Crowded House

34:46You know, he unfortunately didn't live to a great age, but he provided a lot of entertainment along the way. And that's where - Would these be like pop songs, Beatles songs? Those parties were more like the old songs, you know, Sinatra, Elephant's Cheer or Bing Cross, all those, that era. But then when we'd be gatherings when we were kids and we'd be drawn in and hauled up to sing, my brother and I, that included Beatles songs. And, you know, everyone had their item that they had to do. A party piece. Well known for a party piece. My brother and I used to do Jamaican Farewell. Oh, great. It was a beautiful two-part harmony in that.

35:26And we did that. We had Catholic priests that used to sing Two Little Boys. Are you kidding me? I was about to make a joke and I didn't even need to. And it just made itself. It just formed out of thin air. The Durning Brothers. And my aunt used to sing Stormy Weather. Actually, no, Peggy Dawson. Yeah, people would know that. If you've grown up in that environment, people know that. And Nick's family used to sing together. It was very similar. Your family were performers, though, weren't they? Well, I mean, in the sense that we went to church and we were known as a singing family. And so we would get asked to be the kind of choir associated with weddings, particularly we'd sing.

36:19But they would be hymns, though, like Panius Angelicos. I mean, very Catholic. What sort of outfits would you have to dress in when you did those? Oh, no, no, you'd wear civvies. You wouldn't be in a kind of... What would they dress you in, though? Yeah, well, I've never asked. Actually, in the early days. No, we didn't have to wear kind of chorister outfits or anything, but we'd get paid to do a wedding. You'd get a little backhander from the family that you sang for. But this is in country towns that we lived in in Victoria, Australia. but we learned to harmonize around doing family jobs, like the dishes and when we'd go camping, we'd sing in the tent and all the other people in the camping ground would sort of know we were the singing family and we'd get asked to come to different parties to sing.

37:15But a lot of it was like Von Trapp kind of stuff. Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert and Sullivan. you know. So when did the bass start for you? I was in the school, at high school I did music, but then I took up violin and played in the school orchestra. Both my brother and I were first and second violins in the school orchestra and then in an area orchestra in Melbourne. And I kind of, I realised when I was, I played guitar, but I realised that all, everything I I could hear was kind of the counterpoint of bass and the top line of vocal. That's what songs made sense to me, you know. And then I realized that that's all the ladies ever hear as well.

38:00So that was a motivation. That's why bass players are just catnip. Yeah, he'd get to hang around with musicians. Catnip, brilliant. All bass players want to hang around with musicians. That's what they want to do. That's what they say. Yeah, that's what they say. How many strings? Four. That'll suit me. Neil, did you have formal music lessons as well? I played piano. Yeah, I got a few music lessons. Maybe really early on I had a couple, and then I just watched my brother and learnt the things he was learning. But then I got formal lessons and did the Trinity College of Music. I actually got up to grade 8 in the practical and wasn't a very good sight reader.

38:48But I'm so sort of grateful or glad that I did it because it's quite hard. You know, learning piano, as most kids will testify, is pretty tedious. Yeah, and that method as well too, the Trinity. You know, you've got to really apply yourself. It doesn't seem like it's that much point when you're a kid, but I'm glad because my left hand is still not amazing, but at least I've got a sort of a left hand. Most people that learn how to play piano, So just marking the beat with the left hand, and it's all about playing chords with the right. So I feel like that was very valuable. The reason I ask is you're known as this great, great melody writer.

39:28I think that's what people would sort of say about you. But it's actually the harmony in a lot of your songs is incredibly interesting. Even a song like Don't Dream It's Over, which people would think, well, that's like a three-chord pop song. It's not at all. It's quite complicated. In a sense, I would hope anyway that most songs, and it's not a prerequisite, but most songs would have a moment where it dips or dives into something that you weren't expecting. It just feels like it's a good thing to aim for. And I think that would be actually consistent with these guys as well. and even making a record like I said before it seems like every record should contain some little mystery that's unlocked during the course of the recording rather than just repeating the same thing which seems less point and I suppose with harmony it's always interesting to me what the addition of an odd note will do because they all contain feelings don't they all harmony is enhancing feeling and you can put a different nuance into your feeling.

