Speaker 5: to learn the song, turn up, do the same show
Speaker 5: every night. But it's always been part of our manifesto.
Speaker 5: To try, and then every album to album explore new things,
Speaker 5: nuances and possibilities. For Watson, I think we're just getting
Speaker 5: to a point where it feels to me like we
Speaker 5: could make our best record. Hopefully they all are, but
Speaker 5: the next one might be, you know, a real breakthrough.
Speaker 7: Everyone's got quite a distinct personality and the way they
Speaker 7: play in this band, I think, and so and all
Speaker 7: the you know, greatest bands I think have got those
Speaker 7: identifiable characters musically that you hear the song and you
Speaker 7: can kind of tell who's playing drums or tell who's
Speaker 7: playing bass, and you know, that's what you'd strive to do,
Speaker 7: be able to put out great songs that have a
Speaker 7: bunch of individual character but then together make this wonderful
Speaker 7: cohesive geiled noise.
Speaker 1: And how does your personality come out in your songs
Speaker 1: on the album?
Speaker 7: I mean, I think the way I write is probably
Speaker 7: again not that dissimilar to Neil or Liam, but I
Speaker 7: I guess just having the time to explore those little
Speaker 7: avenues and then present them as you've had all the
Speaker 7: chance to vet bad ideas into stuff you feel self
Speaker 7: conscious about before someone hears it, and then you know
Speaker 7: you've got something you believe in a little bit more yourself.
Speaker 5: But I always always got little remnants and fragments of
Speaker 5: ideas that were early ideas that are.
Speaker 4: Just like, what the hell is that?
Speaker 5: And then he can't really you sometimes can't explain what
Speaker 5: they are either, you've got a track of where it
Speaker 5: came from.
Speaker 7: The way I write sometimes is you get a cool
Speaker 7: vocal idea in your head, and so you sing it
Speaker 7: into your phone and then you listen to it two
Speaker 7: weeks later, and it's got no time signature and no
Speaker 7: key that you can pull from, and it sounds like
Speaker 7: oh yes, and might be some trigger of like, oh,
Speaker 7: I can get that back again. But it really pays
Speaker 7: to put a lot more down than a straight vocal
Speaker 7: at first.
Speaker 1: If you can, you should carry around a bit of time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, sometimes it works.
Speaker 5: I write an open tuning sometimes, and if I don't
Speaker 5: make a record of the tuning, it's just impossible to
Speaker 5: learn my song that I just wrote, you know, like
Speaker 5: it slips your mind on what the shapes were. You'll
Speaker 5: never get that feeling back from the open tuning. It's
Speaker 5: even after all this time, I still haven't learned to
Speaker 5: write down my tunings.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more from Crowded House. After
Speaker 2: the break, we're back with the rest of Crowded House.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that is consistent in the band
Speaker 1: neck is your artwork. And I always thought when you
Speaker 1: guys first came out, you were this band that arrived
Speaker 1: with a kind of like there's a sort of whole sensibility,
Speaker 1: and I think so much of that was your early covers,
Speaker 1: and you designed the costumes initially too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess that was probably the connection. When the
Speaker 3: first paint, the first cover that I did, I sort
Speaker 3: of these caricature were kind of costume or outfits within
Speaker 3: this kind of little theatrical setting. And then when we
Speaker 3: were going to start playing in pubs in Australia, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'll make those jackets, and so then there was a
Speaker 3: much more cohesive link between you know, the artwork and
Speaker 3: advertising posters, all that sort of stuff, with the way
Speaker 3: we looked on stage, which also was a hangover from
Speaker 3: Split Ends because they did that, and I was always
Speaker 3: impressed with that. I liked going to see bands that
Speaker 3: actually had some sort of theatricality in the way they
Speaker 3: present it, in the way they looked, and we're probably
Speaker 3: not that it's not. We don't We're not so sort
Speaker 3: of theatrically confined now. I mean, we don't wear matching
Speaker 3: outfits or anything particularly, But with each album cover, I mean,
Speaker 3: I when we're in the studio, I'm trying to actually
Speaker 3: somehow threads some sort of documentation of the conversation and
Speaker 3: the musical setting, the just things to be able to
Speaker 3: present something to the band at the end of a session, saying, look,
Speaker 3: I've got an idea for a record cover or you know,
Speaker 3: add material or whatever, stage or whatever, just keeping illustrations.
Speaker 3: And this one obviously is a homage to class Forman,
Speaker 3: you know, the guy who designed Revolver, but it was
Speaker 3: also a means to show different personalities within the heads
Speaker 3: and the hair and the similarly to that record but
Speaker 3: probably that record cover. I'm not entirely sure whether it's
Speaker 3: actually a positive thing or not. I mean, I've not
Speaker 3: gotten any flack about it, but I've seen a few
Speaker 3: comments on social media saying like, that's just a rip
Speaker 3: off of the Revolver album cover, you know, and I'm
Speaker 3: kind of, well, that's a homage, you know what. People
Speaker 3: don't know what that means.
Speaker 8: So is a ripoff of a different song.
Speaker 5: Well, I just want you to explain why I'm in
Speaker 5: a lifeboat with a huge wave about to swamp my boat.
Speaker 3: If it's describing, what's the most exciting one I came
Speaker 3: up with. I thought this is perfect. He's trapped in
Speaker 3: reeds on one side edge, you know, and then or
Speaker 3: kind of you know, some sort of mangroves. You know,
Speaker 3: you're in a boat. And then then there's this other
Speaker 3: lifeboat that of survivors of a shipwreck and in his quiff,
Speaker 3: because I mean, Neil's hair is a law unto itself.
Speaker 3: I mean, really we could.
Speaker 4: It's an illustrator's dream.
Speaker 1: It's an homage.
Speaker 3: It's a homage to marsupical life in Australia. You know,
Speaker 3: I was delighted when I got his his Oh, I've
Speaker 3: got a good one of Neil. And that's a good
Speaker 3: likeness of Neil, you know. And then then I started
Speaker 3: in on on on Liam wearing a kind of a
Speaker 3: sun Rah kind of warrior hat helmet, you know, with
Speaker 3: you know, good style of climped motifs ober it, and.
Speaker 4: You revealed nothing of yourself. There's nothing like blank. That's
Speaker 4: a blank, blank canvas.
Speaker 3: Iss I'm the most pholically challenged in the band as well,
Speaker 3: and I gave him a perfectly good head of hair.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not a phollically challenged band, shall we say.
Speaker 7: Overall ficular speaking, no speaking, speculating hair.
Speaker 4: No, this decent amount of here going on.
Speaker 1: So I do want to go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: first of all, in the Finn family, because this is
Speaker 1: a kind of it's just become a like a Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash band or something. You've got all the relatives coming
Speaker 1: in and out. So, Neil, you grew up in New Zealand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And was it a musical family you grew up in.
Speaker 5: Not in the sense of there being any you know,
Speaker 5: professional serious musicians in the family. But my mother had
Speaker 5: could play piano by ear, although she only really knew
Speaker 5: two chords. Every song would be reduced to two chords,
Speaker 5: but she could play the.
Speaker 4: Hits of the day.
Speaker 5: And when she met my dad and she taught really,
Speaker 5: when I think about it, taught me to harmonize doing
Speaker 5: the dishes. You know, we just sing you are My
Speaker 5: Sunshine and she'd do the harmony and then we'd swap.
Speaker 5: And when I think about it, that's how the harmony started.
Speaker 5: And my dad was a jazz fanatic. He used to
Speaker 5: listen to jazz records after work every day with a
Speaker 5: whiskey in one hand, and you'd hear him in the
Speaker 5: other room because at that time I thought jazz was
Speaker 5: real lame, you know, because I was into pop music.
Speaker 5: And i'd hear him go, Go, Joe Go, you know,
Speaker 5: on some jazz genre and'd be doing a solo, and
Speaker 5: he really got into it. So he had the love
Speaker 5: of music. He was kind of tone deaf. He couldn't
Speaker 5: sing in tune, but he had a beautiful tone, a
Speaker 5: really warm, rich vibrato. But he'd just sing on one note.
Speaker 7: Really helped when auto tune came along for him.
Speaker 4: You got that tone. But yeah, but.
Speaker 5: You know, in the mass A church, we go to
Speaker 5: church and he would I just tear him singing the
Speaker 5: hymns like this is my command and I.
