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Crowd Control Former Crowded House frontman Neil Finn By Drew Pearce In an industry that thrives on turning musicians into exalted rock stars, it's rare to see an artist carve out a niche by breaking down the barriers between himself and his audience. Neil Finn, former frontman and songwriter for the high-profile pop band Crowded House and former singer/songwriter/guitarist for new wave band Split Enz (founded by his brother Tim), is just such an artist. Although he's earned the admiration of some of the best-known musicians in the world, Finn maintains the kind of perspective you might expect from a small-town New Zealander. Spontaneity and audience participation have been staples of Finn's performances ever since he first began playing parties as a teenager. "But it really started to unfold with Crowded House," he says, "the mentality that there are people out there in the audience who can contribute to the show. And you remember the show a lot better if something happened that wasn't scheduled - some hero was made or villain was discovered. You get addicted to that idea that everybody in the room is a participant." Fortunately for Finn, his music attracts the kind of audience that loves to sing his songs back to him, and along side him. Fans frequently request to come onstage and sing harmony with him. His way of incorporating them into the show, though, varies from one performance to the next. Some nights, he'll call their bluff and bring them up. On other nights, he'll tease them for trying to upstage his bandmates and steal their jobs. He's even been known to create impromptu harmony parts that turn the audience into a makeshift choir, accompanying him as his backing vocalists throughout a song. Finn went solo after dissolving Crowded House in the mid-'90s, descending into his basement to write and record all the parts for Try Whistling This. Eventually, however, he began to feel hemmed in by the solo process. So to finish the record, he traveled to New York to find new co-conspirators, such as Marius De Vries, a producer/songwriter who has also worked with Bjork, David Bowie and PJ Harvey. In the end, his efforts produced some jazzier, more ambient tracks, such as "Sinner," that worked as an intriguing counterpoint to the more straightforward acoustic pop songs on the record, such as the single "She Will Have Her Way." For his most recent release, One All, Finn continued his exploration of a more collaborative approach to songwriting. The result is an excellent collection of tunes that showcases the eclectic influences of his collaborators as well as Finn's own expanding sense of melody and lyricism. "The effective thing about a band is the sum of its parts," says Finn, "and there's no reason why solo artists can't have that." With the new album, Finn proves that even after writing some of the most enduring songs of the past two decades (including "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Weather With You"), he is still able to surprise listeners and himself. "Getting into the zone is sometimes infuriatingly hard, but on the days when things click, songwriting seems really easy," says Finn. "A lot of it is just believing that you are writing, convincing yourself that it's worth persevering." Finn comes up with ideas for the melody while "noodling around on a guitar or a piano" and then develops them by making multiple rounds of rough demos as he gradually works through a song. "I get a notion, get some chords that I like and a melody that's working somehow, and then construct maybe two or three versions of that straightaway," he explains. "I'll just play the basic idea with 'mming' and 'ahhing' and 'la la-ing' [for the vocals] for two minutes and then bang a few things onto it like another guitar track or a harmony." He then sets the tapes aside for a while, going back later to extract the individual parts that gel, no matter how briefly, and building them into a second version of the song. Then he repeats the process of extracting, recording, and layering. "Even that third time through, it won't be set in stone," he says. "It'll only be maybe two minutes long, and it'll fall off at the end. But I'll just listen to it over and over again at the end of the night, and go, 'Oh, this is good.' And I'll know at that point it's something substantial, and I'll luxuriate in it for a moment." The unfinished lyrics encourage Finn to continue. "It's sort of like tricking myself to finish as much as I can," he explains. "Because in the context of that demo, I'll get to the point where I've got to write something I can sing, so that I'll know what the harmony is. So I'll scribble things down that will fit the phrasing, without thinking at all about what they mean. And out of those, I'll get quite a few good lines. I suppose I go a long way relying on not having to intellectualize the process. I try to get as much as I can that's just falling randomly onto the page." Finn takes these random ideas and edits them, deleting and rewriting lines to fill out the song and "introduce a little bit of