40:41And you recognize a feeling when you first get an idea for a song, like Liam referred to, that moment where you suddenly go, I'm feeling something from this idea that just emerged. And then the fun is decorating it. And you can go too far, but the way you decorate it can help that feeling along. We put a lot of effort into making it sound effortless at the end. That's right. We explore it to the nth degree. and sometimes, like you said, it goes too far, but you keep pushing until all of a sudden it sounds like it was always that way. And I think that that's something the Beatles did really well is do quite intellectual things in music that didn't turn people off because it was too intellectual.

41:22It just sounded right. But actually there was crazy time changes and things that actually, if you look at it in an intellectual way, it's like, oh, how did they slip that one? That's kind of the exciting part to me a lot in writing is that you've got something that your brain hears a strange harmony or a strange melody over top of something and it won't work. But if you're convinced that it's the right idea, you kind of keep working at it until it does work, until it does make sense. And sometimes you'll get a really strange result at the end of it where you've kind of got this quite unique sounding thing because you had to adapt everything to make your strangeness succeed.

42:03The beauty of that then is that it always existed. When you know it so well, it's just suddenly like, yes, it's always been that way. Like, you know, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do in the Beatles song, Here Comes the Sun. I mean, what a crazy little resolve that would be. Some people are good at it. The truth of the matter is, and I've worked with a lot of different people, some people are very good in a harmonic way. The Beatles would be an example of pretty much every chord in every song sounds beautiful. So it's a combination of the harmony and the melodic line are just over the top. And I think in Neil's case, I think that you're right.

42:48I mean, that's sort of something people don't notice. You may think that it's the melody, but it's also the harmonic language, which also happens to be distinctively Neil's. And it's the two together that give you that emotion. If you just made the chords just very vanilla, C major to A major, and had the same melody, it wouldn't do it. So some people are just good at that. Some people are clumsy with their chords. Some people just can only deal with very simple chords. But it's, you know. You use a lot of chromatic movement, like I'm thinking four seasons in one day. moves back and forth between a couple of chords side by side.

43:35I'm not sure what the... I'm attracted to sixths in terms of intervals. I like sixths and... Minor sixths is a big one. Minor sixths is a part of what I find myself attracted to all the time and ninths and add-ons. Actually, sometimes if I get too far with that, I actually try playing the song with no added notes whatsoever and sometimes actually it's the key. One instrument just playing the chord straight can suddenly make the whole song come into play. If the melody is singing 6th and 9th, then a straight chord can sound beautiful because you're not sticking within those three notes, the triad notes.

44:16But the mystery of it is the weird thing. I think I'm better now. Experience has taught me to spot the good stuff, but it's still coming at it like a child and you go like, just play along and something hits you. And I like to keep it in that pretty free form state for as long as I possibly can. And then you use your critical mind, your adult mind to kind of organize it at various points because you have to really. But it's still a mystery. I still don't really know what I'm doing. But you have the language. That's the thing. You have your own harmonic language and we have going about things and then you can just stretch it out into whatever.

44:54if you're not coming from a place where you're just... I think you, and I strive to be like that as well, but your songs are sort of more like you've just got a goal to get it as good as it can be, and it's not that it should sound like this or it should sound like this. The inspiration for it needs to be aligned in this style of music. It's just like this is a magical concept, this song, and it can go anywhere. And if I kind of am free with it, it will take itself in its own direction rather than me pigeonholing what the potential of it is, you know. I think that's really valid, actually, what you just said, because that's what leads you forward if you just follow your...

45:33It can be surprising sometimes. You go, actually, there's a hint of Greek in this thing, and I don't know where that came from. Or, you know, it seems to demand a little Baroque touch, but I don't know why. Yeah, and then you explore that and you push that too far and realize, oh, now it's way too Baroque. You get rid of that and leave it as a hint and then move on to the next thing. and it becomes this amalgamation of just nods to stuff rather than it being in a real... Here's our Greek song. Yeah, exactly. I think it's good for your brain. I think, I don't know, sometimes I wonder, but it can drive you crazy as well.