Speaker 8: Give you.
Speaker 4: Know, really it's a beautiful tone. But there's no tune whatsoever.
Speaker 5: But that was and we sing every They'd have parties
Speaker 5: every weekend and they'd always be singing. The piano player
Speaker 5: called Colin O'Brien, who would knew all the songs, and
Speaker 5: they'd ply him with cigarettes and alcohol and he'd keep
Speaker 5: playing all night.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: He unfortunately didn't live to a great age, but he
Speaker 5: provided a lot of entertainment along the way.
Speaker 1: And that would these be like pop songs, beatles songs.
Speaker 5: Those those parties were more like the old songs, you know, Sinatra, Eli, Fitzgerald,
Speaker 5: Bing Cross, all those that era. But then when we'd
Speaker 5: be gatherings when we were kids and we'd be drawn
Speaker 5: in and hauled up to sing. My brother and I
Speaker 5: that was included B songs, and you know, everyone had
Speaker 5: their item that they had to do well known for
Speaker 5: a party piece. My brother and I used to do
Speaker 5: Jamaican farewell. It was a beautiful two part harmony and
Speaker 5: that you know.
Speaker 3: We did that.
Speaker 5: We had Catholic priests that used to sing two little boys.
Speaker 3: I was about to make a job and it just
Speaker 3: made itself. Were just formed the.
Speaker 5: Darning Brothers and you know my auntie used to sing
Speaker 5: Stormy Weather actually know Piggy Dawson. Yeah, just people would
Speaker 5: know that if you've grown up in that environment, people
Speaker 5: know that in the next family is very similar.
Speaker 1: You know, we would have your family were performers though,
Speaker 1: weren't they.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean in the sense that you know, we
Speaker 3: went to church and we were known as a singing family,
Speaker 3: and so we would get asked to be the the
Speaker 3: kind of choir associated with a with we with weddings particularly,
Speaker 3: we'd sing, but they would be hymns though, like partys
Speaker 3: angelic cors saw, I mean, very casus.
Speaker 4: What sort of outfits would you have to dress? And
Speaker 4: when you did those more?
Speaker 3: Oh, no, no, you'd wear cities, you know, you wouldn't
Speaker 3: be kind.
Speaker 4: They dress you in those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I've never asked actually in the early days. No,
Speaker 3: we we didn't have to wear kind of chorister outfits
Speaker 3: or anything. But but we'd get paid to do a wedding.
Speaker 3: You'd get a little backhander from the family that you
Speaker 3: sang for. But this is in country towns that we
Speaker 3: lived in in in Victoria, Australia. But we learned to
Speaker 3: harmonize around, you know, doing family jobs like the dishes
Speaker 3: and the you know. And when we go camping, you know,
Speaker 3: we'd we'd we'd sing in the tent and all the
Speaker 3: other people in the camping ground had sort of know
Speaker 3: we were singing family and we'd get asked to, you know,
Speaker 3: come to different parties to sing. And I think but
Speaker 3: it was a lot of it was like Von Trapp
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, you know, Gilbert, Gilbert and Sullivan.
Speaker 1: You know. So when did the bas start for you?
Speaker 3: I was in the school at high school, I did,
Speaker 3: you know, I did music, But then I took up
Speaker 3: violin and played in the school orchestra. Both my brother
Speaker 3: and I were first and second violins in the school
Speaker 3: orchestra and then in an area orchestra in Melbourne. And
Speaker 3: I kind of I realized when I was I played guitar,
Speaker 3: but I realized that all everything I could hear was
Speaker 3: kind of the counterpoint of bass and the top line
Speaker 3: of vocal. That's that's what songs made sense to me,
Speaker 3: you know. And then I realized that that's all the
Speaker 3: ladies ever here as well. So that was was a motivation.
Speaker 1: That's why bass flayers are just cat nap.
Speaker 4: He'd get to hang around with musicians.
Speaker 1: All bass players want to hang around with musicians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what they say.
Speaker 4: How many strings for that'll suit me?
Speaker 1: Neil? Did you have formal music lessons as well?
Speaker 5: I played piano, Yeah, I did. I got a few
Speaker 5: music lessons, maybe really early on. I had a couple,
Speaker 5: and then I just watched my brother and learned the
Speaker 5: things he was learning. But then I got formal lessons
Speaker 5: and did like the Trinity College of Music sort of.
Speaker 5: I actually got up to grade eight and the practical
Speaker 5: and I wasn't a very good sight reader, but it was.
Speaker 5: I'm so sort of grateful glad that I did it,
Speaker 5: because it's quite hard, you know, learning piano, as most
Speaker 5: kids will testify us, it's pretty tedious.
Speaker 3: Scale to the Trinity.
Speaker 5: You know, you've got to really apply yourself, and doesn't
Speaker 5: seem like it's that much point when you're a kid.
Speaker 5: But I'm glad because my left hand is still not
Speaker 5: it's not amazing, but at least I've got a sort
Speaker 5: of a left hand. Most people learn how to play
Speaker 5: piano just a just whole you know, just marking the
Speaker 5: beat with the left hand, and it's all about playing
Speaker 5: chords with the right. So I feel like that was
Speaker 5: very valuable.
Speaker 1: The reason I ask is, you know, you're known as
Speaker 1: this great, great melody writer. I think that's what people
Speaker 1: would sort of say about you, but it's actually the
Speaker 1: harmony in a lot of your songs is incredibly interesting.
Speaker 1: Even the song like Don't Dream It's Over, which people
Speaker 1: would think well, that's like a three chord pops on.
Speaker 1: It's not at all. It's quite complicated.
Speaker 4: In a sense.
Speaker 5: There's all I would hope anyway that most songs, and
Speaker 5: it's not a prerequisite, but most songs would have a
Speaker 5: moment where it dips or dives into something that you
Speaker 5: weren't expecting. It just feels like it's a good thing
Speaker 5: to aim for, and I think that would be actually
Speaker 5: consistent with these guys as well, because and even making
Speaker 5: a record, like I said before, it seems like every
Speaker 5: record should contain some little mystery that's unlocked during the
Speaker 5: course of the recording, rather than just repeating the same thing,
Speaker 5: which seems less point I suppose with harmony, it's always
Speaker 5: interesting to me the addition of an odd note will
Speaker 5: do because they will contain feelings. They all harmony is
Speaker 5: enhancing feeling, and you can put a different nuance into
Speaker 5: your feeling. Yeah, and you recognize a feeling when you
Speaker 5: first get an idea for a song, like Liam referred to,
Speaker 5: that moment where you suddenly go, ah, and this is
Speaker 5: I'm feeling something from this idea that just emerged, And
Speaker 5: then the fun is decorating it and you can go
Speaker 5: too far, but the way you decorate it can help
Speaker 5: that feeling along or.
Speaker 6: Bring a lot of effort into making it sound effortless
Speaker 6: at the end that to explore it like to the
Speaker 6: nth degree, and sometimes, like you said, it goes too far,
Speaker 6: but you keep pushing into all of a sudd that's
Speaker 6: like it was always that way, And I think that
Speaker 6: that's something the Beatles did really well is do quite
Speaker 6: intellectual things and music that didn't turn people off because
Speaker 6: it was too intellectual.
Speaker 3: It just sounded right.
Speaker 6: Actually, there was crazy time changes and you know, things
Speaker 6: that actually on a if you look at it in
Speaker 6: an intellectual way, it's like, oh, how did they slip
Speaker 6: that one?
Speaker 7: And it's kind of the exciting part to me a
Speaker 7: lot when writing is that you've got something that your
Speaker 7: brain hears a strange harmony or a strange malady over
Speaker 7: top of something and it won't work. But if you're
Speaker 7: convinced that it's the right idea, you kind of keep
Speaker 7: working at it until it does work, until it does
Speaker 7: make sense, and some times you'll get a really strange result,
Speaker 7: as you know, at the end of it, where you've
Speaker 7: kind of got this quite unique sounding thing because you
Speaker 7: had to adapt everything to make your strangeness success.
Speaker 3: Beauty of that then, is that it always existed When
Speaker 3: you know it so well, it's just suddenly like, yes,
Speaker 3: it's always been that way, like you know do in
Speaker 3: the Beatles song here comes the Sound. I mean, what
Speaker 3: a crazy little resolve that would be.
