Hothouse Flowers' man of the people

Liam O'Maonlai from the Hothouse Flowers is famous in New Zealand for two things. First, you must remember the band's 1988 hit Don't Go. If you don't, sing those two words to yourself with breathless urgency and the tune will come flooding back.

Second, there was his ramshackle, yet brilliantly charming collaboration with Tim Finn in the band ALT during 1995.

Since then O'Maonlai and the Hothouse Flowers have been quiet. But this week they are in New Zealand to play.

Today though O'Maonlai is sitting in a diner near Kings Cross in Sydney recounting how he did a bit of busking the other day in Dublin, where he lives. "I was raising some money for a friend of mine - my ex-wife actually - who was driving to Chernobyl in an ambulance [taking medical supplies to the area]. I busked for a quarter of an hour and made £100 [$281]," he says.

Busking is part of O'Maonlai's roots. His street-performing days with schoolmate Fiachna O'Braonain in the mid-80s was the catalyst to the pair forming the Hothouse Flowers.

The band's biggest hit Don't Go from 1988's People is the song they are best known for. But after their third album, Songs From the Rain in 1993, the Hothouse Flowers took a break.

In that year O'Maonlai's father died. He was close to his dad and remembers fondly how he taught him about his Irish heritage and the importance of speaking and singing in their native tongue. ("It wasn't like he beat it into me, he sang it into me," he says.)

"When my father passed away I said to the guys, 'I need a year off to be at home and be where I want to be and not in the middle of some highway and not knowing which way is up and which way is down'."

The break from Hothouse Flowers did him good because he "got a little bit more of a grip on the direction of where my life was going".

During the time off O'Maonlai teamed up with Finn and friend Andy Rourke to form ALT and released Altitude in 1995.

"The idea for ALT was born out of a need in me to put something wild and flawed on record. Something that didn't go along with the usual procedure of perfection that has become the art of making a record.

"I had been to great places in music with the band and I found that with Tim and Andy we were hitting similar places and I felt that we had done our share of records - polished and otherwise - and it felt like a good time to hop on an atmosphere. And lo and behold when we went into the studio to make music we just had a sound."

He still stays in touch with Finn. ("Every year we might throw a few lines to one another," he says.) However, while ALT was a success the next Hothouse Flowers album Born didn't appear until 1998 and received a lukewarm response.

Then 2004's Into Your Heart was more of a return to form for the band even though it was dominated by ballads with only a few stirring, up-beat Celtic moments.

But one thing's for sure, it's music that continues to move O'Maonlai.

"It blows my mind sometimes what music is, and what it does, and how it can focus a group of people. And it's just a party," he says.


LOWDOWN


WHO: Hothouse Flowers


WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday, Bar Bodega, Wellington; Wednesday, The Studio, Auckland.


ALBUMS: People (1988); Home (1990); Songs From the Rain (1993); Into Your Heart (2004)


SEE ALSO: ALT - Altitude (1995)