Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin RichmondCrowded House had one of the most enduring hits of the 80s with “Don’t Dream It’s Over.” The commercial and critical success of that song launched the Australian-New Zealand band and its esteemed Kiwi songwriter, Neil Finn, to pop stardom. The band made three more critically acclaimed albums before breaking up in ‘96. But over the years the band has come back together at various times to put out new projects including their latest, Gravity Stairs.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Crowded House songs HERE.
Pushkin.
Crowded House had one of the most enduring hits of the eighties with Don't Dream It's Over. The commercial and critical success of that song launched to the Australian New Zealand band and its esteemed KIWI songwriter Neil Finn to pop stardom.
The band made.
Three more critically acclaimed records before breaking up in ninety six, but over the years they've come back together at various times to put out new projects, including their latest Gravity Stairs. Crowded House is now made up of their original bassist, Nick Seymour, the American producer of their earliest albums, Mitchell Froom on keyboards, their frontman Neil Finn, and his two sons, Liam on guitar and vocals, and Elroy, who's taken over for the late Paul Hester on drums. On today's episode, Crowded House talked to Bruce Headlam about how they look to tread new ground while still honoring the group's roots, what it's like for Neil Finn to with his sons, Plus they tell some hilarious stories from the rehearsing of their new album at an Airbnb. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman.
Here's Bruce Headlin's conversation with Nick Seymour, Mitchell Farum, and Neil Liam and el Roy Finn of Crowded House.
We never have to do this, but because it's a podcast, could you just go around and introduce yourselves.
Hello, I'm Liam Finn. Hello, I'm Nick, and I am Neil Finn, Mitchell and I'm Elroy.
All right, and you are Crowded House and this is just great to have you. I'll start with you, Neil, because you did the bulk of the writing. Can you talk about writing the songs for this album how it came about.
I make little demos in my writing rooms, go up, try and get a five period.
I can go in every.
Day just sort of turn up and some days are non productive, and then beget into a flow and you have a few breakthroughs and all of a sudden, it feels like you're in the groove. And that's how the songs come out in stages. Basically, I'll make a little demo of a verse maybe, and then a chorus will occur to me. In the process of that, I'll make another demo. Just a series of demos and it's always well, since I've got a four track cassette recorder back in the early eighties, that's been the way I've written. I very rarely sit down on a piano and just write in the old fashioned way. I kind of jam, listen back, find the bits that seem golden, and then add to them.
Do you write on piano or do you write on guitar?
I do right on both.
But yeah, often they're just little atmospheres that spark an idea, and then I often deconstruct them at various points. I'll the band will play them and will learn them, and we'll do them a certain way and they'll be pretty really good, and then I'll decide that there's more to be had. I'll deconstruct them, and then next thing they hear they're completely different. Well, you know, it's a relearning all of a sudden.
And I was Liam as well, because you co wrote some of the songs. Tell me about what was that like.
It's all kind of been pretty organic because we've made music together a lot over the years, and especially in the last eight years or so. Yeah, I probably write in a fairly similar fashion to Dad, just kind of making noises and playing with pedals and stuff until I get excited by something and then stuff kind of gets birthed from that without even really realizing it. It's always the thing when you go away and you realize you're humming a malady around and around that that's probably the thing that's come out of it. And you know, for this record, I had a couple of songs. For one song that was pretty fully formed that I just got to bring to the band and I think we played it twice and that was it, and that's what the second one was to can take was on the record, And so it's yeah, I mean the next record, I'm hoping that we'll all have a bit more time beforehand to come to the table with as much stuff as we're at least a bit closer to the amount that Dad does. We get like the sixteen demos sent to us like it was kind of an unexpected session. Really, we were isolating in Byron Bay before Australian tour. We had to spend two weeks in isolation, and so we did it in a studio, made a lot of sense and fooled ourselves into thinking, oh, it's just rehearsal and maybe we'll cut a track, but we probably did like eight or nine songs and that became the sort of meat of the record really, and they were just things that Dad had and that he sort of gave to everyone and sort of see what got.
Responded to and stuff.
But it was all kind of half halfway there already with as far as the atmosphere and stuff.
Yeah, I would think presenting songs to the full band would be a really intimidating situation. I would think presenting songs to my father in a band would be which way.
You're talking about it, and like, it is really intimidating. But I'm never sure that he feels just as intimidated presenting his songs as as I do, actually feeling like I don't know his songs as well as he knows. And I think that's the main thing, is that when somebody presents an idea, a demo or whatever, it is everybody's obligation to know it as well as the person who's actually formulated the thing before you actually try to add or converse about any ideas you might have to help that song, you know, if we're going to actually play it together. And that's probably the most intimidating thing.
Is, let's wish for thinking in some cases, because obviously, even to make a demo, you get deep inside your idea you have very kind of fixed ideas about certain things. And you know, and el Roy had a couple of things that I picked my ears up demos of his that we actually kept relatively intact actually because they have they had a kind of untouchable mystery about them that we couldn't really we didn't want to break down. Sometimes with my stuff, I'll have a feeling on a demo too, that's very hard to recapture. But what happens with the band is that it doesn't sound like you imagined it would, but actually it lets light into the arrangement a little bit and actually in a way makes it, i think, more approachable and you know, surprising in a good way. So I but you know, not expected when I've seen demos out that everyone learns the demo exactly as it is.
A familiarity is nice, right. Yeah.
The first song we did on the record was Magic Piano, which is the opening song on the album, and it was quite a different demo if you heard it now. I mean the song itself had very familiar parts, but we worked. It was really quite a complicated song to start first, we took two days to learn it and we've got a really really good take on the floor. We sort of knew we were onto something at that point, but in a way it was, you know, counterintuitive to start with one of the most complicated songs.
But what made it a complicated song.
Just as unusual, well a the demo. We had to reconstruct the demo. We took out several bits from the demo and just found our own way with it, and there was still familiarity in there, but and it had some unusual time changes in the end, a great deal of interplay between bass and guitar that was really beautiful and took a while to evolve, you know, just it just had a thing. And our engineer, who we'd never worked with before, was probably incredibly happy that we took two days to get to that point because he was able to get the most kick ass sound over two days by moving MIC's around, and by the time we got the take it sounded really really impressive as well.
So it was that the first song we did, Yeah, Magic Piant Yeah.
So I guess when you move into a new space and then you're actually trying to get sounds together, and one of the songs is suggested or a thing is suggested in a way to try to break the threshold of collaboration and everyone actually, you know, gelling, and that goes with the engineer as well. The engineer is probably really under so much scrutiny and can be quite anxious to have the band break through because it's partly their responsibility to get a great sound. Yeah, and you know, a song. Sometimes a song can end up being the sacrificial lamb for finding that threshold, you know. So, but that was it was really encouraging when we actually got that taste and suddenly we went, oh, okay, we're in the right zone hopefully.
Now are you set up in the studio to rehearse or are you set up to record?
At that point, it depends if you talk to my guitar Tick at the time, he thought we were there to rehearse. The engineers we were there to record. We were trying to keep the pretense that we were just rehearsing so that we wouldn't get red light syndrome and put too much pressure on ourselves. But yeah, so somewhere in the middle there we were kind of it was an unspoken thing. I was thinking it was. We'd planned it so that we found a good engineer, had a proper studio, and it was always in my mind the possibility of getting some new songs going.
Yet, yeah, we were in a fully functioning recording studio and everything was miked up, and so it was all going to be usable. But it is something. There's something to be said about the semantics of believing you're not doing a take. It's got a real irreverence or a little bit of a lack of self consciousness that can sometimes be a lot better than when you're like, Okay, we're going for this specific song version, like we're going to get it now. It's like there's a subconscious pressure on it that sometimes it works and it helps the performance, but sometimes it's just a bit more thought about than it needs to be.