thought and planning so that when you read it through, it has a kind of a thread you can follow." Those more consciously crafted lines are the most difficult ones to get. When he's not poring over his rough demos and lyrics, Finn is working with other artists. Since leaving Crowded House, he's collaborated on Finn Brothers, a recording with his brother Tim, and begun co-writing with Jim Moginie of Midnight Oil and Wendy Melvoin, former guitarist with Prince and the Revolution and half of the duo Wendy and Lisa. No matter who the co-writer is, though, Finn says the process is similar. "It's a matter of drifting off with somebody and letting something come out in a very unselfconscious way," he explains. "What each person brings is completely different. For instance, the first time [Wendy and I] wrote a song together, it was 'Secret God.' It had a bit of a Brazilian feel about it, which was completely new for me. And that would never have happened with anyone else. So that was exciting. That's what's great about collaboration: it draws you into areas you never would have thought of yourself." The element of performance in collaboration is also inspiring to Finn. "If you're on your own writing a song, it can be great fun," he says, "but for me, it's almost inevitable that it'll be introspective in its nature. And when you're with somebody else, you're sort of reaching out to them. You hear something they do that's great and you want to match it." On his recent live CD and DVD, Seven Worlds Collide, recorded in April at the St. James Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand, Finn showcases this penchant for reaching out to and being inspired by other artists. He's joined onstage by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Johnny Marr of the Smiths, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway of Radiohead, Sebastian Steinberg of Soul Coughing, singer/songwriter/violinist Lisa Germano, his brother Tim, and his son Liam's band, Betchadupa. *Aside from reenergizing classic Finn tunes such as "Private Universe" and "History Never Repeats," the all-star lineup takes turns showing off their own songcraft as well. One of the highpoints of the show, though, is the intergenerational jam on "I See Red" involving Eddie Vedder, Betchadupa and Uncle Time Finn. But, as Finn's fans know, his collaborations aren't limited to music industry veterans, and audience participation gets a lot riskier than stage diving at his shows. Recently, Finn added a new dimension to the audience participation concept by soliciting demos from his fans and recruiting makeshift groups to back him up at his Band of Strangers shows. On the day of a show, a group of about a dozen potential bandmates would show up before sound check and be sorted into bands. After getting an idea of each person's ability, Finn and his crew would decide which songs they'd play and put the musicians into lineups. "It was a phenomenal experience," says Finn. "The music wasn't half bad, and in some cases it was remarkably good because the people who went through the process of learning a few songs and sending in a tape knew the songs really well. Although the band had never played together before, everybody played with huge heart, massive commitment and passion. We would try to work people into places where they were either used to their maximum advantage, if they were good, or could do as little damage as possible if they weren't. "I like the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen onstage," Finn continues. "Occasionally someone would turn up and say they knew the piano to 'Not the Girl You Think You Are' or some obscure song like that. And then someone would put their hand up and say, 'Oh, I know the drums to that one.' And I'd say, 'Alright, let's try it out!'" What They Play Neil Finn plays two custom-made Maton EBG808 acoustic guitars. Maton Guitars (www.maton.com.au) is known for using native Australian tonewoods for its guitars' backs, sides, and necks, and Alaskan spruce for the tops. Rather than playing through an amp, Finn plugs his acoustics straight into a D.I. during his live performances. D'Addario EJ16s are his strings of choice, and he uses Dunlop .073 guitar picks and Kyser capos. On the electric side, he plays a 1958 Gretsch Firebird and a 1968 Gibson goldtop Les Paul. Turn and Run From its sparse acoustic opening to its lush orchestrated ending, "Turn and Run" (recorded on his latest CD, One All) exemplifies the way Neil Finn's songwriting has developed since his days with Crowded House. It begins with a strong, sunny melody and slowly unfolds to reveal shades of gray. Like his best-known tune, "Don't Dream It's Over," "Turn and Run" features bright, powerful harmonies that make the words that much more memorable. Sheryl Crow's voice is an excellent match for Finn's and adds real resonance to lines such as "You can't break our love." The uplifting melody of the verses turns bittersweet in the choruses, while the lyrics run in the opposite direction. It's as if you can hear the singer struggling to retain hope as the song progresses. -Drew Pearce |