Crowded House – From The Mouth Of Neil Finn
This is a biography for Crowded House in the year Twenty Ten in which I will attempt to provide a bit of history, lay out the facts surrounding the making of our record Intriguer and to signal our intention for new shows and extracurricular activity thereof…..right then.
This is Neil talking. The whole thing started with Split Enz. In 1972 I watched it unfold in real life as a glassy eyed teenage brother, became immersed in it and then at the age of 19, that was 1977, I got to be part of that mighty and mental New Zealand invention. We took it to every corner of the globe, stumbling from one opportunity to another. I wrote some songs along the way, “I Got You,” “Message To My Girl,” “One Step Ahead,” “History Never Repeats,” they helped to give the band a bigger audience but that early music will always stand tall for me, original and uncompromising, my inspiration…check out the album, Mental Notes! Respect to brother Tim, Eddie, Noel, Phil and the others for blazing the trail. After all, they started it. I was invited in. It was intense and truly excellent.
Paul Hester (drums) and I (singer / guitar) went onwards from Split Enz to Crowded House; we wanted to be in a 3 piece band that could fit into one rental car. We found our bass player Nick Seymour, fresh from the catwalk, clearly loving the attention. We liked how he wore his bass low, had aspirations to funk and after a while we let him paint our suits with Masonic symbols. Despite all that and along the way we became a really good band. I think we tried to make ourselves even smaller by turning to acoustic, bass, snare drum, 3 part harmonizing our way through lounge rooms and restaurants, busking, unplugged, whatever they ended up calling it on MTV. It made us very interested in our audience and we learnt how to draw them in, to sing together like it’s a party. That became our way of doing things, wishing for accidents, showing artifice and awkwardness the door.