46:04There's a song on the album called Night Song, which is a little bit about the experience of being obsessive about music and all night having the tune you're working on going around your head, and I'm sure everyone relates to that, that plays music. Unfortunately, yeah. It can be really maddening. It can feel like you're going crazy with it. Well, if you watch the same film for nine hours of a day, you'd go to bed thinking of that film as well. If you spend the whole day doing music, it's going to be there all night probably. I used to be able to work through the night, but I have to stop after dinner now generally or else I'm going to not sleep.

46:41When we come back, we'll have the rest of Bruce Hedlum's conversation with Crowded House. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an Oocla speed test. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand.

47:26With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients. And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves.

48:07They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you. It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it.

48:41Claude doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, Claude matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive.

49:23The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. We're back with the rest of Crowded House. I saw a speech you gave to the Yale. It was a group of psychiatrists.

50:05Yeah. I should say it was a speech. It was not a session. It was, they asked me to talk, to do a talk on creativity. Yeah, a seminar. And I was fascinated how much you talked about your subconscious and how you try and keep the conscious mind out of your writing as long as possible. Yeah. Is that the same today? yeah it is i mean there's about you have to look at it coming in the morning often after and putting stuff together and you get some um insight into the mechanics if they're actually working and you start to analyze the mechanics of the song but i do like to keep that free floating feeling of a that you haven't discovered everything about an idea until you know long as possible sometimes it's as i'm putting the final vocal on before the goes to mastering i'll have a little revelation about something might be better and i i don't know that it's always a very good thing that i do but this album was a classic example of us continually changing and improving and it actually i think most of the time did get better and we would steven and i would look at each other after i we'd just changed something i go I like it better.

51:23You like it better. Whether or not these guys did, I don't know. I'd send it off to them. There was about a four-month period where they were just hitting home runs, and I was like, wow, this is incredible. And then a couple came in that weren't home runs. Those are the hard ones because you don't want to be negative, but you can just say, hey, I think maybe that was better before. I always appreciate it. That's the thing about a band. You know, you've got to hope that it is a little bit sensitive to get knocked back on an idea. It's hard. It's painful to do. What a relief to have somebody to do it.

51:57Yeah, but it's painful to have to say it to someone. It's painful to hear because, like I say, that's when you're most vulnerable. You know, no one's heard it yet. So you're just. But it's not like, you know, it's not like Britain's Got Talent or something. It's like, you know, you're not sitting in front of a panel of people. That's painful. Yeah. That's brutal. No, but you know what I mean. It's best to be as positive as possible through the whole process until you're done recording. Because then once it's out, you don't care anymore. It's fine. But do you do that? Trying to keep your subconscious so engaged, is that with both lyrics and the music?

52:38It's only just the way I've ended up feeling, like the way I can work. I kind of wish I was a guy who had like poetry, just books of, you know, lines that I could then apply to music because I think that would be a really nice change. But it's just not the way it rolls for me. I find that I'm most trusting of lines that come out spontaneously as I'm writing. I don't often know what I'm singing and then I listen back to it and I go, well, that's quite a good line. that and it suggests this so i'll maybe write a couple more lines along those lines along that train of thought at the time and then i'll get excited about the little idea developing i'll go and reward myself with a coffee and you know and then i'll come back and i won't be in the same frame of mind it'll be really hard all of a sudden um to finish the song but yeah but it also means your songs have a very uh particularly the lyrics have a very dreamy quality things are associated I think a song like Weather With You, you've got the line about the car on the shelf.

53:43Oh, yeah. Or the boat. The boat, pardon me. Yeah. And then you've got the beautiful line or sing like a bird released. I can imagine a lot of songwriters would say, I've just written this line. Do I sing like a bird released? Now I have to rewrite this whole thing about being a bird released. And you don't. Yeah. It stays in a bigger picture. Yeah. well there again as alroy referred to before it's kind of like the the they slot into place at a various point it's really quite weird and um sometimes quite time-consuming to find words that i'm not consistent i'm not bothered whether they follow each thought follows in a logical progression but they have to relate to each other in a way that's kind of opens people's minds to little thoughts and doorways and things that are not intellectual because i i like songs always have that i didn't really know what they meant i just like the sound of the words and the way that they certain phrases just pick you up and take you somewhere and you can switch off your conscious mind that you use for reading or you use for analyzing every other thing in your day and so that's the kind of lyric that i always liked and that's what i've allowed myself to pursue as a lyricist now and it when they hit i think they hit really in a powerful way because they're not they're operating on a different level than an academic thing and sometimes i don't hit when i look back on some of the lyrics i go well it's clunky and clumsy and didn't really make it there but you know one of my co-hosts and i malcolm we we did a book with uh paul simon and i was amazed when he talked about songwriting how much of it was just like i just like the sound of that line yeah and that was just i mean he's a great lyricist and at his best he was able to write i mean they were impressionistic lyrics too actually when i think about it like sound of silence you don't really see a clear narrative in there but it's incredibly evocative and i always think it's sort of a combination of enough concrete images that put you in an in a place you can sense a place and abstract images that you become dream you know dreamlike in your mind And also, it's really nice to sort of sense the person who's singing.