We're not taping now, by the way, so you can to say, so, Mitchell, you're you're both the keyboard player and the producer.
Well, no, I'm not the producer of this band. No you don't, now it's a there is no producer. Well, the engineer was a co producer, but this is not a band that needs a what I would call a proper that kind of everyone here is very skilled and everyone here is a producer.
So but you you produced their first few album, Yeah, the first three I worked on. So what was what did you do then that you don't have to do now? Or what do you do now? You didn't do that?
It was a completely different time in music. It was a different time in Neil's life as a writer, and so I could bring well, you know, we were both just starting off, so we just threw anything in the pot that we could and and.
That was.
It was more of that kind of proper situation. But now has made so many records. Any of that kind of guidance or anything. It just I mean, I'll speak up if I feel something, but yeah, but it's not we're not looking for the leader to.
You know, Mitchell's fully engaged with the production but with us all and he's in the room with.
Us, But they don't look to me, which I'm very grateful to, you know, like you're the producer.
I look to you, Mitch. I study your left hand.
It's a very funny dynamic actually, because Mitchell often gets involved in helping Nick complete his base parts, and it's like an old married couple that just really, you know, sort of just beyond just about getting shirty with each other.
But not not quite.
And Mitchell's very good at just you know, reinforcing the important beats that the bass has to land and gets get some over the line, doesn't doesn't.
He's still got some production now.
Used to be in the control room with Chad most of the time, playing a few things the control room, so there was a there was a physical.
Yeah, you look too for a different role, but I don't think a person could come into this band with that role and be welcome. They'd have to They'd have to be very gentle with the way they move things around. You're not going to say, oh, Neil, like that form is all wrong. You should be doing this because Neil's got his own way of writing now and it's it's it's unique to himself. So it take a real delicate presence.
I could benefit from that sometimes. Yeah, I think remaking them the structures about five times.
Yeah, but that's to get it to where you want it. No one else can get it to where you want it.
Well, someone else could come along.
I tried once. Yeah, on the last record. I tried once or twice, but I just ended up straightening it out too much and it was a failure. So it's you know, it's just different.
And you're the base wrangler and I'm not even the full keyboard PA because I play.
But then these guys all go away and play some stuff too.
So then I'm interested about in the sound of this album because it is a very distinctive sound. It's not each song has its own kind of pace, in its own feeling. That's got a very experimental sound. How did that emerge out of these songs?
I think that was more with the engineer and in Neil's area because we how many times do we get together three times and to cut tracks?
Yeah, we wait to ten days three times to get all the tracks done because we.
All live in different places. When it came down to the actual full formulation of the sound, it was mostly done in New Zealand with Neil and Stephen Shram and we get things and we contribute, but they were mostly getting that down. I mean, everyone says things. Everyone has an opinion and might say one thing that people respond to and then keep that in mind. But it's more, Yeah, I don't know I just think it's more relaxed. It's not like there's no guru in the room colon things out.
And I think the atmosphere and the sort of the vibe of the record was very much formed in those that first by and Bay Thing And maybe it was a combination of working with Stephen for the first time and the way we were all playing. But there was something happened which was really kind of languid and kind of lush and something we were responding to in the rainforest of you know, northern New South Wales or something. And it really like when we took it away, I was really excited by this relatively unseelf conscious sound that we were making. It felt really different from the last one and really cool, and I think that was retained when I listened to it now. I can still hear that as the essence of it, but it did certainly go in many different directions over the next year.
Well, you can hear the crickets and the rain at the beginning of the end of songs and a couple of them.
Yeah, we got to record with the doors open to the forest, you know, and so it was kind of.
Hot. I mean, what time of year was. It was it January March, okay, so it's the end of summer. But they were they were inundated with biblical proportions of rainfall. There were floods. There's actually a town now that's been declared a disaster zone that the government, Australian government is buying compulsory purchasing people's houses because they can't keep there anymore. From you know, there was so much rain fell in that period and we were kind of isolated by the quarantining of the compulsory two weeks that you have to have when you arrive in Australia at that time, and also the fact that we couldn't leave the studio because of the rain it was. And then one night actually I got my room was flooded. My bedroom was flooded up in the middle of the night and know it was knee deep deep in water when I put my feet out of the bed, you.
Know, And you can hear that on the record.
You can hear it on the very wet ankle deep bass tone.
It reminded me a bit of Temple of the Lowman. Of of all your albums, it was the album that kind of in it sort of sounds. It also reminded me of an album and I didn't realize till this week that you had produced because it's one of my all time favorite albums, which is Keiko Oh Rights Lobos. Someday I'd love to talk to you about that album because.
That was Yeah, I would say if there's a similarity, because I was there for all of them, was there was a free spirit. It was an open kind of creative spirit going on that was backed up with a lot of confidence, and if you have that, you can get a long ways. In the case of this record, for me, that one of the most difficult things is if you have a a demo that's attractive, and now you bring it into a band, and now the band interprets it, and sometimes it doesn't get better, but magic piano it got a lot better. And it was just one of those things where like for Neil bringing that song into the band, it was kind of clear to all of us that it was what we were doing was just of a high level. Maybe it was the best track we had cut up as a band up to that point, so that certainly got us going and gave us confidence because you can hear a demo I mean, Neil can bring in a demo and you think, whoa that that just sounds really good. But what should we keep? What should we just try it and not think about what's there already or you so you have a small window in which you better get to some kind of improvement to make you feel like, let's just let go of this demo and move forward as a band. And yeah, so it's tricky, and it's also for writers, at least in my experience, that's when people are the most vulnerable, like Neil or Liam or oh where they can write something, but if people haven't heard it before, the way you react when you first hear it is much more has a much greater effect on them than if the song's already released. And then someone will come up to Liam and say, oh, I love that, you know, I love how Yeah it's insecure. Yeah, so you've got to all keep a very positive outlook on it and try just try not to feel pressure and just just try and see what happens. And all those records, it was like that temple Ment. Some people said was a bit dark, but we had a lot of fun doing that record, and my memory, you know, it was it's much less stressful than the first album, and you know it was it was fun to do.
It's always weird to react when you see reactions to an overall body of work because people make assumptions that you were sort of going for that. Yeah, you're not really going for anything. You're just going to try and make the songs sound as good as they can, you know, And maybe we're in a point now where we're attracted to more more dreamy landscapes than we would have been as we were a more rollicking pop band in the early days, you know, because that's what we just that stage of our lives, and people do sometimes compare our new records to what we were like then, and you sort of go, well, that's just beside the point. Really, Yeah, it's not. We're not trying to be or wanting to be a rollicking pop band every now and again. It's fun, and there might be one that comes along that works that, but we're interested in exploring the atmospheres that we're capable of creating, which you know, if you listen to Alroy's demos for instance, and the ones that are on the record Blurry Grass and Thirsty, the music that he had made which had just a great sense of atmosphere and the way he approaches drums is he's not a big, you know, Keith moonstyle guy. He's got a really nice feel going and beautiful fills here and there. A Liam's got incredible atmospheres that he makes with his pedals on the guitar. We want to embrace all of that and make it part of what and we're getting really better at doing that too. I think on stage you might have noticed the other night, but we're starting to feel the freedom to be able to jump off the script like we used to back in the day and utilize all of that, you know, those beautiful attributes, knowing that if I go into a strange moment, Liam will engage a pedal somewhere and it will suddenly make me feel okay about it, and Nicole will always join in, you know, and Mitchell'll be standing by with some cool keyboard thing. And that's a really beautiful feeling that bands only get when they've been playing together for quite a while, I think. And some bands don't ever want that, They just want to learn the song, turn up, do the same show every night. But it's always been part of our manifesto. To try, and then every album to album explore new things, nuances and possibilities. For Watson, I think we're just getting to a point where it feels to me like we could make our best record. Hopefully they all are, but the next one might be, you know, a real breakthrough.
