History ever repeats with Neil Finn

On the occasion of his new album One Nil, GRAHAM REID takes Neil Finn for a stroll through his back pages.

Neil Finn gives the impression he's happier than he has ever been. This year he's been around the country playing solo shows in small venues with contributions by ring-in local musicians, billing them as the Band of Strangers.

On Monday week he starts a five-night stand at the St James in Auckland with a guest list that includes Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, a couple of the guys from Radiohead, Johnny Marr from the Smiths and others.

He's then off to Britain and also has Australian shows mid-year with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Oh, and his album One Nil released this week has already gone gold. He is a happy man very much at ease with his private and professional life.

"Everything I'm doing this year is completely unique for me and different to each other as well," he says with a broad smile, "so there's something wondrous in that. I've embraced my freedom and am thinking, I can do anything - so I might as well do it all.

"It's good to feel the strong passion for it. At this point it's not as career-based as it was, it's experience-based. I want my records to be heard and am ambitious for them, to a degree. But I'm also not creating ridiculously punishing schedules for myself, I'm leaving spaces. The idea was to do less this year, but to put more energy into each and they would be the more powerful for that.

Let's take you through what might be considered pivotal songs of your career and hear how you reflect on them. Random memories or whatever - but first: when was the last time you sat down and listened to an Enz or Crowdies' album?

Not recently. I had a phase a year or two ago where I listened to them, but I don't often. I hear them on the radio by chance quite a lot.

Do you recognise them instantly?

Funnily enough I don't. If they're on at the supermarket and it's sort of ambient I'll take a while to pick up on it. They do take you back to specific memories in some way, how you did it or how you wrote them, or what you were doing at the time.

First one then: Give it a Whirl from the 1979 Enz album Frenzy?

I wrote it initially as a piece of music, just music, on acoustic guitar. It was at Chorley Wood [Hertfordshire] where Noel Crombie and I were living, in Split Enz's most broke but musically fertile year, 1978. I did it at 3 am, Noel was lying on his bed and I thought he was asleep but after an hour he went, "That's good." A month later we did the rehearsal and totally transformed it into a big rock anthem.

Tim wrote the words in the main, I think he may have written them all. I'd been in Split Enz for a year and a half being useless, apart from a few vocal harmonies.

That was the first song of mine Split Enz did. I remember it very fondly. We didn't play it live much, it was a hard one to get the right attitude for, but one of the delights of my musical life was hearing Shihad play it at Sweetwaters. They did a stonking version.

And the worst version you've ever heard of one of your songs?

There's an Italian version of Don't Dream It's Over which is pretty bad because they rewrote the lyrics, something like, "I'll puff on my cigarette as you stroke my long hair." I've got a copy at home somewhere.

I Got You from 1980's True Colours?

I think Tim came up with the title. We were sitting around in Rose Bay, Sydney, writing and I remember thinking the chorus was kind of weak. But when we rehearsed it, it felt really good straight away. Certainly when we recorded it there was big excitement hearing it back in the speakers - mostly because [producer] David Tickle used to play the stuff back at ear-splitting level.

I didn't realise it was a hit until I heard it on radio, and immediately recognised it was going to be pretty big - and that came after a meeting with Michael Gudinski of Mushroom who said, "I don't think there are any hits on it, but we'll give it a good shot anyway."

History Never Repeats?

I wrote it in Perth, and everybody in the world called it History Repeats Itself. No one could get into their heads it was History Never Repeats. I think it's a good slogan for my current mindset, trying to make each year distinctive from the last.

I remember playing it to Andrew Snoid when he was in the Swingers and him being blown away by it. But then at the same time I was listening to them do True or False on the Swingers' record [Practical Jokers] and being completely in awe of it.

One Step Ahead from the 1981 Enz album Waiata?

Noel Crombie actually wrote a set of lyrics because I was having trouble, he wrote really funny stuff. Noel used to write in a very phonetic way. I did use one of his lines: "One step ahead of you, makes it hard to move" or something like that. It was magic in the studio when we got that one. Eddie [Rayner] had some wonderful keyboard parts. I wrote that in a hotel room in Melbourne and I've still got the tape.