55:52And even if you don't get a, it's not the person who's singing. I'm not imagining Paul Simon's life when I'm listening to Sounds of Silence. I'm imagining somebody on the streets having a particular convergence of awareness and loneliness, possibly. And so it has to evoke a good lyric by hook or by crook has to evoke a time and a place and a person subliminally at least. Are you a visual thinker? Because a lot of your lyrics have a really strong sense of place. I think that that's been a sort of a thing I try and put in and I don't always do it. Sometimes it's just the way I'm feeling. that's the lyric other kind of lyric is just and nowadays particularly the confessional lyric is very much the order of the day you know like writing a diary and the way you made me feel because you were mean to me or you dropped me or you know um that i like a lyric that's got a couple of phrases that link you to the day like you know whether it's the boat made of china or something there's an image that you can put yourself in a room and yeah is that maybe a yes to your question I don't think it is.

57:11I think they're very visual. I'm continually struck with the, once I hear the lyric, not necessarily confirmed when we're working a song up, but it will evoke a definite visual reference to me that then inspires me to actually affect a certain approach to what the foundation notes or style should be to actually set that visual scene. And how do you go about, assuming Mitchell isn't in the room, to keep you on the beat? No, I worked with Nick a lot more in the early days. Oh, okay. He's way beyond all that now. Because you do, it makes sense. You played violin. There's a lot of beautiful little figures in your playing, including Teenage Summer, which I think was your first single off that.

58:09There's a lot of great little figures. A lot of those little counterpoint ideas come off the skip of Neil's words. So that if a lyric in a verse particularly, like a chorus will be hopefully the same, it'll be a refrain and he sings it the same words when it is so that the bass can sit underpinning in a solid, give it solidity. But with verses, often I'll look for a counterpoint that has a slight gap in or an announcement that skips off his palate. If he's saying a certain word or the way the word is falling around the beat, I'll try and identify that in a way on the bass as well. It's quite inspiring.

59:00but with with a song like um i remember we were recording uh black water white circle um and i came up with a bass line and i remember because neil had just plotted down the put the chords down to that on acoustic guitar and sang a a vocal over it because we we hadn't learned that song by this stage and there's a lot of chords and uh so i had to suddenly the pressure was on me to come up with a bass line. Oh, Nick, can you do a bass line now? And I'm like, and you were texting someone, you're on your phone and you're calling out the chords as I'm moving through a bass line that I had this idea of a sort of a tango style bass line.

59:42And meanwhile, Mitchell's sitting on the couch behind me with his arms folded and I can just, I can just see him shaking his head, you know, like in the glass. As I'm moving through these notes, Neil's going C sharp, A, oh, it's a minor. Then it goes to E, E major. And he's calling them out before I'm actually landing on the note to do the little figure. The temperature's rising in the room as Nick's trying to fashion a bass part. And I go outside, I think, to continue my phone call or something, and suddenly there's Nick flying through the door and jumps straight in the pool. in some kind of, it was in some existential crisis with the bass line.

1:00:24He just needed to go and, you know, it was quite a moment actually that. I think the reason I ran out, I suddenly put my bass on a stand and ran outside and dived into the pool. With clothes. Fully clothed. I just needed to, I had a terrible hangover as I recall and I just needed to shock myself into knowing to just be decisive basically. Well, that's when you and Stephen had opened that bottle of incredibly expensive tequila at the house while staying. To the Airbnb. And then went and bought a cheap bottle to fill the bottle back up again. That was a falling behavior. That's classic Airbnb behavior, that is, right there.