Everyone's got quite a distinct personality and the way they play in this band, I think, and so and all the you know, greatest bands I think have got those identifiable characters musically that you hear the song and you can kind of tell who's playing drums or tell who's playing bass, and you know, that's what you'd strive to do, be able to put out great songs that have a bunch of individual character but then together make this wonderful cohesive geiled noise.
And how does your personality come out in your songs on the album?
I mean, I think the way I write is probably again not that dissimilar to Neil or Liam, but I I guess just having the time to explore those little avenues and then present them as you've had all the chance to vet bad ideas into stuff you feel self conscious about before someone hears it, and then you know you've got something you believe in a little bit more yourself.
But I always always got little remnants and fragments of ideas that were early ideas that are.
Just like, what the hell is that?
And then he can't really you sometimes can't explain what they are either, you've got a track of where it came from.
The way I write sometimes is you get a cool vocal idea in your head, and so you sing it into your phone and then you listen to it two weeks later, and it's got no time signature and no key that you can pull from, and it sounds like oh yes, and might be some trigger of like, oh, I can get that back again. But it really pays to put a lot more down than a straight vocal at first.
If you can, you should carry around a bit of time.
Yeah, I mean, look, sometimes it works.
I write an open tuning sometimes, and if I don't make a record of the tuning, it's just impossible to learn my song that I just wrote, you know, like it slips your mind on what the shapes were. You'll never get that feeling back from the open tuning. It's even after all this time, I still haven't learned to write down my tunings.
We'll be right back with more from Crowded House. After the break, we're back with the rest of Crowded House.
You know, one thing that is consistent in the band neck is your artwork. And I always thought when you guys first came out, you were this band that arrived with a kind of like there's a sort of whole sensibility, and I think so much of that was your early covers, and you designed the costumes initially too.
Yeah, I guess that was probably the connection. When the first paint, the first cover that I did, I sort of these caricature were kind of costume or outfits within this kind of little theatrical setting. And then when we were going to start playing in pubs in Australia, I thought, well, I'll make those jackets, and so then there was a much more cohesive link between you know, the artwork and advertising posters, all that sort of stuff, with the way we looked on stage, which also was a hangover from Split Ends because they did that, and I was always impressed with that. I liked going to see bands that actually had some sort of theatricality in the way they present it, in the way they looked, and we're probably not that it's not. We don't We're not so sort of theatrically confined now. I mean, we don't wear matching outfits or anything particularly, But with each album cover, I mean, I when we're in the studio, I'm trying to actually somehow threads some sort of documentation of the conversation and the musical setting, the just things to be able to present something to the band at the end of a session, saying, look, I've got an idea for a record cover or you know, add material or whatever, stage or whatever, just keeping illustrations. And this one obviously is a homage to class Forman, you know, the guy who designed Revolver, but it was also a means to show different personalities within the heads and the hair and the similarly to that record but probably that record cover. I'm not entirely sure whether it's actually a positive thing or not. I mean, I've not gotten any flack about it, but I've seen a few comments on social media saying like, that's just a rip off of the Revolver album cover, you know, and I'm kind of, well, that's a homage, you know what. People don't know what that means.
So is a ripoff of a different song.
Well, I just want you to explain why I'm in a lifeboat with a huge wave about to swamp my boat.
If it's describing, what's the most exciting one I came up with. I thought this is perfect. He's trapped in reeds on one side edge, you know, and then or kind of you know, some sort of mangroves. You know, you're in a boat. And then then there's this other lifeboat that of survivors of a shipwreck and in his quiff, because I mean, Neil's hair is a law unto itself. I mean, really we could.
It's an illustrator's dream.
It's an homage.
It's a homage to marsupical life in Australia. You know, I was delighted when I got his his Oh, I've got a good one of Neil. And that's a good likeness of Neil, you know. And then then I started in on on on Liam wearing a kind of a sun Rah kind of warrior hat helmet, you know, with you know, good style of climped motifs ober it, and.
You revealed nothing of yourself. There's nothing like blank. That's a blank, blank canvas.
Iss I'm the most pholically challenged in the band as well, and I gave him a perfectly good head of hair.
Well, it's not a phollically challenged band, shall we say.
Overall ficular speaking, no speaking, speculating hair.
No, this decent amount of here going on.
So I do want to go back to the beginning first of all, in the Finn family, because this is a kind of it's just become a like a Johnny Cash band or something. You've got all the relatives coming in and out. So, Neil, you grew up in New Zealand. Yeah, And was it a musical family you grew up in.
Not in the sense of there being any you know, professional serious musicians in the family. But my mother had could play piano by ear, although she only really knew two chords. Every song would be reduced to two chords, but she could play the.
Hits of the day.
And when she met my dad and she taught really, when I think about it, taught me to harmonize doing the dishes. You know, we just sing you are My Sunshine and she'd do the harmony and then we'd swap. And when I think about it, that's how the harmony started. And my dad was a jazz fanatic. He used to listen to jazz records after work every day with a whiskey in one hand, and you'd hear him in the other room because at that time I thought jazz was real lame, you know, because I was into pop music. And i'd hear him go, Go, Joe Go, you know, on some jazz genre and'd be doing a solo, and he really got into it. So he had the love of music. He was kind of tone deaf. He couldn't sing in tune, but he had a beautiful tone, a really warm, rich vibrato. But he'd just sing on one note.
Really helped when auto tune came along for him.
You got that tone. But yeah, but.
You know, in the mass A church, we go to church and he would I just tear him singing the hymns like this is my command and I.
Give you.
Know, really it's a beautiful tone. But there's no tune whatsoever.
But that was and we sing every They'd have parties every weekend and they'd always be singing. The piano player called Colin O'Brien, who would knew all the songs, and they'd ply him with cigarettes and alcohol and he'd keep playing all night.
You know.
He unfortunately didn't live to a great age, but he provided a lot of entertainment along the way.
And that would these be like pop songs, beatles songs.
Those those parties were more like the old songs, you know, Sinatra, Eli, Fitzgerald, Bing Cross, all those that era. But then when we'd be gatherings when we were kids and we'd be drawn in and hauled up to sing. My brother and I that was included B songs, and you know, everyone had their item that they had to do well known for a party piece. My brother and I used to do Jamaican farewell. It was a beautiful two part harmony and that you know.
We did that.
We had Catholic priests that used to sing two little boys.
I was about to make a job and it just made itself. Were just formed the.
Darning Brothers and you know my auntie used to sing Stormy Weather actually know Piggy Dawson. Yeah, just people would know that if you've grown up in that environment, people know that in the next family is very similar.
You know, we would have your family were performers though, weren't they.
Well, I mean in the sense that you know, we went to church and we were known as a singing family, and so we would get asked to be the the kind of choir associated with a with we with weddings particularly, we'd sing, but they would be hymns though, like partys angelic cors saw, I mean, very casus.
What sort of outfits would you have to dress? And when you did those more?
Oh, no, no, you'd wear cities, you know, you wouldn't be kind.
They dress you in those.