Speaker 8: Some people are good at it. The truth of the
Speaker 8: matter is, and you know, I've worked on with a
Speaker 8: lot of different people. Some people are very good, uh,
Speaker 8: you know, a harmonic way. The Beatles will be an
Speaker 8: example of pretty much every chord in every song sounds beautiful.
Speaker 8: So it's it's a combination of the harmony and the
Speaker 8: melodic line are just you know, over the top. And
Speaker 8: I think in Neil's case, I think that that's You're right.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's sort of something people don't notice. You
Speaker 8: may think that it's the melody, but it's also the
Speaker 8: harmonic language, which also happens to be distinctively Nils. And
Speaker 8: it's the two together that give you that emotion. It's
Speaker 8: if you if you just made the chords what just
Speaker 8: very vanilla c major to a major and had the
Speaker 8: same melody, it wouldn't it wouldn't do it. It's some
Speaker 8: people are just good at that. Some people are clumsy
Speaker 8: with their chords, and you know, some people just can
Speaker 8: only deal with very simple chords.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, you have a lot of use,
Speaker 1: a lot of chromatic movement, like I'm thinking four seasons
Speaker 1: in one day, moves back and forth between a couple
Speaker 1: of chords.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not sure what the I'm attracted to sixth
Speaker 5: in terms of intervals, I like sixth and minor six
Speaker 5: is min six is a part of what I find
Speaker 5: myself attracted to all the time, and nights and add ons.
Speaker 4: You know. Actually, sometimes if.
Speaker 5: I get too far with that, I actually try playing
Speaker 5: the song with no added notes whatsoever. And sometimes actually
Speaker 5: it's the key one instrument. Just playing the chord straight
Speaker 5: can suddenly make the whole song come into.
Speaker 8: If the play melody is singing six and ninth, yeah,
Speaker 8: a straight chord can sound beautiful because yeah, you're not
Speaker 8: sticking within those three notes the tryad notes.
Speaker 5: So it's but the mystery of it is the is
Speaker 5: the weird thing I am. I think I'm better now.
Speaker 5: Experience has taught me to spot the good stuff, but
Speaker 5: it's still coming at it like a child, and you
Speaker 5: go like just play along and something hits you, and
Speaker 5: I like to keep it in that pretty free form
Speaker 5: state for as long as it possibly can, and then
Speaker 5: you use your critical mind, your adult mind to kind
Speaker 5: of organize at various points because you know you have to,
Speaker 5: really but it's still a mystery. I still don't really
Speaker 5: know what I'm doing, you know.
Speaker 8: But you have the language, that's the thing. You have
Speaker 8: your own harmonic language, and we have gone about things,
Speaker 8: and then you can just stretch it out into whatever
Speaker 8: if you're not coming from a.
Speaker 7: Place I think you and I strive to be like
Speaker 7: that as well, But your songs are sort of more
Speaker 7: like you've You've just got a goal to get it
Speaker 7: as good as it can be. And it's not that
Speaker 7: it should sound like this or it should sound like
Speaker 7: this and the inspiration for it needs to be aligned in.
Speaker 4: This style of music.
Speaker 7: It's just like, this is a magical concept, this song,
Speaker 7: and it can go anywhere, and if I kind of, yeah,
Speaker 7: am free with it, it will take itself in its
Speaker 7: own direction rather than me pigeonholing what the potential of
Speaker 7: it is, you know.
Speaker 5: And I think that's really valid, actually, what you just said,
Speaker 5: because that's what leads you forward. If you just follow you,
Speaker 5: it can be surprising. Sometimes you go, actually, there's a
Speaker 5: hint of Greek in this thing, and I don't know
Speaker 5: where that came from, or you know, it seems to
Speaker 5: demand a little baroque touch, but I don't know why.
Speaker 7: But yeah, and then you explore that and you push
Speaker 7: that too far and realize now it's way too borroke.
Speaker 7: You get rid of that and leave it as a
Speaker 7: hint and then move on to the next thing, and
Speaker 7: you know that becomes this amalgamation of just nods to
Speaker 7: stuff rather than it being in a real a Greek song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly for your.
Speaker 5: Brain, like I think, you know, I don't know. Sometimes
Speaker 5: I wonder, but can drive you crazy as well. The
Speaker 5: song on the album called night Song, which is a
Speaker 5: little bit about the experience of being obsessive about music
Speaker 5: and all night having the tune you're working on go
Speaker 5: around in your head. And I'm sure everyone relates to
Speaker 5: that that plays music. It's unfortunately it can be really
Speaker 5: like maddening. You know, it can feel like you're going
Speaker 5: crazy with her with it.
Speaker 7: Will you watch to so you watch the same film
Speaker 7: for nine hours of a day. You'd go to bed
Speaker 7: thinking of that film as well as as you spend
Speaker 7: a whole day to doing music, it's going to be
Speaker 7: there all night.
Speaker 2: Probably.
Speaker 5: I used to be able to work through the night,
Speaker 5: but I have to stop after dinner now generally, or us,
Speaker 5: I'm going to not sleep.
Speaker 2: When we come back, we'll have the rest of Bruce
Speaker 2: Headlen's conversation with Crowded House. We're back with the rest
Speaker 2: of Crowded House.
Speaker 1: I saw a speech you gave to the Yale It
Speaker 1: was a group of psychiatrists. Yeah, I should say it
Speaker 1: was a speech. It was not a session.
Speaker 4: It was they asked me to talk to do a
Speaker 4: talk on creativity.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was seminar and I was fascinated how much
Speaker 1: you talked to about your subconscious and how you try
Speaker 1: and keep the conscious mind out of your writing as
Speaker 1: long as possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that the same today.
Speaker 4: Yeah it is.
Speaker 5: I mean there's about you have to look at it
Speaker 5: and coming in the morning often after it putting stuff together,
Speaker 5: and you get some insight into the mechanics if they're
Speaker 5: actually working, and you start to analyze the mechanics of
Speaker 5: the song. But I do like to keep that free
Speaker 5: floating feeling of a that you haven't discovered everything about
Speaker 5: an idea until long as possible. Sometimes it's as I'm
Speaker 5: putting the final vocal on before that goes to mastering,
Speaker 5: I'll have a little revelation about something might be better.
Speaker 5: I don't know that it's always a very good thing
Speaker 5: that I do. But this album was a classic example
Speaker 5: of us continually changing and improving, and it actually, I
Speaker 5: think most of the time did get better. And we
Speaker 5: would Stephen and I would look at each other after
Speaker 5: we just changed something. I go, I like it better.
Speaker 5: You know, you like it better. Whether or not these
Speaker 5: guys did, I don't know. I've seen it off to them.
Speaker 8: There was about a four month period where they were
Speaker 8: just hitting home runs and I was like, wow, this
Speaker 8: is incredible. And then a couple came in that weren't.
Speaker 8: Those are the hard ones because you don't want to
Speaker 8: be negative, but you can just say, hey, maybe, you know,
Speaker 8: I think maybe that was better before.
Speaker 5: I always appreciate that's the thing about a band, you know,
Speaker 5: you get to hope that it is a little bit
Speaker 5: sensitive to get knocked back on an idea.
Speaker 8: But it's hard. It's a painful.
Speaker 4: Relief to have somebody to do it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but it's painful to have to say it to someone,
Speaker 8: and it's painful to hear because, like I say, that's
Speaker 8: when you're your most vulnerable. You know, no one's heard
Speaker 8: it yet, so you're.
Speaker 5: Just but it's not like, you know, it's not like
Speaker 5: Britain's got talent or something. It's like, you know, you're
Speaker 5: not sitting in front of a panel of that's painful,
Speaker 5: it's brutal, No.
Speaker 8: But you know what I mean. It's just it's best
Speaker 8: to be as positive as possible through this whole, the
Speaker 8: whole process until you're done recording, because then once it's
Speaker 8: out who you don't care anymore, you know.
Speaker 1: But do that that trying to keep your subconscious so engaged.
Speaker 1: Is that with both lyrics and the music.
Speaker 5: It's only just the way I've ended up feeling like
Speaker 5: the way I can work. I kind of wish I
Speaker 5: was a guy who had like poetry, just books of
Speaker 5: you know, lines that I could then apply to music,
Speaker 5: because I think that would be a really nice change.
Speaker 4: But it's just not not the way it rolls for me.