1:01:04Yeah. And I'm sure you've heard this before, but I do think one of the most exciting parts of Don't Dream It's Over is in the third course where you do that walk-up with the baby. oh okay thank you do you remember that yeah or am i just yeah yeah but do you come at it from the bottom but am i oh yeah instead of hitting the a flat the predominant a flat it's an f minor yeah i get that f minor you hit a i think it's a isn't it a d e and then i think you're playing the sixth I think you're playing the sixth of the chord, actually. I know you usually hit a little grace note there, a drumming section, if it's where I think you're talking about.

1:01:49You're talking about the last chorus after the solo section. Yeah, so everything's the same, except it's normally an A-flat bass, an F minor chord with an A-flat bass. That last chorus, it finally lands on the F minor. But everything else about the chorus is the same. But the bass part on that song that obviously is signature of Nick is the do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do at the beginning. Nick can get tables at restaurants that are full by just going do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do, and, you know, that's his calling card. Yeah, they'll say, oh, we don't do walk-ups at this restaurant. You have to reserve a table, and I'll just go do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

1:02:34I remember you doing that. I remember we had the whole song was worked out and then there was the idea oh maybe we should do something on the bass to bring it in and you did that and I was like is that any good? because it was so fast you know like the song has this kind of beautiful slow movement all of a sudden someone's coming in just playing kind of quickly and it took me a minute before I realized it was good but I was we just did it and those were the days you had to punch in and out so you couldn't Oh, God. Poor old Chad Blake. You couldn't do a bunch of things. Yeah. I punched in. Don't remember that.

1:03:08Poor old Chad Blake. He used to, he was the best puncher ever. And because I was so inconsistent at actually playing a straight linear delivery of bass, he'd be punching me in and out for single notes or whatever. And he, it used to drive him crazy. It used to really drive him crazy. I mean, the stress in those days for him to hit, record play, record play, you know, just dropping single notes in, you know, for me. Yeah, and phrases, but that's, it's kind of, we were talking about this, it's kind of how the bass style evolved. Like we would be in the control room and we'd just punch in a section and you'd just be trying all these things.

1:03:52And then it's like, oh, that's good. But then we'd have to deal with the next bar. Yeah, you could never remember what you just played. So it'd be something different. It was like that scene in Father Ted. And then once in a while, if he messed up, then we'd have to go back and do the whole thing. Poor old Chad. It kind of, that freedom and that you were just trying things kind of helped develop the style within the band. Yeah, true, yeah. So it was kind of interesting. And he could get into any restaurant just by singing that little bit and saying, I punched that in. Chad would have to go. Oh, Chad would.

1:04:27Yeah, that would be obscure. Wouldn't get into that many places like that. That would do it. That would look a bit creepy, actually. I did want to ask you because so much of the band's early sound was Paul Hester's drums. And I always thought he was underrated as a drummer. I always thought he had such great swing and great drive. Yeah. When you started learning those songs, were there things you took from his drumming? Yeah, undoubtedly. I mean, all the recordings of the early Crowded House records have got, again, so much character and the playing and Paul was a huge part of that. And yeah, like you say, the swing and the drive and the explosiveness when it needed to be is really distinctly Paul.

1:05:14So yeah, it was definitely something that I was really mindful of when I was learning all these songs for touring and trying to get my own personality as a drummer and into the music as well is obviously something I want to do but when it comes to the classic songs that everyone has come to to love and have listened to for a long time it rewards the audience a lot when they hear those signature fills or something from the record that is you know maybe bands over the years would stop being really faithful to the recordings because they get tired of it and stuff like that or want to explore but and that's cool too but I think there's a few things in drumming and Paul's drumming in particular that were really important to me and I would guess that they were really important to the listener.