Yeah, well I've never asked actually in the early days. No, we we didn't have to wear kind of chorister outfits or anything. But but we'd get paid to do a wedding. You'd get a little backhander from the family that you sang for. But this is in country towns that we lived in in in Victoria, Australia. But we learned to harmonize around, you know, doing family jobs like the dishes and the you know. And when we go camping, you know, we'd we'd we'd sing in the tent and all the other people in the camping ground had sort of know we were singing family and we'd get asked to, you know, come to different parties to sing. And I think but it was a lot of it was like Von Trapp kind of stuff, you know, Gilbert, Gilbert and Sullivan.
You know. So when did the bas start for you?
I was in the school at high school, I did, you know, I did music, But then I took up violin and played in the school orchestra. Both my brother and I were first and second violins in the school orchestra and then in an area orchestra in Melbourne. And I kind of I realized when I was I played guitar, but I realized that all everything I could hear was kind of the counterpoint of bass and the top line of vocal. That's that's what songs made sense to me, you know. And then I realized that that's all the ladies ever here as well. So that was was a motivation.
That's why bass flayers are just cat nap.
He'd get to hang around with musicians.
All bass players want to hang around with musicians.
Yeah, that's what they say.
How many strings for that'll suit me?
Neil? Did you have formal music lessons as well?
I played piano, Yeah, I did. I got a few music lessons, maybe really early on. I had a couple, and then I just watched my brother and learned the things he was learning. But then I got formal lessons and did like the Trinity College of Music sort of. I actually got up to grade eight and the practical and I wasn't a very good sight reader, but it was. I'm so sort of grateful glad that I did it, because it's quite hard, you know, learning piano, as most kids will testify us, it's pretty tedious.
Scale to the Trinity.
You know, you've got to really apply yourself, and doesn't seem like it's that much point when you're a kid. But I'm glad because my left hand is still not it's not amazing, but at least I've got a sort of a left hand. Most people learn how to play piano just a just whole you know, just marking the beat with the left hand, and it's all about playing chords with the right. So I feel like that was very valuable.
The reason I ask is, you know, you're known as this great, great melody writer. I think that's what people would sort of say about you, but it's actually the harmony in a lot of your songs is incredibly interesting. Even the song like Don't Dream It's Over, which people would think well, that's like a three chord pops on. It's not at all. It's quite complicated.
In a sense.
There's all I would hope anyway that most songs, and it's not a prerequisite, but most songs would have a moment where it dips or dives into something that you weren't expecting. It just feels like it's a good thing to aim for, and I think that would be actually consistent with these guys as well, because and even making a record, like I said before, it seems like every record should contain some little mystery that's unlocked during the course of the recording, rather than just repeating the same thing, which seems less point I suppose with harmony, it's always interesting to me the addition of an odd note will do because they will contain feelings. They all harmony is enhancing feeling, and you can put a different nuance into your feeling. Yeah, and you recognize a feeling when you first get an idea for a song, like Liam referred to, that moment where you suddenly go, ah, and this is I'm feeling something from this idea that just emerged, And then the fun is decorating it and you can go too far, but the way you decorate it can help that feeling along or.
Bring a lot of effort into making it sound effortless at the end that to explore it like to the nth degree, and sometimes, like you said, it goes too far, but you keep pushing into all of a sudd that's like it was always that way, And I think that that's something the Beatles did really well is do quite intellectual things and music that didn't turn people off because it was too intellectual.
It just sounded right.
Actually, there was crazy time changes and you know, things that actually on a if you look at it in an intellectual way, it's like, oh, how did they slip that one?
And it's kind of the exciting part to me a lot when writing is that you've got something that your brain hears a strange harmony or a strange malady over top of something and it won't work. But if you're convinced that it's the right idea, you kind of keep working at it until it does work, until it does make sense, and some times you'll get a really strange result, as you know, at the end of it, where you've kind of got this quite unique sounding thing because you had to adapt everything to make your strangeness success.
Beauty of that then, is that it always existed When you know it so well, it's just suddenly like, yes, it's always been that way, like you know do in the Beatles song here comes the Sound. I mean, what a crazy little resolve that would be.
Some people are good at it. The truth of the matter is, and you know, I've worked on with a lot of different people. Some people are very good, uh, you know, a harmonic way. The Beatles will be an example of pretty much every chord in every song sounds beautiful. So it's it's a combination of the harmony and the melodic line are just you know, over the top. And I think in Neil's case, I think that that's You're right. I mean, that's sort of something people don't notice. You may think that it's the melody, but it's also the harmonic language, which also happens to be distinctively Nils. And it's the two together that give you that emotion. It's if you if you just made the chords what just very vanilla c major to a major and had the same melody, it wouldn't it wouldn't do it. It's some people are just good at that. Some people are clumsy with their chords, and you know, some people just can only deal with very simple chords.
But it's you know, you have a lot of use, a lot of chromatic movement, like I'm thinking four seasons in one day, moves back and forth between a couple of chords.
Yeah, I'm not sure what the I'm attracted to sixth in terms of intervals, I like sixth and minor six is min six is a part of what I find myself attracted to all the time, and nights and add ons.
You know. Actually, sometimes if.
I get too far with that, I actually try playing the song with no added notes whatsoever. And sometimes actually it's the key one instrument. Just playing the chord straight can suddenly make the whole song come into.
If the play melody is singing six and ninth, yeah, a straight chord can sound beautiful because yeah, you're not sticking within those three notes the tryad notes.
So it's but the mystery of it is the is the weird thing I am. I think I'm better now. Experience has taught me to spot the good stuff, but it's still coming at it like a child, and you go like just play along and something hits you, and I like to keep it in that pretty free form state for as long as it possibly can, and then you use your critical mind, your adult mind to kind of organize at various points because you know you have to, really but it's still a mystery. I still don't really know what I'm doing, you know.
But you have the language, that's the thing. You have your own harmonic language, and we have gone about things, and then you can just stretch it out into whatever if you're not coming from a.
Place I think you and I strive to be like that as well, But your songs are sort of more like you've You've just got a goal to get it as good as it can be. And it's not that it should sound like this or it should sound like this and the inspiration for it needs to be aligned in.
This style of music.
It's just like, this is a magical concept, this song, and it can go anywhere, and if I kind of, yeah, am free with it, it will take itself in its own direction rather than me pigeonholing what the potential of it is, you know.
And I think that's really valid, actually, what you just said, because that's what leads you forward. If you just follow you, it can be surprising. Sometimes you go, actually, there's a hint of Greek in this thing, and I don't know where that came from, or you know, it seems to demand a little baroque touch, but I don't know why.
But yeah, and then you explore that and you push that too far and realize now it's way too borroke. You get rid of that and leave it as a hint and then move on to the next thing, and you know that becomes this amalgamation of just nods to stuff rather than it being in a real a Greek song.
Yeah, exactly for your.
Brain, like I think, you know, I don't know. Sometimes I wonder, but can drive you crazy as well. The song on the album called night Song, which is a little bit about the experience of being obsessive about music and all night having the tune you're working on go around in your head. And I'm sure everyone relates to that that plays music. It's unfortunately it can be really like maddening. You know, it can feel like you're going crazy with her with it.
Will you watch to so you watch the same film for nine hours of a day. You'd go to bed thinking of that film as well as as you spend a whole day to doing music, it's going to be there all night.
Probably.
I used to be able to work through the night, but I have to stop after dinner now generally, or us, I'm going to not sleep.
When we come back, we'll have the rest of Bruce Headlen's conversation with Crowded House. We're back with the rest of Crowded House.
I saw a speech you gave to the Yale It was a group of psychiatrists. Yeah, I should say it was a speech. It was not a session.
It was they asked me to talk to do a talk on creativity.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was seminar and I was fascinated how much you talked to about your subconscious and how you try and keep the conscious mind out of your writing as long as possible.