Speaker 5: I find that I'm most trusting of lines that come
Speaker 5: out spontaneously as I'm writing. I don't often know what
Speaker 5: I'm singing, and then I listen back to it and
Speaker 5: I go, oh, that's that's quite a good line that
Speaker 5: it suggests this. So I maybe write a couple more
Speaker 5: lines along those lines, along that train of thought at
Speaker 5: the time, and then I'll get excited about the little
Speaker 5: idea developing. I go and reward myself with a coffee,
Speaker 5: and you know, and then I'll come back and I
Speaker 5: won't be in the same frame of mind.
Speaker 4: It'll be really hard all of a sudden to finish
Speaker 4: the song.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but it also means your songs have a
Speaker 1: very particularly the lyrics have a very dreamy quality. Things
Speaker 1: are associated, you know. I think a song like whether
Speaker 1: with You, You've got the line about the car on
Speaker 1: the shelf, Oh yeah, boat boat, pardon yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you've got the beautiful line or sing like a bird released?
Speaker 1: I can I can imagine a lot of songwriters would say,
Speaker 1: I've just written this line. Do I sing like a
Speaker 1: bird released?
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 1: I have to rewrite this whole thing about being a
Speaker 1: bird released? And you don't it stays in a bigger picture.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well there again, as l we referred to before,
Speaker 5: it's kind of like the the they slot into place
Speaker 5: at a various point.
Speaker 4: It's really quite weird and.
Speaker 5: Sometimes quite time consuming to find words that I'm not consistent.
Speaker 5: I'm not bothered whether they follow each thought follows in
Speaker 5: a logical progression, but they have to relate to each
Speaker 5: other in a way that's kind of opens people's minds
Speaker 5: to little thoughts and doorways and things that are not intellectual.
Speaker 5: Because I like songs always have that I didn't really
Speaker 5: know what they meant. I just liked the sound of
Speaker 5: the words and the way that they certain phrases just
Speaker 5: pick you up and take you somewhere and you can
Speaker 5: switch off your conscious mind that you use for reading
Speaker 5: or you use for analyzing every other thing in your day.
Speaker 4: And so that's the kind of lyric that.
Speaker 5: I always liked, and that's what I've allowed myself to
Speaker 5: pursue as a lyricist now. And when they hit, I
Speaker 5: think they hit really in a powerful way because they're
Speaker 5: not They're operating on a different level than an academic thing.
Speaker 5: And sometimes I don't hit. When I look back on
Speaker 5: some of the lyrics, I go, that's clunky and clumsy
Speaker 5: and didn't really make it there.
Speaker 1: But you know, one of my co hosts, and I'm Malcolm.
Speaker 1: We did a book with Paul Simon, and I was
Speaker 1: amazed when he talked about song how much of it
Speaker 1: was just like I just like the sound of that line, and.
Speaker 5: That was just I mean, he's a great lyricist, and
Speaker 5: at his best he was able to write. I mean
Speaker 5: they were impressionistic lyrics too. Actually, when I think about it,
Speaker 5: like Sound of Silence, you don't really see a clear
Speaker 5: narrative in there, but it's incredibly evocative. And I always
Speaker 5: think it's sort of a combination of enough concrete images
Speaker 5: that put you in in a place you can sense
Speaker 5: a place, and abstract images that you become dream you know,
Speaker 5: dream like in your mind. And also it's really nice
Speaker 5: to sort of sense the person who's singing, and even
Speaker 5: if you don't get a it's not the person who's singing.
Speaker 5: And I'm not imagining Paul Simon's life when I'm listening
Speaker 5: to Sounds of Silence, but I'm imagining somebody on the
Speaker 5: streets having a particular convergence of you know, awareness and
Speaker 5: you know loneliness possibly, And so it has to evoke
Speaker 5: a good lyric by hook Crook has to evoke a
Speaker 5: time and a place and a person subliminally at least.
Speaker 1: Are you a visual thinker because a lot of your
Speaker 1: lyrics have a really strong sense of place.
Speaker 5: I think that that's been a sort of a thing
Speaker 5: I try and put in, and I don't always do it.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's just the way I'm feeling.
Speaker 4: That's the lyric.
Speaker 5: Other kind of lyrics just and nowadays, particularly the confessional
Speaker 5: lyric is very much the order of the day, you know,
Speaker 5: like writing a diary and the way you made me
Speaker 5: feel because you were mean to me, or you drop me,
Speaker 5: or you know.
Speaker 7: That.
Speaker 5: I like a lyric that's got a couple of phrases
Speaker 5: that link you to the day, like you know, whether
Speaker 5: it's the boat made of China or something, there's an
Speaker 5: image that you can put yourself in a room and yeah,
Speaker 5: is that maybe a yes to your question?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think it is. I think they're
Speaker 3: very visual. I'm continually struck with the once I hear
Speaker 3: the lyric not necessarily confirmed when we're working a song up,
Speaker 3: but it will evoke a definite visual reference to me
Speaker 3: that then inspires me to actually affect a certain approach
Speaker 3: to what the foundation notes or styles should be to
Speaker 3: actually set that visual scene.
Speaker 1: And how do you go about assuming Mitchell isn't in
Speaker 1: the room to keep you on the beat?
Speaker 8: Now that was I work with Nick a lot more
Speaker 8: in the early days. Okay, he's way beyond all that now.
Speaker 1: Because you do it makes sense you played violent. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of beautiful little figures in the in you're playing,
Speaker 1: including Teenage Summer, which I think was your first single.
Speaker 1: After that, there's a lot of great little figure A lot.
Speaker 3: Of those little counterpoint ideas come off the skip of
Speaker 3: Neil's words, so that if he if if a lyric
Speaker 3: in a in a verse partickee like a chorus will
Speaker 3: be hopefully the same, it'll be a refrain and he
Speaker 3: sings it the same words when it is so that
Speaker 3: the bass can sit underpinning in a solid give its solidity.
Speaker 3: But with with with verses, often I'll look for a
Speaker 3: counterpoint that has a slight gap in, or an announcement
Speaker 3: that skips off his palette. If he's saying a certain word,
Speaker 3: or the way he's the word is falling around the beat,
Speaker 3: I'll try and and and identify that in a in
Speaker 3: a way on the bass as well. It's sort of
Speaker 3: it's quite inspiring, but with a song like I remember
Speaker 3: we were recording Blackwater White Circle, and I came up
Speaker 3: with a bassline, and I remember because Neil had just
Speaker 3: plotted down and put the chords down to that on
Speaker 3: acoustic guitar and saying a a vocal over it, because
Speaker 3: we we hadn't learned that song by this stage, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of chords, and so I had to
Speaker 3: Suddenly the pressure was on me to come up with
Speaker 3: a baseline on Nick, can you do a baseline now?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, and you were. You were texting somewhere.
Speaker 3: You're on your phone and you're calling out the cords
Speaker 3: as I'm moving through a baseline that I had this
Speaker 3: idea of a sort of a tango style baseline. And
Speaker 3: meanwhile Mitchell sitting on the couch behind me with his
Speaker 3: arms folded, and I can just I can just see
Speaker 3: him shaking his head, you know, like in the in
Speaker 3: the glass. Yeah, but was moving through these notes. Neil's
Speaker 3: going see sharp A, oh, it's a minor. Then it
Speaker 3: goes to E a major E major, and he's calling
Speaker 3: them out before I'm actually landing on the note to
Speaker 3: do the little figure, and then.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and then the temperatures rising in the in
Speaker 5: the room as next trying to fashion a bass partner.
Speaker 5: I go outside, I think to continue my phone call
Speaker 5: or something, and suddenly there's Nick flying through the door
Speaker 5: and jumped straight in the pool in some kind of
Speaker 5: it was in some existential crisis with the with the baseline.
Speaker 5: He just needed to go. And you know, it was
Speaker 5: quite a moment actually that I think.
Speaker 3: The reason I ran out, put the base, put my
Speaker 3: base on his stand, and ran outside and dived into
Speaker 3: the pool with clothes. I just needed to I had
Speaker 3: a terrible hangover and so I recall and I just
Speaker 3: needed to shock myself into knowing to just be decisive.
Speaker 5: Basically, well, that's when you and Steve it had opened
Speaker 5: that bottle of incredibly expensive tequila at the house and
Speaker 5: then went and bought a cheap bottle to fill the
Speaker 5: bottle back up.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 7: That was.
Speaker 3: B and B behavior.
