Tim Finn: Interview: Listener - February 26, 2000

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INTERVIEW: "UNDERGROUND ARTISTE"

New Zealand Listener: February 26, 2000
By Linda Herrick
(Contributed by Emma George)

Brian Timothy Finn, OBE, the grand old papa of New Zealand rock, in independent maverick shocker: Finn's new album, Say It Is So, marks his breakthrough as an indie artist. Good timing. Finn, 47, is free from record company politics at a time when the industry is contracting into a tight group of major players swallowing each other up. His dealings with record execs from the days of Split Enz, his short time with brother Neil's band Crowded House, and a couple of earlier solo forays have left him in no doubt that record company execs have only one thing in mind - the bottom line.

"I've deconstructed my career," he says. "Got rid of all the structure around me and did everything I wanted to do myself, and, God, it's a good feeling. Even though you try to maintain integrity, you can get influenced by people whispering in your ear about stuff; it's a real drag, it doesn't help.

"A lot of the time (record company people) are not coming from music, they have a degree in marketing. Someone said the best times in music are when everyone's confused and I think record companies are not confused. But then there's the underground and the underbelly, and the indie scene is probably going to flourish because of the internet."

Say It Is So will be available from March 2; it's also being sold from Finn's website, www.timfinn.com.

Despite the outstanding beauty and melodic allure of some of the album's songs, Finn isn't betting that he'll get radio play because "I assume nothing these days." Playing live is the thing and he's building a schedule of shows both here and in the US, plus a four night gig at the New Zealand Festival 2000. The thrill of playing, he says, is "as mad and silly as falling in love."

Well, he would know about that. Hard as it is to take, "a really solid heartbreak is a gift," he says. "Like anybody, I've had different periods of my life where I've been shocked, the ground's been cut out from under me. It's happened several times, and for different reasons each time, and it's a great gift. It got rid of a lot of the narcissism and vanity of my life. When I started Split Enz with Phil Judd, there was a sort of mirror that happens between two young guys who find their talent through each other, and there's a self-love in loving that person almost.

"Then when you realise that person is flawed, like everybody is, you get quite shocked. You realise that perhaps the relationship had a lot vanity in it and you needed to learn that, you needed to be burnt in those fires. You don't carry these things around like a weight; in a way they set you free, but it's very tough."

But in the early days of Split Enz, he had only one mistress: the band. "Through the years of 18 to about 22, I was very solitary, very lonely really, and very obsessed with Split Enz to the point where I didn't have any emotional room left. I didn't even have a proper girlfriend through all those years, and girls were alien to me to some extent, having been at boarding school for years (Sacred Heart in Auckland). When I was at primary school, I had great friendships with girls. Then that all went out, gone, through five years of boarding school, where I became very shy of girls. I regret that in a way, because it took years to get back just being easy with women."

Now, though, he's a married man, a proud dad, and more satisfied with his career than he has been for a long time. Is he happy? "I am reluctant to say I am a happy person or that I'm not. It's not like you arrive anywhere. I'm having a happy phase and I'm having a very creative phase and I'm very grateful for that. It'll come and go, but there is more stability in my life than there's ever been. Sometimes when you're in turmoil, and you think you feel a certain romanticism about it all, it actually produces very little of worth. Stability is more excitement."

Stable guy in kid-rock shocker: as well as releasing Say It Is So, Finn has also recently performed on an album by...the Wiggles, the skivvy-wearing Australian preschool teachers-turned-singers. Kids worldwide adore their Henry the Octopus and Dorothy the Dinosaur characters, and it's estimated that 50 percent of all Australian children under the age of five have at least one Wiggles album, driving their mummies and daddies into dementis with high-rotation play. Finn's involvement is due to his two-year-old son Harper.

"I didn't get the Wiggles at all before I had my child, but now I get what they're doing," he says. "They've isolated what kids like: dinosaurs, pirates, cars, and they serve it up to them very simple and direct. Kids adore it. They are superstars. The wiggles have done this compilation record with guest singers, and they wanted to do 'Six Months in a Leaky Boat' with me. Now that I've got Harper, I thought, 'Great, I'll be a hero' - so I did 'Six Months,' and we performed it at this show in Sydney. There were 5000 kids there and it was amazing. It was as good as any great concert you'd go to.