Yeah.
Is that the same today.
Yeah it is.
I mean there's about you have to look at it and coming in the morning often after it putting stuff together, and you get some insight into the mechanics if they're actually working, and you start to analyze the mechanics of the song. But I do like to keep that free floating feeling of a that you haven't discovered everything about an idea until long as possible. Sometimes it's as I'm putting the final vocal on before that goes to mastering, I'll have a little revelation about something might be better. I don't know that it's always a very good thing that I do. But this album was a classic example of us continually changing and improving, and it actually, I think most of the time did get better. And we would Stephen and I would look at each other after we just changed something. I go, I like it better. You know, you like it better. Whether or not these guys did, I don't know. I've seen it off to them.
There was about a four month period where they were just hitting home runs and I was like, wow, this is incredible. And then a couple came in that weren't. Those are the hard ones because you don't want to be negative, but you can just say, hey, maybe, you know, I think maybe that was better before.
I always appreciate that's the thing about a band, you know, you get to hope that it is a little bit sensitive to get knocked back on an idea.
But it's hard. It's a painful.
Relief to have somebody to do it.
Yeah, but it's painful to have to say it to someone, and it's painful to hear because, like I say, that's when you're your most vulnerable. You know, no one's heard it yet, so you're.
Just but it's not like, you know, it's not like Britain's got talent or something. It's like, you know, you're not sitting in front of a panel of that's painful, it's brutal, No.
But you know what I mean. It's just it's best to be as positive as possible through this whole, the whole process until you're done recording, because then once it's out who you don't care anymore, you know.
But do that that trying to keep your subconscious so engaged. Is that with both lyrics and the music.
It's only just the way I've ended up feeling like the way I can work. I kind of wish I was a guy who had like poetry, just books of you know, lines that I could then apply to music, because I think that would be a really nice change.
But it's just not not the way it rolls for me.
I find that I'm most trusting of lines that come out spontaneously as I'm writing. I don't often know what I'm singing, and then I listen back to it and I go, oh, that's that's quite a good line that it suggests this. So I maybe write a couple more lines along those lines, along that train of thought at the time, and then I'll get excited about the little idea developing. I go and reward myself with a coffee, and you know, and then I'll come back and I won't be in the same frame of mind.
It'll be really hard all of a sudden to finish the song.
But yeah, but it also means your songs have a very particularly the lyrics have a very dreamy quality. Things are associated, you know. I think a song like whether with You, You've got the line about the car on the shelf, Oh yeah, boat boat, pardon yeah, and then you've got the beautiful line or sing like a bird released? I can I can imagine a lot of songwriters would say, I've just written this line. Do I sing like a bird released?
Now?
I have to rewrite this whole thing about being a bird released? And you don't it stays in a bigger picture.
Yeah, Well there again, as l we referred to before, it's kind of like the the they slot into place at a various point.
It's really quite weird and.
Sometimes quite time consuming to find words that I'm not consistent. I'm not bothered whether they follow each thought follows in a logical progression, but they have to relate to each other in a way that's kind of opens people's minds to little thoughts and doorways and things that are not intellectual. Because I like songs always have that I didn't really know what they meant. I just liked the sound of the words and the way that they certain phrases just pick you up and take you somewhere and you can switch off your conscious mind that you use for reading or you use for analyzing every other thing in your day.
And so that's the kind of lyric that.
I always liked, and that's what I've allowed myself to pursue as a lyricist now. And when they hit, I think they hit really in a powerful way because they're not They're operating on a different level than an academic thing. And sometimes I don't hit. When I look back on some of the lyrics, I go, that's clunky and clumsy and didn't really make it there.
But you know, one of my co hosts, and I'm Malcolm. We did a book with Paul Simon, and I was amazed when he talked about song how much of it was just like I just like the sound of that line, and.
That was just I mean, he's a great lyricist, and at his best he was able to write. I mean they were impressionistic lyrics too. Actually, when I think about it, like Sound of Silence, you don't really see a clear narrative in there, but it's incredibly evocative. And I always think it's sort of a combination of enough concrete images that put you in in a place you can sense a place, and abstract images that you become dream you know, dream like in your mind. And also it's really nice to sort of sense the person who's singing, and even if you don't get a it's not the person who's singing. And I'm not imagining Paul Simon's life when I'm listening to Sounds of Silence, but I'm imagining somebody on the streets having a particular convergence of you know, awareness and you know loneliness possibly, And so it has to evoke a good lyric by hook Crook has to evoke a time and a place and a person subliminally at least.
Are you a visual thinker because a lot of your lyrics have a really strong sense of place.
I think that that's been a sort of a thing I try and put in, and I don't always do it. Sometimes it's just the way I'm feeling.
That's the lyric.
Other kind of lyrics just and nowadays, particularly the confessional lyric is very much the order of the day, you know, like writing a diary and the way you made me feel because you were mean to me, or you drop me, or you know.
That.
I like a lyric that's got a couple of phrases that link you to the day, like you know, whether it's the boat made of China or something, there's an image that you can put yourself in a room and yeah, is that maybe a yes to your question?
I don't know. I think it is. I think they're very visual. I'm continually struck with the once I hear the lyric not necessarily confirmed when we're working a song up, but it will evoke a definite visual reference to me that then inspires me to actually affect a certain approach to what the foundation notes or styles should be to actually set that visual scene.
And how do you go about assuming Mitchell isn't in the room to keep you on the beat?
Now that was I work with Nick a lot more in the early days. Okay, he's way beyond all that now.
Because you do it makes sense you played violent. There's a lot of beautiful little figures in the in you're playing, including Teenage Summer, which I think was your first single. After that, there's a lot of great little figure A lot.
Of those little counterpoint ideas come off the skip of Neil's words, so that if he if if a lyric in a in a verse partickee like a chorus will be hopefully the same, it'll be a refrain and he sings it the same words when it is so that the bass can sit underpinning in a solid give its solidity. But with with with verses, often I'll look for a counterpoint that has a slight gap in, or an announcement that skips off his palette. If he's saying a certain word, or the way he's the word is falling around the beat, I'll try and and and identify that in a in a way on the bass as well. It's sort of it's quite inspiring, but with a song like I remember we were recording Blackwater White Circle, and I came up with a bassline, and I remember because Neil had just plotted down and put the chords down to that on acoustic guitar and saying a a vocal over it, because we we hadn't learned that song by this stage, and there's a lot of chords, and so I had to Suddenly the pressure was on me to come up with a baseline on Nick, can you do a baseline now? And I'm like, and you were. You were texting somewhere. You're on your phone and you're calling out the cords as I'm moving through a baseline that I had this idea of a sort of a tango style baseline. And meanwhile Mitchell sitting on the couch behind me with his arms folded, and I can just I can just see him shaking his head, you know, like in the in the glass. Yeah, but was moving through these notes. Neil's going see sharp A, oh, it's a minor. Then it goes to E a major E major, and he's calling them out before I'm actually landing on the note to do the little figure, and then.
Well, yeah, and then the temperatures rising in the in the room as next trying to fashion a bass partner. I go outside, I think to continue my phone call or something, and suddenly there's Nick flying through the door and jumped straight in the pool in some kind of it was in some existential crisis with the with the baseline. He just needed to go. And you know, it was quite a moment actually that I think.
The reason I ran out, put the base, put my base on his stand, and ran outside and dived into the pool with clothes. I just needed to I had a terrible hangover and so I recall and I just needed to shock myself into knowing to just be decisive.
Basically, well, that's when you and Steve it had opened that bottle of incredibly expensive tequila at the house and then went and bought a cheap bottle to fill the bottle back up.
