Tim Finn: Interview: Star Times

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INTERVIEW: "FINN'S ODE TO JOY"

New Zealand Sunday Star Times: February 13, 2000
By Dyland Cleaver
(Contributed by Emma George)

Tim Finn is back with a new album which he says has liberated him. Dyland Cleaver spends an hour listening to the Kiwi legend.

Some people see the light in the strangest places. Who would have thought Tim Finn's schoolmate Dave Dobbyn, who belted out "drink yourself more bliss, forget about the last one, get yourself another", would have found it in the Bible? Who would have thought Finn's road to Damascus would lead him to Nashville, Tennessee?

Certainly not Finn. But disciples of one of our true rock legends needn't fret over their fretboards, Finn isn't about to go all Garth Brooks on us. His two trips to the home of the Grand Ole Opry in 1999 were as perplexing to him as they are to you. But the journey has spawned a new album, Say It Is So, with 11 classic tunes and only the merest hint of a pedal steel guitar. "There's a pedal steel on one track. Jay (producer Jay Joyce) didn't want to use any, but I snuck a bit on."

Again. . . Nashville? Tim Finn?

"Yeah I know," he laughs. "It was a good friend of mine in Sydney who suggested I go over there. She'd been talking to a mutual friend and he was pretty excited about all the studios they had and the opportunities for recording. He was talking about it from a technical point of view which never really interested me, but I suppose I got caught up in the atmosphere, and it seemed a sort of perverse idea and I thought 'why not'?"

"I didn't want to make a country record by any stretch of imagination, but I still love guitars and the sounds I've always loved and I knew that would be a good place to get raw sounds. I recorded the album quite quickly. In the end it took about 13 days. The whole fact of being there, it felt so weird and so different. Between Nashville and Memphis, which is only a four-hour car trip - so much great music came out of it.

"We (his wife Marie and two-year-old son Harper accompany him on the road: he describes the domestic trio as a 'tight unit') went on a road trip to Memphis while we were there and went to Sun Studios and I was just thinking about Elvis and stuff. I was never a big Elvis fan as a kid. I was a Beatles fan. But the Beatles worshipped Elvis so there's a connection. Being there...there's something in the water. I love all that old country stuff like Hank Williams and there's a band out now called Wilco which I really love. The drummer from Wilco (Ken Coomer) is living in Nashville so he played on the record.

"The producer and guitarist, Jay Joyce, is an intriguing character. He's from Cleveland and he's not really into country either. But he's into music and he's into studios so again it's just the ease and the speed with which you can work there. You don't have to second guess anything. There are good studios everywhere, but there's something about the place. It just churns music out all the time. It encourages you to work and encourages your inspiration.

"It was basically the last place on Earth I wanted to go, but that's why I kind of liked the idea. I'd done some recording but I'd scrapped it. I wasn't sure what the next move should be, but this just sort of came out of the blue and I met some good people in Nashville."

If that sounds like an awfully long quote, it is, and at the same time let me offer an explanation. Tim Finn is just about the most contented man I've met. With only the merest of prompting he's off, waxing lyrical about a range of subjects from dance music to the Viaduct Basin to family. To steal a line from Sports Illustrated, he took the Q out of Q&A.

Which is fine. I can think of worse ways to pass the time than listen to as 40 odd going on twentysomething idol expounding and extemporising.

"It is a happy time, but it's never fait accompli. It's not like 'I've arrived' or anything. It's a non-stop invention, this game of life, and as soon as you think you've got it, you lose it. I'm having a very happy phase, but with that happiness comes, hopefully, a bit of empathy for what's happening around me. True contentment comes with empathy.

"I'm not hung up on the past or the future, I'm hung up on where I now and at the moment I feel like I'm dangling free."

But surely there are low times?

"Like anybody, but I'm not a particularly low person." Now, then, would appear to be a good time to put all that sibling rivalry stuff out of the way. After all, there was always a nagging feeling, fueled in part by the media, that there was some resentment between the fabulous Finn brothers. It was never more widely speculated than when Tim joined Neil's Crowded House briefly - they wrote most of Woodface together - and then left. 'There's a Fraction Too Much Friction' headlines were commonplace. So did the reports of brotherly unlove amuse, bemuse or anger him?

"You expect it, because sibling rivalry is a big story. I mean Cain and Abel was the second story of the Bible after the Creation. We have our reality and we have the perceived reality and quite often they're two different things.

"There is rivalry, but it seems to work, like when we get together and play we push each other because he digs what I do and I dig what he does, so there's a lot of respect. When we're together it's like fireworks, it just sparks. When we're not together if he's doing well and I'm struggling or whatever, it doesn't feel like a bad thing. There's a lot of love there and I'm just grateful to have a brother, to be honest. As we get older and as our families grow up it's just going to be awesome to have him there and all that."