Speaker 1: That is right there. Yeah uh, And I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard this before, but I do think one of the
Speaker 1: most exciting parts of Don't Dream It's Over is in
Speaker 1: the It's in the third chorus where you do that
Speaker 1: walker with the bass.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that. Yeah, yeah, but do you come
Speaker 1: at it from the bottom, but.
Speaker 4: The A flat predominant A flat it's an F mine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1: F minor and you hit A. I think it's A,
Speaker 1: isn't it A? You go d E and then you're
Speaker 1: the court.
Speaker 3: Actually, I know you usually hit a little grace no
Speaker 3: drumming section. If it's where I think you're talking.
Speaker 8: Last, you're talking about the last course after the solo section. Yeah,
Speaker 8: so it's it's everything is the same, except it's n F.
Speaker 8: It's normally an A flat bass an F minor core
Speaker 8: with an A flat bass. That last chorus, it finally
Speaker 8: lands on the F minor, but everything else about the
Speaker 8: chorus is the same.
Speaker 5: The bass part on that song that obviously is signature
Speaker 5: is the do do Do Do Do Do Do Do.
Speaker 4: At the beginning.
Speaker 5: Nick can get tables at restaurants that are full by
Speaker 5: just going do do Do Do Do Do Do Do,
Speaker 5: And you know that's that's his cold card.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they say, we don't do walk ups at this
Speaker 3: this restaurant. You have to reserve a table, and I'll
Speaker 3: just go do do Do Do Do Do do do.
Speaker 8: Remember you, I remember we had the whole song was
Speaker 8: worked out, and then there was idea, oh, maybe we
Speaker 8: should do something on the base to bring it in,
Speaker 8: And you did that, and I was like, is that
Speaker 8: any good? Because it was so fast, you know, like
Speaker 8: the song has this kind of beautiful slow move. Also,
Speaker 8: song's coming in, just playing kind of quickly, And it
Speaker 8: took me a minute before I realized it was good,
Speaker 8: but I was. We we just did it. And those
Speaker 8: are the days you had to punch in and out
Speaker 8: so you couldn't go We couldn't just do a bunch
Speaker 8: of things.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I punched in. Remember that Chad, poor old
Speaker 3: Chad Blake. He used to used to he was the
Speaker 3: best punch or arena ever. And and because I was
Speaker 3: so inconsistent that actually playing a straight linear delivery of bass,
Speaker 3: he'd be punching me in and out for single notes
Speaker 3: or whatever, and he I could used to drive him crazy.
Speaker 3: It used to really drive him crazy. But god, I
Speaker 3: mean the stress in those days for him to hit
Speaker 3: record play, record play, you know, just dropping single notes
Speaker 3: in you know for me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and phrases. But that's it's kind of we were
Speaker 8: talking about. This is kind of how the base style evolved.
Speaker 8: Like we would be in the control room and we're
Speaker 8: just punch in a section, and you'd just be trying
Speaker 8: all these things and then it's like, oh, that's good,
Speaker 8: But then we'd have to deal with the next bar.
Speaker 8: You can never remember what you just played, and then
Speaker 8: once in a while if he if he messed up,
Speaker 8: then we'd have to go back and do the whole thing.
Speaker 8: But it kind of that freedom and that you were
Speaker 8: just trying things kind of helped develop the style within
Speaker 8: the band. So it was it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: And he could get into any restaurant just by singing
Speaker 1: that little kit and sang I pushed that in.
Speaker 3: Chad would have to go Chad would.
Speaker 4: That would be obscure? Wouldn't get into that many places
Speaker 4: like that?
Speaker 1: That would do it?
Speaker 4: That'd look a bit creepy.
Speaker 1: Actually, I did want to ask you because you know,
Speaker 1: so much of the band's early sound was Paul Hester's drums,
Speaker 1: and I always thought he was underrated as a drummer.
Speaker 1: So he had such great swing and great drive. What
Speaker 1: when you when you started learning those songs? Were there
Speaker 1: things you took from his drumming?
Speaker 7: Yeah, undoubtedly, I mean all the recordings of the early
Speaker 7: crowdit Hoouse records have got against so much character and
Speaker 7: the playing, and Paul was huge part of that. And
Speaker 7: like you say, the swing and the drive and the
Speaker 7: explosiveness when it needed to be is really distinctly Paul.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it was definitely something that I was really
Speaker 7: mind when I was learning all these songs for touring
Speaker 7: and trying to get you know, my own personality as
Speaker 7: a drummer into the music as well is obviously something
Speaker 7: I want to do. But when it comes to the
Speaker 7: classic songs that everyone has come to love and have
Speaker 7: listened to for a long time, it rewards the audience
Speaker 7: a lot when they hear those signature films or something
Speaker 7: from the record that is you know, maybe bands over
Speaker 7: the years would stop being really faithful to the recordings
Speaker 7: because they get tired of it and stuff like that
Speaker 7: or want to explore.
Speaker 4: And that's cool too.
Speaker 7: But I think there's a few things in drumming, and
Speaker 7: Paul's drumming in particular, that were really important to me,
Speaker 7: and I would guess that they were really important to
Speaker 7: the listener. So I wanted to get some things really
Speaker 7: spot on that Paul had done.
Speaker 3: Brush Your brush's style is just so evocative of Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know that.
Speaker 8: I think a big thing that I didn't even know
Speaker 8: it at the time, but a big thing that Paul
Speaker 8: had that Elwer has because I've seen Neil with different
Speaker 8: drummers when Neil's playing acoustic guitar, and it's the amount
Speaker 8: of swing in the high hat. I mean, Neil's talked
Speaker 8: about that and it's just the way it went together.
Speaker 8: I just sort of took for granted. But Elwer has
Speaker 8: got that. I think even when we play the more
Speaker 8: classic songs, so it to me it sounds like Elwright
Speaker 8: doesn't sound like Paul, but it has that swing, so
Speaker 8: it's satisfying. It's just got a different, slightly different shade
Speaker 8: to it, and most people in the audience wouldn't know
Speaker 8: the difference, but he's when Elwar is playing in this band,
Speaker 8: it's Elroy's.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: It's a right of passage in the Finn family that
Speaker 6: you have to learn how to play a mid tempo
Speaker 6: song without something like you're slowing down. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 6: of the classic songs are of a medium pace or
Speaker 6: not super fast, and so to play that and have
Speaker 6: it not feel like it's slugging along at any point,
Speaker 6: and the song is really important.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. How do you do that?
Speaker 7: It's a you got well just be mindful of. Like
Speaker 7: speeding up is the most common thing as a drummer,
Speaker 7: I think, and so you don't want to do that either.
Speaker 7: But when a song is mid tempo, it has the
Speaker 7: same tendency to slacken off because you don't want to
Speaker 7: rush things and the singing as soon as it gets
Speaker 7: too fast, you notice that because you can't get the
Speaker 7: words out in time, and so it's easier to.
Speaker 4: Very rarely speed up.
Speaker 8: Like it's.
Speaker 4: The acoustic, like Mitchell said, the acoustic.
Speaker 5: Guitar is my way of trying to generate the kind
Speaker 5: of amount of swing that you want from a song
Speaker 5: that you've written, and so the l was tuned into that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think one difference would be that Paul, when
Speaker 7: you had a symbiotic rhythm thing going on from the
Speaker 7: start that you know, Paul was uninhibited as he played.
Speaker 7: He was really you know, played with a lot of passion,
Speaker 7: a lot of irreverence. And I think I've got a
Speaker 7: different version of trying to lock in with your time
Speaker 7: because as a songwriter and bandleader, you're right, you know,
Speaker 7: your rhythm guitar is powerful force. You know, you can
Speaker 7: carry a whole song on its own, don't even need
Speaker 7: drums with Neil playing guitar, it's really incredible rhythm. And
Speaker 7: so you can't come in as a drummer with that
Speaker 7: other instrument being so rhythmic and demand that everyone's going
Speaker 7: to follow you the whole time. So there's this sort
Speaker 7: of push and pull between me and Dad. I think
Speaker 7: on stage sometimes where it's who's who's leading the charge
Speaker 7: and who's dictating the terms of this rhythm, But in
Speaker 7: that it's micro seconds, you know, where we're really locked in.
Speaker 7: But there's something cool about I don't know who's driving
Speaker 7: the songs to dance and a dance you know.