Again.
That was.
B and B behavior.
That is right there. Yeah uh, And I'm sure you've heard this before, but I do think one of the most exciting parts of Don't Dream It's Over is in the It's in the third chorus where you do that walker with the bass.
Oh okay, thank you.
Do you remember that. Yeah, yeah, but do you come at it from the bottom, but.
The A flat predominant A flat it's an F mine.
Yeah, I get that.
F minor and you hit A. I think it's A, isn't it A? You go d E and then you're the court.
Actually, I know you usually hit a little grace no drumming section. If it's where I think you're talking.
Last, you're talking about the last course after the solo section. Yeah, so it's it's everything is the same, except it's n F. It's normally an A flat bass an F minor core with an A flat bass. That last chorus, it finally lands on the F minor, but everything else about the chorus is the same.
The bass part on that song that obviously is signature is the do do Do Do Do Do Do Do.
At the beginning.
Nick can get tables at restaurants that are full by just going do do Do Do Do Do Do Do, And you know that's that's his cold card.
Yeah, they say, we don't do walk ups at this this restaurant. You have to reserve a table, and I'll just go do do Do Do Do Do do do.
Remember you, I remember we had the whole song was worked out, and then there was idea, oh, maybe we should do something on the base to bring it in, And you did that, and I was like, is that any good? Because it was so fast, you know, like the song has this kind of beautiful slow move. Also, song's coming in, just playing kind of quickly, And it took me a minute before I realized it was good, but I was. We we just did it. And those are the days you had to punch in and out so you couldn't go We couldn't just do a bunch of things.
And yeah, I punched in. Remember that Chad, poor old Chad Blake. He used to used to he was the best punch or arena ever. And and because I was so inconsistent that actually playing a straight linear delivery of bass, he'd be punching me in and out for single notes or whatever, and he I could used to drive him crazy. It used to really drive him crazy. But god, I mean the stress in those days for him to hit record play, record play, you know, just dropping single notes in you know for me.
Yeah, and phrases. But that's it's kind of we were talking about. This is kind of how the base style evolved. Like we would be in the control room and we're just punch in a section, and you'd just be trying all these things and then it's like, oh, that's good, But then we'd have to deal with the next bar. You can never remember what you just played, and then once in a while if he if he messed up, then we'd have to go back and do the whole thing. But it kind of that freedom and that you were just trying things kind of helped develop the style within the band. So it was it's kind of interesting.
And he could get into any restaurant just by singing that little kit and sang I pushed that in.
Chad would have to go Chad would.
That would be obscure? Wouldn't get into that many places like that?
That would do it?
That'd look a bit creepy.
Actually, I did want to ask you because you know, so much of the band's early sound was Paul Hester's drums, and I always thought he was underrated as a drummer. So he had such great swing and great drive. What when you when you started learning those songs? Were there things you took from his drumming?
Yeah, undoubtedly, I mean all the recordings of the early crowdit Hoouse records have got against so much character and the playing, and Paul was huge part of that. And like you say, the swing and the drive and the explosiveness when it needed to be is really distinctly Paul. So yeah, it was definitely something that I was really mind when I was learning all these songs for touring and trying to get you know, my own personality as a drummer into the music as well is obviously something I want to do. But when it comes to the classic songs that everyone has come to love and have listened to for a long time, it rewards the audience a lot when they hear those signature films or something from the record that is you know, maybe bands over the years would stop being really faithful to the recordings because they get tired of it and stuff like that or want to explore.
And that's cool too.
But I think there's a few things in drumming, and Paul's drumming in particular, that were really important to me, and I would guess that they were really important to the listener. So I wanted to get some things really spot on that Paul had done.
Brush Your brush's style is just so evocative of Yeah, you know that.
I think a big thing that I didn't even know it at the time, but a big thing that Paul had that Elwer has because I've seen Neil with different drummers when Neil's playing acoustic guitar, and it's the amount of swing in the high hat. I mean, Neil's talked about that and it's just the way it went together. I just sort of took for granted. But Elwer has got that. I think even when we play the more classic songs, so it to me it sounds like Elwright doesn't sound like Paul, but it has that swing, so it's satisfying. It's just got a different, slightly different shade to it, and most people in the audience wouldn't know the difference, but he's when Elwar is playing in this band, it's Elroy's.
Absolutely.
It's a right of passage in the Finn family that you have to learn how to play a mid tempo song without something like you're slowing down. Yeah, a lot of the classic songs are of a medium pace or not super fast, and so to play that and have it not feel like it's slugging along at any point, and the song is really important.
It's really interesting. How do you do that?
It's a you got well just be mindful of. Like speeding up is the most common thing as a drummer, I think, and so you don't want to do that either. But when a song is mid tempo, it has the same tendency to slacken off because you don't want to rush things and the singing as soon as it gets too fast, you notice that because you can't get the words out in time, and so it's easier to.
Very rarely speed up.
Like it's.
The acoustic, like Mitchell said, the acoustic.
Guitar is my way of trying to generate the kind of amount of swing that you want from a song that you've written, and so the l was tuned into that.
Yeah, I think one difference would be that Paul, when you had a symbiotic rhythm thing going on from the start that you know, Paul was uninhibited as he played. He was really you know, played with a lot of passion, a lot of irreverence. And I think I've got a different version of trying to lock in with your time because as a songwriter and bandleader, you're right, you know, your rhythm guitar is powerful force. You know, you can carry a whole song on its own, don't even need drums with Neil playing guitar, it's really incredible rhythm. And so you can't come in as a drummer with that other instrument being so rhythmic and demand that everyone's going to follow you the whole time. So there's this sort of push and pull between me and Dad. I think on stage sometimes where it's who's who's leading the charge and who's dictating the terms of this rhythm, But in that it's micro seconds, you know, where we're really locked in. But there's something cool about I don't know who's driving the songs to dance and a dance you know.
That's what makes the mid temple stuff sound like it's moving forward because a lot of drummers on mid temple songs, they really like the snare to feel really back. They think that that's deep and soulful.
A bit of a delay, yeah.
You really delayed, you're behind the beat and then and then the high hat.
But this is you know, like a Christmas in a feel, you know, like a it has to be slightly danced, and it's even if it's slow or so I'll push sometimes. I mean, Alroy is probably having to be conscious of not speeding up with me, because I probably would. My idea of crispness and the feel might to some drummers just be like an invitation to get right on top and hit the snare a little bit too.
You know, bristpiled.
Alroy's got a really lovely way of setting things back. When you listen to the recordings from the live it's remarkable how relaxed it feels, and yet it's not. It's not lacking energy, but it's that he's got a really good sense of and things very rarely speed up. If I'm if I'm making it'd be the odd song we've made up time differences. But generally speaking, I listened to the end of a song, it hasn't gone up more than one or two bpm from the beginning, and that's quite unusual, I think.
I mean, it's such a pleasure these days listening to a band that can speed up and slow down since everything else.
That as well.
Some songs do want to get three five faster than the breadge or in the chorus and at the end of the song, you know, like and that's a nice natural amount of swaying, and I value that in music a lot too. So I think drummings weird because you've got to be some sort of you've got to have some sort of discipline, but then also total inhibition to make it feel like this thunderous instrument when it needs to be. But as soon as you get carried away with yourself, you will speed up five bpm and everyone's looking at you, what's going on, And you're like, oh god, I had too much fun there for one bar.
Yeah, you just have to And then that night you drive a car into the pool.
That's the ya the way it feels like to play in the band. It feels like everyone's trying to play the mood of the song, and so I think everything just comes.
Out of that.