1:06:01So I wanted to get some things really spot on that Paul had done. Your brush's style is just so evocative of that. I think a big thing that, I didn't even know it at the time, but a big thing that Paul had that Elway has, because I've seen Neil with different drummers, when Neil's playing acoustic guitar and it's the amount of swing in the hi-hat I mean Neil's talked about that and it's just the way it went together I just sort of took for granted but Elroy's got that I think even when we play the more classic songs of it to me it sounds like Elroy it doesn't sound like Paul but it has that swing so it's satisfying it's just got a slightly different shade to it and most people in the audience wouldn't know the difference but he's when i was playing in this band it's elroy's it's like absolutely it's a rite of passage in the finn family that you have to learn how to play a mid-tempo song without something like you're slowing down yeah a lot of the classic songs are of a you know medium pace or not super fast and so to play that and have it not feel like it's slugging along at any point in the song is really important that's really interesting how do you do that it's a you got Well, just be mindful of like, speeding up is the most common thing as a drummer, I think.

1:07:20And so you don't want to do that either. But when a song is mid-tempo, it has the same tendency to slacken off because you don't want to rush things. And the singing, as soon as it gets too fast, you notice that because you can't get the words out in time. And so it's easier. You very rarely speed up. Like Mitchell said, the acoustic guitar is my way of trying to generate the kind of amount of swing that you want from a song that you've written. And so Elroy's tuned into that. Yeah, I think one difference would be that Paul and you had a symbiotic rhythm thing going on from the start. Paul was uninhibited as he played.

1:08:02He played with a lot of passion and a lot of irreverence. And I think I've got a different version of trying to lock in with your time because as a songwriter and band leader, your rhythm guitar is a powerful force. You can carry a whole song on its own. You don't even need drums with Neil playing guitar. It's a really incredible rhythm. And so you can't come in as a drummer with that other instrument being so rhythmic and demand that everyone's going to follow you the whole time. So there's this sort of push and pull between me and Dad, I think, on stage sometimes where it's who's leading the charge and who's dictating the terms of this rhythm.

1:08:43But in that, it's microseconds. We're really locked in, but there's something cool about, I don't know, who's driving the song. It's a dance, yeah. It's a dance. But that's what makes the mid-tempo stuff sound like it's moving forward. Because a lot of drummers on mid-tempo songs, they really like the snare to feel really back. They think that that's deep and soulful. You mean a bit of a delay on that? Yeah, you really delay your back beat. Just behind the beat a little bit. And then the hi-hat. But this is, you know. Yeah, I like a crispness and a feel. It has to be slightly dancing even if it's slow.

1:09:20So I'll push sometimes. Elroy is probably having to be conscious of not speeding up with me because I probably would, my idea of crispness and the feel might to some drummers just be like an invitation to get right on top and hit the snare a little bit too, you know. Bristbill, Elroy's got a really lovely way of setting things back. When you listen to the recordings from the live, it's remarkable how relaxed it feels and yet it's not lacking energy. But he's got a really good sense of, and things very rarely speed up if I'm making, it'd be the odd song we've made up time differences. But generally speaking, I listen to the end of a song, it hasn't gone up more than one or two BPM from the beginning and that's quite unusual, I think.

1:10:10I mean, it's such a pleasure these days listening to a band that can speed up and slow down since everything else is click tracks. Yeah, so there's that as well. Some songs do want to get three, five to five BPM faster in the bridge or in the chorus at the end of the song. And that's a nice natural amount of swaying and I value that in music a lot too. So I think, I don't know, drumming's weird because you've got to be some sort of, you've got to have some sort of discipline but then also total inhibition to make it feel like this thunderous instrument when it needs to be. But as soon as you get carried away with yourself, you will speed up 5 BPM and everyone's looking at you like, what's going on?

1:10:48And you're like, oh God, I had too much fun there for one bar. Yeah. and then that night you drive a car into the pool that's the yeah the way it feels to play in the band it feels like everyone's trying to play the mood of the song and so i think everything just comes out of that now you must just play the mood of the song everything will take care of itself you don't have you worked with bands where that's problem uh almost all the time no i mean it's the way music used to be the the backing would be a mood and then the singer you know would kind of dictate the mood and everyone just follow the singer and it became something where everything's now individual and you know bands that play use a click track live it's just horrible because it now you're introducing this rigid thing where you should be playing music so you're playing along with this rigid thing instead of playing together i mean something there's certain situations where something like that can work but in general if you see a whole concert and it's all uh you know people playing with a click you're going to be bored and not know why yeah surge and retard is the thing of when you go and you see a band.