Speaker 8: That's what makes the mid temple stuff sound like it's
Speaker 8: moving forward because a lot of drummers on mid temple songs,
Speaker 8: they really like the snare to feel really back. They
Speaker 8: think that that's deep and soulful.
Speaker 1: A bit of a delay, yeah.
Speaker 8: You really delayed, you're behind the beat and then and
Speaker 8: then the high hat.
Speaker 5: But this is you know, like a Christmas in a feel,
Speaker 5: you know, like a it has to be slightly danced,
Speaker 5: and it's even if it's slow or so I'll push sometimes.
Speaker 5: I mean, Alroy is probably having to be conscious of
Speaker 5: not speeding up with me, because I probably would. My
Speaker 5: idea of crispness and the feel might to some drummers
Speaker 5: just be like an invitation to get right on top
Speaker 5: and hit the snare a little bit too.
Speaker 4: You know, bristpiled.
Speaker 5: Alroy's got a really lovely way of setting things back.
Speaker 5: When you listen to the recordings from the live it's
Speaker 5: remarkable how relaxed it feels, and yet it's not. It's
Speaker 5: not lacking energy, but it's that he's got a really
Speaker 5: good sense of and things very rarely speed up. If
Speaker 5: I'm if I'm making it'd be the odd song we've
Speaker 5: made up time differences. But generally speaking, I listened to
Speaker 5: the end of a song, it hasn't gone up more
Speaker 5: than one or two bpm from the beginning, and that's
Speaker 5: quite unusual, I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a pleasure these days listening to
Speaker 1: a band that can speed up and slow down since
Speaker 1: everything else.
Speaker 3: That as well.
Speaker 7: Some songs do want to get three five faster than
Speaker 7: the breadge or in the chorus and at the end
Speaker 7: of the song, you know, like and that's a nice
Speaker 7: natural amount of swaying, and I value that in music
Speaker 7: a lot too. So I think drummings weird because you've
Speaker 7: got to be some sort of you've got to have
Speaker 7: some sort of discipline, but then also total inhibition to
Speaker 7: make it feel like this thunderous instrument when it needs
Speaker 7: to be. But as soon as you get carried away
Speaker 7: with yourself, you will speed up five bpm and everyone's
Speaker 7: looking at you, what's going on, And you're like, oh god,
Speaker 7: I had too much fun there for one bar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just have to And then that night you
Speaker 1: drive a car into the pool.
Speaker 8: That's the ya the way it feels like to play
Speaker 8: in the band. It feels like everyone's trying to play
Speaker 8: the mood of the song, and so I think everything
Speaker 8: just comes.
Speaker 1: Out of that.
Speaker 8: Now you must just play the mood of the song.
Speaker 8: Everything will take care of itself.
Speaker 1: You know, have you worked with bands where that's a
Speaker 1: problem almost all the no.
Speaker 8: I mean it's the way music used to be. The
Speaker 8: backing would be a mood and then the singer, you know,
Speaker 8: would kind of dictate the mood and everyone just followed
Speaker 8: the singer and it became something where everything is now individual.
Speaker 8: And you know, bands that play use a click track live.
Speaker 8: It's just horrible because now you're introducing this rigid thing
Speaker 8: where you should be playing music, so you're playing along
Speaker 8: with this rigid thing instead of playing together, I mean something.
Speaker 8: There's certain situations where something like that can work, but
Speaker 8: in general, if you see a whole concert and it's all,
Speaker 8: you know, people playing with a click, you're going to
Speaker 8: be bored and not know why.
Speaker 3: Yeah, surgeon retard is the thing of when you're going
Speaker 3: to see a band. I love it when a band
Speaker 3: just yes.
Speaker 1: They got in trouble for the name changed, it's changed now.
Speaker 3: But yeah, where there's a hesitancy as it goes into
Speaker 3: the first chorus and then it sits and then slows
Speaker 3: down again when it goes into the next verse. I mean,
Speaker 3: I love detecting that sort of thing when I'm watching
Speaker 3: a really you know, a really dynamic band, rock band,
Speaker 3: or ensemble, I mean in orchestras, that's always the way
Speaker 3: the conductor will say, as it moves from this section
Speaker 3: to this section, there is actually three breaths, four breaths.
Speaker 3: You're all rushing those four breaths, you know, and just
Speaker 3: watch my conducting and the piece will slow down. You know,
Speaker 3: it's extraordinary. They're even using click tracks now in orchestras,
Speaker 3: you know, right, well, you know, not for concert performances,
Speaker 3: but for TV. Yeah, film and TV.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, you played violin, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you played in a quartet. I did for
Speaker 1: a little while. But it's all that looking back and
Speaker 1: forth and yeah, when it gets going, it's really amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's natural people, that's the way people perceive, you.
Speaker 5: Know, well, it's the benefit of ours spent. You know,
Speaker 5: the tipping point concept that everybody talks about.
Speaker 4: Well, we're a while ago, and.
Speaker 5: If with a band, it's exciting at the moment because
Speaker 5: we're at that point. We've played enough shows now that
Speaker 5: we can I can sense us getting much better and
Speaker 5: understanding those kind of little micro the way that music
Speaker 5: is capable of being thought about, and you know, micro
Speaker 5: metering of the gap between beats. We're just leaving a
Speaker 5: tiny hole before the beginning of the next bar can
Speaker 5: add And you only get those moments when everybody's focused together,
Speaker 5: and so we feel like we're capable of becoming much better,
Speaker 5: you know, which is pretty exciting for an up and
Speaker 5: coming band.
Speaker 8: It keeps so we don't get bored. I don't, at
Speaker 8: least me, but we don't. It doesn't feel like anyone
Speaker 8: gets bored playing any of these songs. And no matter
Speaker 8: how many times we play them, because when we play them,
Speaker 8: we're playing the mood. It's not like, oh, here's this song,
Speaker 8: I've done it a million times.
Speaker 7: You know, you were listening to what everyone else is doing.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of people.
Speaker 8: To see how that mood is at that moment, and
Speaker 8: it might be moving a little and how can you
Speaker 8: contribute to it?
Speaker 1: So does that change with the crowd? When I saw
Speaker 1: you the other night, you know that was a concert
Speaker 1: where people were singing along with everything, clapping. How how
Speaker 1: does that change the playing crowd?
Speaker 5: Definitely to hear the crowd, because it doesn't lend itself.
Speaker 5: We did an open air the other night and we'd
Speaker 5: had two really nice sheds to get into a bounce
Speaker 5: back and hear the crowd, and we just weren't hearing
Speaker 5: them rebill. It's quite disarming, and you don't know whether
Speaker 5: they're really going along for it with it, you know.
Speaker 5: But yeah, the crowd will make their presence felt fairly
Speaker 5: early on if they often get them to sing early
Speaker 5: on to figure out whether they've got the you know,
Speaker 5: the gusto not to try it too much.
Speaker 1: I do want to talk through some of the songs
Speaker 1: on the new album, and I wanted to start with
Speaker 1: the Howl, which I think has got that beautiful guitar
Speaker 1: figure that starts it. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about writing that song.
Speaker 6: I wrote it as part of a solo project I
Speaker 6: was doing in the last few years called Hyperverse, where
Speaker 6: I streamed myself writing and recording a record on this
Speaker 6: platform Twitch. I've always had a very different experience in
Speaker 6: a studio than I do on stage, mainly with energy
Speaker 6: levels I find, and I wanted to figure out how
Speaker 6: to recreate that energy level I get on stage in
Speaker 6: a studio, and I thought, well, I think it's the
Speaker 6: fact you're being watched in the performance.
Speaker 3: Aspect of it.
Speaker 6: So I have made this whole record through doing my
Speaker 6: one man band thing, which is the thing I do
Speaker 6: as a solo artist, making a pre energetic record. And
Speaker 6: I handed a bunch of the songs over to Dad
Speaker 6: to listen to when I was kind of halfway through
Speaker 6: writing them, and so I was doing these long, sprawling
Speaker 6: jams basically, and then cut editing them down into songs,
Speaker 6: and that one in particular he really responded to, unknowingly
Speaker 6: responded to when he had it on a few playlists
Speaker 6: when he was on vacation and kept coming up and
Speaker 6: he would be like, what's that song? And it was
Speaker 6: the hell, I'm not even sure I knew it was you,
Speaker 6: but I thought it was something that would catch my
Speaker 6: ear from another room. There's something about music that sounds
Speaker 6: good from the next room. That's a lot of my
Speaker 6: music whole in the next room.