Now you must just play the mood of the song. Everything will take care of itself.
You know, have you worked with bands where that's a problem almost all the no.
I mean it's the way music used to be. The backing would be a mood and then the singer, you know, would kind of dictate the mood and everyone just followed the singer and it became something where everything is now individual. And you know, bands that play use a click track live. It's just horrible because now you're introducing this rigid thing where you should be playing music, so you're playing along with this rigid thing instead of playing together, I mean something. There's certain situations where something like that can work, but in general, if you see a whole concert and it's all, you know, people playing with a click, you're going to be bored and not know why.
Yeah, surgeon retard is the thing of when you're going to see a band. I love it when a band just yes.
They got in trouble for the name changed, it's changed now.
But yeah, where there's a hesitancy as it goes into the first chorus and then it sits and then slows down again when it goes into the next verse. I mean, I love detecting that sort of thing when I'm watching a really you know, a really dynamic band, rock band, or ensemble, I mean in orchestras, that's always the way the conductor will say, as it moves from this section to this section, there is actually three breaths, four breaths. You're all rushing those four breaths, you know, and just watch my conducting and the piece will slow down. You know, it's extraordinary. They're even using click tracks now in orchestras, you know, right, well, you know, not for concert performances, but for TV. Yeah, film and TV.
I don't know. I mean, you played violin, I don't know if you played in a quartet. I did for a little while. But it's all that looking back and forth and yeah, when it gets going, it's really amazing.
Yeah, and it's natural people, that's the way people perceive, you.
Know, well, it's the benefit of ours spent. You know, the tipping point concept that everybody talks about.
Well, we're a while ago, and.
If with a band, it's exciting at the moment because we're at that point. We've played enough shows now that we can I can sense us getting much better and understanding those kind of little micro the way that music is capable of being thought about, and you know, micro metering of the gap between beats. We're just leaving a tiny hole before the beginning of the next bar can add And you only get those moments when everybody's focused together, and so we feel like we're capable of becoming much better, you know, which is pretty exciting for an up and coming band.
It keeps so we don't get bored. I don't, at least me, but we don't. It doesn't feel like anyone gets bored playing any of these songs. And no matter how many times we play them, because when we play them, we're playing the mood. It's not like, oh, here's this song, I've done it a million times.
You know, you were listening to what everyone else is doing. I think a lot of people.
To see how that mood is at that moment, and it might be moving a little and how can you contribute to it?
So does that change with the crowd? When I saw you the other night, you know that was a concert where people were singing along with everything, clapping. How how does that change the playing crowd?
Definitely to hear the crowd, because it doesn't lend itself. We did an open air the other night and we'd had two really nice sheds to get into a bounce back and hear the crowd, and we just weren't hearing them rebill. It's quite disarming, and you don't know whether they're really going along for it with it, you know. But yeah, the crowd will make their presence felt fairly early on if they often get them to sing early on to figure out whether they've got the you know, the gusto not to try it too much.
I do want to talk through some of the songs on the new album, and I wanted to start with the Howl, which I think has got that beautiful guitar figure that starts it. Can you tell me a little bit about writing that song.
I wrote it as part of a solo project I was doing in the last few years called Hyperverse, where I streamed myself writing and recording a record on this platform Twitch. I've always had a very different experience in a studio than I do on stage, mainly with energy levels I find, and I wanted to figure out how to recreate that energy level I get on stage in a studio, and I thought, well, I think it's the fact you're being watched in the performance.
Aspect of it.
So I have made this whole record through doing my one man band thing, which is the thing I do as a solo artist, making a pre energetic record. And I handed a bunch of the songs over to Dad to listen to when I was kind of halfway through writing them, and so I was doing these long, sprawling jams basically, and then cut editing them down into songs, and that one in particular he really responded to, unknowingly responded to when he had it on a few playlists when he was on vacation and kept coming up and he would be like, what's that song? And it was the hell, I'm not even sure I knew it was you, but I thought it was something that would catch my ear from another room. There's something about music that sounds good from the next room. That's a lot of my music whole in the next room.
The sonics actually really coming better.
But when we were going into the second session of the of the album, Dad was really keen to try it, as he was a couple of hourroys things and stuff, and we That's like I said, it.
Was done really quickly.
Nick had to all of a sudden scramble to learn It's really quite a simple song except for the one change that happens, and I had a very particular baseline in that part. But we got it really, We got a very vibe take of it very quickly. But it was actually for me. It was a really nice thing because I had often I would be if I'm teaching a band a song, I'm probably only three quarters written with it, and a lot of it I ended up finishing on the back end, but that song was kind of a finished thing, and it made me realize how and that's what I was going to say, I want to bring finished songs to the band because you can actually move through them so much quicker and figure them out as far as what the end result would be so much and in such well, basically with less anxiety and less torturous behavior on my part. So it was really cool because I had so I had a version, this demo version for my record that if we did it.
Dad was like, well, if we do it, we've.
Got to make it better than your version, because otherwise what's the point.
And so we did.
We worked on it really hard and actually cut quite a bit out of it and made a three and a half minute version of what my was like five minutes and full of long guitar solos and stuff like that. And then I went back in after we'd finished the credit House record and made my version better, not better than the Crowdhouse version, but I got to go and take what I learned from the.
Crowded House one and apply that to my version. And so now I've got these two different versions of the song.
It's a great vocal in that song too, just really lovely and can I ask for Teenage Summer which became the Was it designed as a did you think we need a single?
Or it just not really?
But I saw potential in it. It was a jam that we did. Actually Elru was in on the original jam, and if you heard the demo that, yeah, it's very different. A couple of parts have remained. The bassline that starts the song was actually the main bass riff in the song at that point, and I just kept reworking it and reworking it and reworking it and taking apart and putting it back together again. We tried it with drum machine, we tried at Latin, We tried it a number of different ways, and it was really hardy like his demo, it was really experimental and weird song. But when it got to the end part of it where it had the.
One been near you and are we going to have some sort of new that there was this like pop song in there.
There's a pop sign dying to get out. Yeah.
But we tried it the three of us once and didn't really get anywhere, and then we tried it again. We tried it and then with the band we tried it didn't really get anywhere.
It changed a lot, it did.
I just had I knew there was something in there, and I just chased it basically, and Elroy played the drums the drum track on it about three different times, three different places. And in the actual fact, we used a couple of the fills from the I used a couple of his fills from the early takes and sliced them and even though the drums sounded completely different.
You can sort of do anything, really.
But yeah, I was very happy with the way it turned out because it was kind of fully realized, and sometimes they don't turn out to be fully realized.
So did you ever think of giving up on it? Was it just that.
Prust probably did? Yeah, I would have had a few moments Rolf was not happening. Let's forget about it.
Yeah, it was subject to a lot of discussion, that song, a lot of things. I did a failed effort at trying to edit it into what I thought was a more cohesive form, and it was just landed like a ton of bricks. You know. That was bad. We had a version that we had the drums really lively sounding really roomy and lively and which is exciting, but it seemed to wear out. And then we tried a version where the drums were very dry, thinking, oh, more intimate, that'll carry the song.
We've got a rap over the sixty.
So we just went through a bunch of different things. And then you know, there was if you listen to the song, like after the first chorus, the way it goes back to the intro is really tricky. I mean, that's that. That was that was Neil's idea. But so we finally got a dynamic where the song felt like, Okay, this is how it's the shape of it, and by the end it's its peak. So we had to figure out all kinds of things and after it was breakdown and you know, all these things.
After it was mastered for the third time and already imprinting in for the vinyl, Dad changed the title of the song and changed the beginning of the song. Well that's what we kind of thought. Maybe he was losing it.