1:12:05I love it when a band just slides. They're a great band, aren't they?

1:12:11They got in trouble for the name. Yeah, I know. It's changed. It's changed now. But, yeah, where there's a slight hesitancy as it goes into the first chorus and then it sits and then slows down again when it goes into the next verse. I mean, I love detecting that sort of thing when I'm watching a really, you know, a really dynamic band, rock band or ensemble. I mean, in orchestras, that's always the way. The conductor will say as it moves from this section to this section, there is actually three breaths, four breaths. You're all rushing those four breaths, you know, and just watch my conducting and the piece will slow down.

1:12:55You know, it's extraordinary. They're even using click tracks now in orchestras. Is that right? Well, not for concert performances, but for TV, film and TV. I don't know. I mean, you played violin. I don't know if you played in a quartet, which I did for a little while. But it's all that looking back and forth. And when it gets going, it's really amazing. Yeah. Amazing feeling. And it's natural. That's the way people perceive, you know. Well, it's the benefit of hours spent, you know, the tipping point concept that everybody talks about or were a while ago. and with a band it's exciting at the moment because we're at that point we've played enough shows now that we can i can sense us getting much better and understanding those kind of little micro the way that music is capable of being thought about and you know micro metering of this the gap between beats or just leaving a tiny hole before the beginning of the next bar can add and you only get those moments when everybody's focused together and so we feel like we're capable of becoming much better you know which is pretty exciting for an up-and-coming band it keeps it so we don't get bored i don't at least me but we don't it doesn't feel like anyone gets bored playing any of these songs no matter how many times we play them because when we play them we're playing the mood it's not like oh here's this song i've done it a million times you know you were listening to what everyone else is doing i think yeah you're just I'm trying to see how that mood is at that moment.

1:14:27And it might be moving a little and how can you contribute to it? And does that change with the crowd? When I saw you the other night, you know, that was a concert where people were singing along with everything, clapping. How does that change the playing? Crowd, definitely. Well, some venues, it's harder to hear the crowd because it doesn't lend itself. We did an open air the other night and we'd had two really nice sheds that get a bit bounced back and hear the crowd and we just weren't hearing them for a while. It was quite disarming and you don't know whether they're really going along with it.

1:15:00But yeah, the crowd will make their presence felt fairly early on. I often get them to sing early on to figure out whether they've got the gusto, not to try it too much. I do want to talk through some of the songs on the new album. And I wanted to start with The Howl, which I think has got that beautiful guitar figure that starts it. Can you tell me a little bit about writing that song? I wrote it as part of a solo project I was doing in the last few years called Hyperverse, where I streamed myself writing and recording a record on this platform, Twitch. I've always had a very different experience in a studio than I do on stage, mainly with energy levels, I find.

1:15:46And I wanted to figure out how to recreate that energy level I get on stage in a studio. And I thought, well, I think it's the fact you're being watched and the performance aspect of it. So I have made this whole record through doing my one man band thing, which is the thing I do as a solo artist, making a pretty energetic record. And I handed a bunch of the songs over to dad to listen to when I was kind of halfway through writing them. And so I was doing these long sprawling jams basically and then editing them down into songs and that one in particular he really responded to or unknowingly responded to when he had it on a few playlists when he was on vacation and kept kept coming up and he would be like what's that song and it was the hell I'm not even sure I knew it was you but I thought it was just something that would catch my ear from another room I there's something about music that sounds good from the next room yeah that's um a whole right in the next room yeah the sonics actually really come better yeah but when we were going into the second session of the of the album um dad was really keen to try it as he was a couple alroy's things and stuff and we that's like i said it was done really quickly um nick had to all of a sudden scramble to learn it's really quite a simple song except for the one change that happens and i had a very particular baseline in that part but we got it really we got a very vibey take of it very quickly but it was actually for me it was a really nice thing because i had often i would be if i'm teaching a band a song i'm probably only three quarters written with it um and a lot of it i end up finishing on the back end but that song was kind of a finished thing and it made me realize how and that's what i was going to say i want to bring finished songs to the band because you can actually move through them so much quicker and figure them out as far as what the end result will be so much.