Clearly there are differences for all to see as well. I suggest Neil would never have been able to record an album like Say It Is So in 13 days. "He's a bit more labour intensive and that's how he works . . . he shapes and he sculpts. There's many great records that have been made arduously over long periods. I like working fast, but some of my favourite records were not made fast at all so it's not like I'm saying it's got to be like this. I've made other records which I've spent a lot more time on. Neil can work fast too."

Fast enough for another Finn brothers collaboration? "Umm, there could be, but I can't really say when. You know, we want to do it. We did this jam thing the other day, I was trying out this drum and guitar thing with Neil and he got on the bass and we had this band thing going. It was amazing, just the two of us. It's pretty magic when we get together and we want to do it. It could be soon."

The drum and guitar thing he is talking about is his new live show. He will be touring Say It Is So acoustically and as a solo act. He's learnt to play the bass drum and snare with his feet while playing the guitar and singing at the same time.

He's touring the US soon and has plans to do every city in New Zealand during the winter. For the first time though, he will be choosing his venues and agendas. Say It Is So is nearly a complete solo project from funding to promotion.

"I met people who were talking about the net and amazon.com and these other ways of selling records and being more autonomous. I kind of got inspired by that so when I finished the record I didn't bother shopping it around. I basically knew I wanted to control it myself and be the record company. In the process of doing all that it's kind of liberated me. I'm feeling quite outside the patterns I've been in for the last 20 years."

There's a certain irony here. One of the reasons Finn didn't shop it around was the fact he didn't want to have the pressure of making radio-friendly singles to please the executives. In liberating himself from the pressure Finn has made a record with untold single potential. 'Underwater Mountain,' 'Shiver,' 'Currents,' 'Twinkle,' 'Death of a Popular Song,' and 'Some Dumb Reason' would all cut the radio mustard.

"I want to go up to the States for a month, but that's my decision, it's not the record companies pressuring me. I'm choosing the cities I want to go to like Chicago and Boston, New York and LA. And of course I'll go to Nashville and Memphis.

"Once you've set up the album and done a bit of promotion, then if a major label comes sniffing around, that could enhance the ability to get the word out and I'd never rule that out...but at the moment it feels good."

He doesn't need to sell multi-million copies. There's going to be food on the Finn table for some time yet; getting out and performing live is what's driving him.

"I'm confident I can support my family regardless and I'm not trying to be flippant about it because i know things can change. But that side of my life is fairly stable so there's no desperation in that sense. There's a strong passion and a need to play it live and connect with an audience so it's coming more from there than saying, 'gee, I need to sell records, how am I going to survive?'."

In fact the last time Finn ever felt the need to "sell" was before Split Enz tour de force album True Colours was released. "That record had to succeed or the band would have broken up. We'd gone through nearly eight years of playing live and building an audience and we'd reached that point. Every band has written in their blueprint to be the biggest band in the world, whether they believe it in their guts or not. It's part of the desire.

"We believed we were the best band in the world. For a New Zealand band to believe that at that time was unusual. I'm not sure where it came from, but on any given night we absolutely felt it in our bones that we were the best band in the world and that belief sustained us.

"So there was frustration before True Colours and we knew it had to explode one way or another. And luckily it did. It didn't mean we became huge in America, but we became a big band in several different territories. It was nice anyway. It felt like justification or resolution."

Many millennium revelers would agree with Finn's admittedly immodest but proud assessment of Split Enz's virtues. For a time just before midnight, during their one-off concert at Auckland's Viaduct Basin, they felt like the greatest band in the world again. For a band with so many memories this one will always stand out.

"It was so emotional. We did 'Six Months in a Leaky Boat' just before midnight and I've never had a more powerful moment on stage...ever. I was looking across at Neil and I could tell he was feeling it too. Everybody was; it was a feeling close to ecstasy (the emotion, not the drug) and that's not easy to attain."

He know how to behave after a concert now too. Gone are the days where he takes the buzz of performing live deep into the night and early the next morning. Now it's back to the family.

He hasn't grown out of the rock star look - his youthful features remain intact and there's always hair product to hide those greys. And it seems Finn doesn't want to grow out of his day job.

"I'm a songwriter, why fight it? I still feel sometimes like how the hell am I still doing this after 25 years, but at the same time I know why I'm doing it: because I can, because I'm good at it and there's a need for it.

"The only other thing would be some kind of writing. Maybe a book of some kind; it wouldn't be a novel or an autobiography. I like using prose. As much as I like writing songs I also like writing sentences and pushing prose around."

Evidently he's a fair storyteller too. A former Waikato Times journalist remembers a series involving prominent personalities writing true stories from their lives for the paper. Finn obliged with a childhood story about biking from Te Awamutu to Mt. Maunganui with a friend. Although authors were submitting stories as well, Finn's was head and shoulders above the rest; vivid, compelling.

He'd make a good author - he's told this story without to much help.

-Say It Is So will be released in early March