Speaker 7: The sonics actually really coming better.
Speaker 6: But when we were going into the second session of
Speaker 6: the of the album, Dad was really keen to try it,
Speaker 6: as he was a couple of hourroys things and stuff,
Speaker 6: and we That's like I said, it.
Speaker 3: Was done really quickly.
Speaker 6: Nick had to all of a sudden scramble to learn
Speaker 6: It's really quite a simple song except for the one
Speaker 6: change that happens, and I had a very particular baseline
Speaker 6: in that part. But we got it really, We got
Speaker 6: a very vibe take of it very quickly. But it
Speaker 6: was actually for me. It was a really nice thing
Speaker 6: because I had often I would be if I'm teaching
Speaker 6: a band a song, I'm probably only three quarters written
Speaker 6: with it, and a lot of it I ended up
Speaker 6: finishing on the back end, but that song was kind
Speaker 6: of a finished thing, and it made me realize how
Speaker 6: and that's what I was going to say, I want
Speaker 6: to bring finished songs to the band because you can
Speaker 6: actually move through them so much quicker and figure them
Speaker 6: out as far as what the end result would be
Speaker 6: so much and in such well, basically with less anxiety
Speaker 6: and less torturous behavior on my part. So it was
Speaker 6: really cool because I had so I had a version,
Speaker 6: this demo version for my record that if we did it.
Speaker 4: Dad was like, well, if we do it, we've.
Speaker 6: Got to make it better than your version, because otherwise
Speaker 6: what's the point.
Speaker 8: And so we did.
Speaker 6: We worked on it really hard and actually cut quite
Speaker 6: a bit out of it and made a three and
Speaker 6: a half minute version of what my was like five
Speaker 6: minutes and full of long guitar solos and stuff like that.
Speaker 6: And then I went back in after we'd finished the
Speaker 6: credit House record and made my version better, not better
Speaker 6: than the Crowdhouse version, but I got to go and
Speaker 6: take what I learned from the.
Speaker 4: Crowded House one and apply that to my version. And
Speaker 4: so now I've got these two different versions of the song.
Speaker 1: It's a great vocal in that song too, just really
Speaker 1: lovely and can I ask for Teenage Summer which became
Speaker 1: the Was it designed as a did you think we
Speaker 1: need a single?
Speaker 4: Or it just not really?
Speaker 5: But I saw potential in it. It was a jam
Speaker 5: that we did. Actually Elru was in on the original jam,
Speaker 5: and if you heard the demo that, yeah, it's very different.
Speaker 5: A couple of parts have remained. The bassline that starts
Speaker 5: the song was actually the main bass riff in the
Speaker 5: song at that point, and I just kept reworking it
Speaker 5: and reworking it and reworking it and taking apart and
Speaker 5: putting it back together again. We tried it with drum machine,
Speaker 5: we tried at Latin, We tried it a number of
Speaker 5: different ways, and it was really hardy like his demo,
Speaker 5: it was really experimental and weird song. But when it
Speaker 5: got to the end part of it where it had the.
Speaker 6: One been near you and are we going to have
Speaker 6: some sort of new that there was this like pop
Speaker 6: song in there.
Speaker 4: There's a pop sign dying to get out. Yeah.
Speaker 6: But we tried it the three of us once and
Speaker 6: didn't really get anywhere, and then we tried it again.
Speaker 6: We tried it and then with the band we tried
Speaker 6: it didn't really get anywhere.
Speaker 4: It changed a lot, it did.
Speaker 5: I just had I knew there was something in there,
Speaker 5: and I just chased it basically, and Elroy played the
Speaker 5: drums the drum track on it about three different times,
Speaker 5: three different places. And in the actual fact, we used
Speaker 5: a couple of the fills from the I used a
Speaker 5: couple of his fills from the early takes and sliced
Speaker 5: them and even though the drums sounded completely different.
Speaker 4: You can sort of do anything, really.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I was very happy with the way it
Speaker 5: turned out because it was kind of fully realized, and
Speaker 5: sometimes they don't turn out to be fully realized.
Speaker 1: So did you ever think of giving up on it?
Speaker 1: Was it just that.
Speaker 4: Prust probably did? Yeah, I would have had a few
Speaker 4: moments Rolf was not happening. Let's forget about it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was subject to a lot of discussion, that song,
Speaker 8: a lot of things. I did a failed effort at
Speaker 8: trying to edit it into what I thought was a
Speaker 8: more cohesive form, and it was just landed like a
Speaker 8: ton of bricks. You know. That was bad. We had
Speaker 8: a version that we had the drums really lively sounding
Speaker 8: really roomy and lively and which is exciting, but it
Speaker 8: seemed to wear out. And then we tried a version
Speaker 8: where the drums were very dry, thinking, oh, more intimate,
Speaker 8: that'll carry the song.
Speaker 4: We've got a rap over the sixty.
Speaker 8: So we just went through a bunch of different things.
Speaker 8: And then you know, there was if you listen to
Speaker 8: the song, like after the first chorus, the way it
Speaker 8: goes back to the intro is really tricky. I mean,
Speaker 8: that's that. That was that was Neil's idea. But so
Speaker 8: we finally got a dynamic where the song felt like, Okay,
Speaker 8: this is how it's the shape of it, and by
Speaker 8: the end it's its peak. So we had to figure
Speaker 8: out all kinds of things and after it was breakdown
Speaker 8: and you know, all these things.
Speaker 6: After it was mastered for the third time and already
Speaker 6: imprinting in for the vinyl, Dad changed the title of
Speaker 6: the song and changed the beginning of the song. Well
Speaker 6: that's what we kind of thought. Maybe he was losing it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't even know what the title changed because
Speaker 5: actually just only because I was on a zoom call
Speaker 5: or a FaceTime with my grandson and I are Liam's son,
Speaker 5: and he was listening to it, I think, and he said,
Speaker 5: I like that song, Papa teenage summer song. Well he's
Speaker 5: just the kids have spoken, you know. That's what it
Speaker 5: was called Life's imitation.
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, yeah.
Speaker 5: For a couple of years, or for a year, for
Speaker 5: a couple of years. Yeah, I've never done that before
Speaker 5: that late in the piece. But hey, there's this surprises
Speaker 5: yet to come, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to ask about Thirsty, which began with you.
Speaker 1: We talked about it a little. Yeah, So what was
Speaker 1: it like, Neil when you first heard it?
Speaker 5: If you listened to the instrumental version of Thirsty without
Speaker 5: it's really nice instrumental and that's how it was Elroy.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a little scrubbed up. Engineer has done
Speaker 5: a bit of job on it, and maybe a couple
Speaker 5: of editions I've been added. Mitchell might have played some things,
Speaker 5: I think, and Liam's added a bit of guitar, but
Speaker 5: essentially the arrangement was the way Elroy had. It was
Speaker 5: a beautiful instrumental. I think the daughter of Stephen, who
Speaker 5: mixed the album, came in one day as he was
Speaker 5: before the vocal was added and loved it, absolutely loved it,
Speaker 5: and I think she was disappointed when she heard the vocal.
Speaker 5: So whether or not we improved it, I don't know.
Speaker 5: But it's a beautiful piece of music. The way the
Speaker 5: chords flow is just effortless and very elegant. Yeah, they
Speaker 5: picked my ears up and I found himut that seemed
Speaker 5: to work with it, and ran with it. And then Ail,
Speaker 5: you know, helped we sort of to and fro on
Speaker 5: what the lyrics might be.
Speaker 3: To me, it took on a kind of a Simon
Speaker 3: and Garf uncle vibe at some point as to falling
Speaker 3: in love with it, I think was. And then the
Speaker 3: idea of some people never getting thirsty, that just was
Speaker 3: so abstract to me, you.
Speaker 5: Know, Yeah, I didn't know if it was appropriate to
Speaker 5: even have that, and as we fought against that a
Speaker 5: little bit because it was like what, but I it
Speaker 5: had really evocative feeling for me, because there are people
Speaker 5: like Mcfleetwood's mother never drank water for thirty that he
Speaker 5: said he never saw her drink water.
Speaker 4: She only ever had drink cups of tea, cups of tea.
Speaker 5: I suppose that still quenches a thirst, but you know some,
Speaker 5: but it's also now it's got a modern.