Yeah, I don't even know what the title changed because actually just only because I was on a zoom call or a FaceTime with my grandson and I are Liam's son, and he was listening to it, I think, and he said, I like that song, Papa teenage summer song. Well he's just the kids have spoken, you know. That's what it was called Life's imitation.
I thought, oh, yeah.
For a couple of years, or for a year, for a couple of years. Yeah, I've never done that before that late in the piece. But hey, there's this surprises yet to come, I'm sure.
And I wanted to ask about Thirsty, which began with you. We talked about it a little. Yeah, So what was it like, Neil when you first heard it?
If you listened to the instrumental version of Thirsty without it's really nice instrumental and that's how it was Elroy. I mean, it's a little scrubbed up. Engineer has done a bit of job on it, and maybe a couple of editions I've been added. Mitchell might have played some things, I think, and Liam's added a bit of guitar, but essentially the arrangement was the way Elroy had. It was a beautiful instrumental. I think the daughter of Stephen, who mixed the album, came in one day as he was before the vocal was added and loved it, absolutely loved it, and I think she was disappointed when she heard the vocal. So whether or not we improved it, I don't know. But it's a beautiful piece of music. The way the chords flow is just effortless and very elegant. Yeah, they picked my ears up and I found himut that seemed to work with it, and ran with it. And then Ail, you know, helped we sort of to and fro on what the lyrics might be.
To me, it took on a kind of a Simon and Garf uncle vibe at some point as to falling in love with it, I think was. And then the idea of some people never getting thirsty, that just was so abstract to me, you.
Know, Yeah, I didn't know if it was appropriate to even have that, and as we fought against that a little bit because it was like what, but I it had really evocative feeling for me, because there are people like Mcfleetwood's mother never drank water for thirty that he said he never saw her drink water.
She only ever had drink cups of tea, cups of tea.
I suppose that still quenches a thirst, but you know some, but it's also now it's got a modern.
Well yet to be thirsty is kind of hungry for sex and the modern concept of someone's too thirsty. They're like showing off too many signs of being into it, and so suddenly some people never get thirsty. It has a very different meaning if you think of.
It that way.
A bit of.
Shed separated that from Mick Fleetwood's.
Mother that you can do that in post, right, you can chuck a better time in between.
It's a good juxtaposition. I'd be happy with that in a lyric. We will talk to Mick about it first, but yeah.
You know, we haven't talked about this because this is one of your many bands. But you did tour with Fleetwood Mac did that?
Yeah?
Did it? Did you learn anything about bands?
Not a thing.
Or think?
Yeah?
It was amazing experience, like stepping into another life for a while, you know, and so unexpected.
We knew Mick well enough for me.
To know that I would have a good time with him, you know, that wasn't entirely unknown, but really unexpected. And learning somebody else's songs and the way they put songs together is really fascinating, getting deep inside it because you think you know the way that songs work, but then when you actually learn them, you find that there's more going on than you realized. And they're harder to learn other people's songs too, the little nuances that they add and mine would be hard for people to learn.
I understand that as well.
But can you give me an example of just one of their songs that once you got into it, you're like, well, this doesn't work the way I.
Thought, Well, maybe all of them. Really, I think they're all like that. They're all sort of even go your own way, which you think you've heard. And I wasn't like a big fan of the band in those days particularly, I liked admired them for what I knew that they were really big, you know, great pop songs, and they had something and I'd seen a couple of live things back in the day that were amazing, you know, when they were at their prime. And but you think you know and it is a very simple song, but it's just learning it is more is more difficult than you think. And it's not that they're I think I have more quirks and nuances and the way that I put songs together than Lindsay, but somehow they're hard and like things like I was serlening Monday morning. Just quite a strange song and a weird lyric as well, actually, but so much singing, and it's really high and it's very hard to sing. It's because there's no gaps in the vocal and I found I had to actually in the end, So I can't. Don't think I can do that one unless we drop the key quite a bit. And we stopped doing it anyway because I just I was blowing my voice out every night trying to do it. So yeah, things I would have if I'd been doing that myself, I would have created space somewhere so I get a breath. Yeah, these are not particularly interesting details. What I did learn was that classic bands are a result of and music as a result of five in that case, individuals having quite distinctive personalities musically, and something about that being undeniable and unreplaceable. Although having said that, I did replace Lindsey.
But did you ever talk to about it.
I've not met him. No, I have a feeling we'd probably get on just fine. And I don't think he was I mean, it was very he was not happy about the situation. I understand that, but I don't think he would have blamed me for it particularly, and I think he probably had some awareness of my songs and probably, you know, I would hope at some point he might have thought, well, at least somebody that can write a good song is you know, taken my part. But the believing in a band, and actually it can be redefined, especially Fleetwood Mack have redefined themselves so many times, have been so many different kinds of bands. I related to that, and I thought, oh, maybe I can do that. And at the same time as I thought that, and I was appreciating that about Fleetwood Mac, I thought, I've been playing music with el Roy and Liam for the last few years and it's been feeling great, So why not just you know, one ring to bind them all. And I put it to Nick and he was super enthusiastic about it. And then we thought, well, what about Mitchell as well?
Why don't we ask him?
We asked him twenty five thirty years ago and he was too busy trying to be a producer. But maybe the time will be right, and it just was, you know, was right.
I was interested when I saw you the other night, which was a great show that the crowd got to vote on the song they were playing, and you seem surprised, and I don't know if you were genuinely surprised that they chose Into Temptation, which I think.
Is just we give them an option of It's an experiment on this too.
We haven't done this before, but we thought they like having some degree of people request songs all the time, and we often don't do them because they come at the wrong time, or it's a way of people being able to express an opinion.
I got you gets a lot of.
Nods, and that Into Temptation is a surprising one, but it has endured for a lot of people as one of our best songs. And we don't play it every night because if we've got four seasons in the set, they occupy quite a similar dynamic and feels like sometimes too many of that kind of song might lower the tempo of the show, but it's actually finishes the show quite well. Strangely, it doesn't leave people feeling depressed. That leaves them feeling sort of content in a funny kind of way.
It seems well, it seems like a very catholic song, so maybe it's like man, it.
Does express, it does express all the dimensions of temptation and guilty.
Yeah, so what's next for you is that you're going to keep touring and then.
Well we are in the short term, we're going to the end of the year pretty NonStop now, which is you know, amazing for developing as a band and has some degree of you know, a bit of a wrench for Liam to be away from family and we all have the and Nick, you know, and Mitchell below. Mitchell's son's just left home so he's free as a bird. So yeah, it's but we're going to be touring next year a little bit less, but we're going to make a new record next year, I think.
Yeah, it was we didn't know until we did an interview that it's thirty forty thirty forty years since the first since the band started. Next year, so we've got to, you know, that's kind oft to the anniversary, make the best record that Crowded House has ever made.
Yeah, after forty years.
Well, we're capable of it, and everyone will be coming with a clean slate, a fresh palette. There's no other you know, nothing else that is competing for our attention. Next year so and we can be together in a studio more often if we can navigate it from a geographical point of view.
Well, listen, thank you so much for coming in here. It's been thank you, it was till late.
Thank you, thank you the real very nice conversation. Thanks for jowing us.
Thank you, Bruce, thank you, thank you, great Honor.
Thanks so much to Neil Finn, Liam Finn, Al Ray Finn, Nick Seymour and Miss Froom of Crowded House for talking about their new project and their long histories together. To hear a playlist of our favorite songs from Crowded House. You can go to this episode's description or visit us at broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollinay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and actually listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts, subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats.
I'm justin Richmond.