The main phrase of most songs comes and ... I always want to convince myself that I'll finish all the lyrics at one time. But usually when I've written something I'm so flush with excitement I'll go off and have a cup of tea as a reward and by the time I come back the song is in a different zone.

Mean to Me, opening track from the first Crowdies' album in 86?

It was two songs we flung together in LA. The verse was written on a tour of New Zealand I did with Dave Dobbyn under the absolutely shocking moniker of the Party Boys.

We played Palmerston North and this girl turned up from America. She'd written to my parents to say she was coming to New Zealand, was a massive Split Enz fan, would it be possible for me to meet her, it would be the fulfilment of a dream. A really over-the-top letter.

I met her and had 10 minutes with her. Then I came back later and she was dancing with Gary McCormick, so I wrote those lines in which I did intimate they'd got it on. She bailed me up in LA about three years later and was most upset. She swears she didn't. I felt chastened by that.

Hole in the River is an intensely personal song about the death of your father's sister.

I still rate the song as really good. All the lyrics came in one go. It didn't go down very well within the family. I understand completely and sympathise with their point of view.

I was writing a piece of music at the time I was told, so it was one of those things which seemed to demand to be written. I suppose I could have chosen not to air it, but there was a compulsion to have what I thought was one of the strongest pieces of music around be out there.

I would hope it has become what at the time I thought it was - the most positive way I could reflect on something which was tragic. I like the feeling songs inhabit spaces that are difficult for people to talk about, so they gain some degree of empathy or comfort from listening to them.

Four Seasons in One Day from Woodface in 91, co-written with Tim, sounds like it came very naturally.

Yeah it did. The music was written first. I spent an afternoon in Melbourne playing a keyboard with string sounds on it, just writing string parts and playing piano parts. The music for both Into Temptation and Four Seasons in One Day happened at the same time. They were part of the same piece at one point, and are sister songs in tempo and atmosphere.

When Tim and I started writing for the first Finn brothers record - which became Woodface - there was a day when we threw lyrics at each other and they came very quickly.

Private Universe from Together Alone in 93?

It's probably one of the songs I'm most proud of because it seems to have existed in many different incarnations. On this last tour with the Band of Strangers in Wellington we did it with a cello, saxophone, slide guitar and me and it sounded amazing. It lends itself to any number of arrangements.

The first verse is connected to my childhood, being up this apple tree I used to climb and spy on the neighbours. It's also connected to the house we had in Melbourne so there's a mid-life thing too. But it's also about your whole life and how you create your private domain. I don't know that it has a clear narrative but it has a deep sense of atmosphere. Songs are an alternative reality, or they should be.

Suffer Never from the Finn album of 95?

I wrote that here in Auckland with Tim. It's a love song about not wishing ill of women, wishing them strength and comfort and recognising they are the great earth mother. But that's over-explaining things.

When we put that down it was late one night and we'd had a few and it was the first take. Which is not to say I'm encouraging anybody to over-indulge to create music, but that was one occasion where it did work.

Instinct, from one of the last Crowded House sessions?

Not one of my favourites actually. The demo was good, I was disappointed in the recording. But it's definitely a song about breaking things up: "I lit the match and saw another monster turn to ash."

If Instinct was about ending Crowded House, was Last One Standing the lead track on your first solo album deliberate?

The ideal thing for me with any song is to have two or three options as to how you could look at a title, that open-endedness is something I'm attracted to. I actually thought of putting it out as the first single, having a bit of fun with being the only one left.

I wrote it in the studio one night. That was another where I sang a nonsense version and used made-up sounds. But then I listen through and garner a few lines out of the gabble which become the basis of the song. Sometimes it's difficult because you get so attracted to the sound of the words you leave them like that because you can't find a way of making them make sense. I made sense of it as best I could.

On the new album, people are talking already about Anytime, I guess because everybody can get it: "I could go at anytime ... "

Yeah, it's very plain. Generally speaking I think it's useful to remember that mortality thing, not as a negative in your life, but consider it by thinking, "Well, what sort of crap am I dealing with today?" which is balanced with the view you might only have today left and asking what's worth worrying about and what's not. Keep that in your mind and you'll always get it right with the people you care about. That's a small wisdom I've learned that I'm trying to apply now.