Speaker 7: Well yet to be thirsty is kind of hungry for
Speaker 7: sex and the modern concept of someone's too thirsty. They're
Speaker 7: like showing off too many signs of being into it,
Speaker 7: and so suddenly some people never get thirsty. It has
Speaker 7: a very different meaning if you think of.
Speaker 1: It that way.
Speaker 8: A bit of.
Speaker 1: Shed separated that from Mick Fleetwood's.
Speaker 7: Mother that you can do that in post, right, you
Speaker 7: can chuck a better time in between.
Speaker 4: It's a good juxtaposition. I'd be happy with that in
Speaker 4: a lyric. We will talk to Mick about it first,
Speaker 4: but yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, we haven't talked about this because this is
Speaker 1: one of your many bands. But you did tour with
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac did that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did it? Did you learn anything about bands?
Speaker 4: Not a thing.
Speaker 8: Or think?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: It was amazing experience, like stepping into another life for
Speaker 5: a while, you know, and so unexpected.
Speaker 4: We knew Mick well enough for me.
Speaker 5: To know that I would have a good time with him,
Speaker 5: you know, that wasn't entirely unknown, but really unexpected. And
Speaker 5: learning somebody else's songs and the way they put songs
Speaker 5: together is really fascinating, getting deep inside it because you
Speaker 5: think you know the way that songs work, but then
Speaker 5: when you actually learn them, you find that there's more
Speaker 5: going on than you realized. And they're harder to learn
Speaker 5: other people's songs too, the little nuances that they add
Speaker 5: and mine would be hard for people to learn.
Speaker 4: I understand that as well.
Speaker 1: But can you give me an example of just one
Speaker 1: of their songs that once you got into it, you're like, well,
Speaker 1: this doesn't work the way I.
Speaker 5: Thought, Well, maybe all of them. Really, I think they're
Speaker 5: all like that. They're all sort of even go your
Speaker 5: own way, which you think you've heard. And I wasn't
Speaker 5: like a big fan of the band in those days particularly,
Speaker 5: I liked admired them for what I knew that they
Speaker 5: were really big, you know, great pop songs, and they
Speaker 5: had something and I'd seen a couple of live things
Speaker 5: back in the day that were amazing, you know, when
Speaker 5: they were at their prime. And but you think you
Speaker 5: know and it is a very simple song, but it's
Speaker 5: just learning it is more is more difficult than you think.
Speaker 5: And it's not that they're I think I have more
Speaker 5: quirks and nuances and the way that I put songs
Speaker 5: together than Lindsay, but somehow they're hard and like things
Speaker 5: like I was serlening Monday morning. Just quite a strange
Speaker 5: song and a weird lyric as well, actually, but so
Speaker 5: much singing, and it's really high and it's very hard
Speaker 5: to sing. It's because there's no gaps in the vocal
Speaker 5: and I found I had to actually in the end,
Speaker 5: So I can't. Don't think I can do that one
Speaker 5: unless we drop the key quite a bit. And we
Speaker 5: stopped doing it anyway because I just I was blowing
Speaker 5: my voice out every night trying to do it. So yeah,
Speaker 5: things I would have if I'd been doing that myself,
Speaker 5: I would have created space somewhere so I get a breath. Yeah,
Speaker 5: these are not particularly interesting details. What I did learn
Speaker 5: was that classic bands are a result of and music
Speaker 5: as a result of five in that case, individuals having
Speaker 5: quite distinctive personalities musically, and something about that being undeniable
Speaker 5: and unreplaceable. Although having said that, I did replace Lindsey.
Speaker 1: But did you ever talk to about it.
Speaker 5: I've not met him. No, I have a feeling we'd
Speaker 5: probably get on just fine. And I don't think he
Speaker 5: was I mean, it was very he was not happy
Speaker 5: about the situation. I understand that, but I don't think
Speaker 5: he would have blamed me for it particularly, and I
Speaker 5: think he probably had some awareness of my songs and probably,
Speaker 5: you know, I would hope at some point he might
Speaker 5: have thought, well, at least somebody that can write a
Speaker 5: good song is you know, taken my part. But the
Speaker 5: believing in a band, and actually it can be redefined,
Speaker 5: especially Fleetwood Mack have redefined themselves so many times, have
Speaker 5: been so many different kinds of bands. I related to that,
Speaker 5: and I thought, oh, maybe I can do that. And
Speaker 5: at the same time as I thought that, and I
Speaker 5: was appreciating that about Fleetwood Mac, I thought, I've been
Speaker 5: playing music with el Roy and Liam for the last
Speaker 5: few years and it's been feeling great, So why not
Speaker 5: just you know, one ring to bind them all. And
Speaker 5: I put it to Nick and he was super enthusiastic
Speaker 5: about it. And then we thought, well, what about Mitchell
Speaker 5: as well?
Speaker 4: Why don't we ask him?
Speaker 5: We asked him twenty five thirty years ago and he
Speaker 5: was too busy trying to be a producer. But maybe
Speaker 5: the time will be right, and it just was, you know,
Speaker 5: was right.
Speaker 1: I was interested when I saw you the other night,
Speaker 1: which was a great show that the crowd got to
Speaker 1: vote on the song they were playing, and you seem surprised,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you were genuinely surprised that
Speaker 1: they chose Into Temptation, which I think.
Speaker 4: Is just we give them an option of It's an
Speaker 4: experiment on this too.
Speaker 5: We haven't done this before, but we thought they like
Speaker 5: having some degree of people request songs all the time,
Speaker 5: and we often don't do them because they come at
Speaker 5: the wrong time, or it's a way of people being
Speaker 5: able to express an opinion.
Speaker 4: I got you gets a lot of.
Speaker 5: Nods, and that Into Temptation is a surprising one, but
Speaker 5: it has endured for a lot of people as one
Speaker 5: of our best songs. And we don't play it every
Speaker 5: night because if we've got four seasons in the set,
Speaker 5: they occupy quite a similar dynamic and feels like sometimes
Speaker 5: too many of that kind of song might lower the
Speaker 5: tempo of the show, but it's actually finishes the show
Speaker 5: quite well. Strangely, it doesn't leave people feeling depressed. That
Speaker 5: leaves them feeling sort of content in a funny kind
Speaker 5: of way.
Speaker 1: It seems well, it seems like a very catholic song,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's like man, it.
Speaker 5: Does express, it does express all the dimensions of temptation
Speaker 5: and guilty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what's next for you is that you're going
Speaker 1: to keep touring and then.
Speaker 5: Well we are in the short term, we're going to
Speaker 5: the end of the year pretty NonStop now, which is
Speaker 5: you know, amazing for developing as a band and has
Speaker 5: some degree of you know, a bit of a wrench
Speaker 5: for Liam to be away from family and we all
Speaker 5: have the and Nick, you know, and Mitchell below. Mitchell's
Speaker 5: son's just left home so he's free as a bird.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's but we're going to be touring next
Speaker 5: year a little bit less, but we're going to make
Speaker 5: a new record next year, I think.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was we didn't know until we did an
Speaker 6: interview that it's thirty forty thirty forty years since the
Speaker 6: first since the band started. Next year, so we've got to,
Speaker 6: you know, that's kind oft to the anniversary, make the
Speaker 6: best record that Crowded House has ever made.
Speaker 4: Yeah, after forty years.
Speaker 5: Well, we're capable of it, and everyone will be coming
Speaker 5: with a clean slate, a fresh palette. There's no other
Speaker 5: you know, nothing else that is competing for our attention.
Speaker 5: Next year so and we can be together in a
Speaker 5: studio more often if we can navigate it from a
Speaker 5: geographical point of view.
Speaker 1: Well, listen, thank you so much for coming in here.
Speaker 1: It's been thank you, it was till late.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you the real very nice conversation. Thanks
Speaker 4: for jowing us.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bruce, thank you, thank you, great Honor.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to Neil Finn, Liam Finn, Al Ray Finn,
Speaker 2: Nick Seymour and Miss Froom of Crowded House for talking
Speaker 2: about their new project and their long histories together. To
Speaker 2: hear a playlist of our favorite songs from Crowded House.
Speaker 2: You can go to this episode's description or visit us
Speaker 2: at broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube
Speaker 2: channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where
Speaker 2: you can find all of our new episodes. You can
Speaker 2: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
Speaker 2: produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
Speaker 2: Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollinay.
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Speaker 3: I'm justin Richmond.