1:17:43And in such, well, basically with less anxiety and less torturous behavior on my part. So it was really cool. So I had a version, this demo version for my record that if we did it, Dad was like, well, if we do it, we've got to make it better than your version because otherwise what's the point? And so we did. We worked on it really hard and actually cut quite a bit out of it and made a three-and-a-half-minute version of what my was, like five minutes and full of long guitar solos and stuff like that. And then I went back in after we'd finished the Crowded House record and made my version better than the – no, not better than the Crowded House version, but I got to go and take what I learnt from the Crowded House one and apply that to my version.

1:18:24And so now I've got these two different versions of the song. It's a great vocal in that song too. Oh, cheers. It's really lovely. And can I ask about Teenage Summer, which became the, was it designed as a, did you think we need a single? No, not really. But I saw potential in it. It was a jam that we did. Actually, Elroy was in on the original jam. And if you heard the demo that came from that, it's very different. A couple of parts have remained. The bass line, da-da-da-da-da-da, that starts the song, was actually the main bass riff in the song at that point. And I just kept reworking it and reworking it and reworking it and taking it apart and putting it back together again.

1:19:08We tried it with drum machine. We tried it in Latin. We tried it a number of different ways. It was really hard, I have to say. His demo was a really experimental and weird song, but when it got to the end part of it where it had the, I want to be near you. And are we going to have some? Sort of knew that there was this pop song in there. There's a pop song in you. You're dying to get out, yeah. But we tried it, the three of us once, it didn't really get anywhere. And then we tried it again. And then with the band, we tried it, it didn't really get anywhere. It changed a lot. It did. I knew there was something in there, and I just chased it, basically.

1:19:46And Elroy played the drums, the drum track on it, about three different times, three different places. And in actual fact, we used a couple of the fills from the, I used a couple of his fills from the early takes and sliced them in, even though the drums sounded completely different, you can sort of do anything really. But yeah, I was very happy with the way it turned out because it was kind of fully realized and sometimes they don't turn out to be fully realized. Did you ever think of giving up on it? Was it just that frustrating? Probably did. Yeah. I would have had a few moments where I thought, ah, it's not happening.

1:20:19Let's forget about it. Yeah. It was subject to a lot of discussion, that song. A lot of things. I did a failed effort at trying to edit it into what I thought was a more cohesive form, and it just landed like a ton of bricks. That was bad. We had a version that we had the drums really lively sounding, really roomy and lively, which is exciting, but it seemed to wear out. Then we tried a version where the drums were very dry, thinking, oh, more intimate, that'll carry the song. Mitchell did a rap over the 60-verse. We tried it all. We just went through a bunch of different things. And then, you know, if you listen to the song, like after the first chorus, the way it goes back to the intro is really tricky.

1:21:05I mean, that was Neil's idea. So we finally got a dynamic where the song felt like, okay, this is how it's the shape of it. And then by the end, it's reached its peak. So we had to figure out all kinds of things. And after it was... Breakdown and, you know, all these things. After it was mastered for the third time and already in printing for the vinyl, Dad changed the title of the song and changed the beginning of the song. That's where we kind of thought maybe he was losing it. I don't even know what version ended up. The title changed because, actually, just only because I was on a Zoom call or a FaceTime with my grandson Mania, Liam's son.

1:21:52and he was listening to it, I think. And he said, I like that song, Papa, Teenage Summer song. And I went, oh, well, he's just, the kids have spoken. You know, that's what he, it was called Life's Imitation. And I thought, oh, yeah. For a couple of years or more, for a year. Yeah, for a couple of years, yeah. I've never done that before, that late in the piece. But hey, there's surprises yet to come, I'm sure. Yeah. And I wanted to ask about Thirsty, which began with you. We talked about it a little. Yeah. So what was it like, Neil, when you first heard it? If you listen to the instrumental version of Thirsty, it's a really nice instrumental, and that's how it was.

1:22:34Elroy, I mean, it's a little scrubbed up. Engineer's done a bit of job on it, and maybe a couple of additions have been added. Mitchell might have played some things, I think, and Liam's added a bit of guitar. but essentially the arrangement was the way Elroy had his, it was a beautiful instrumental. I think the daughter of Stephen who mixed the album came in one day before the vocal was added and loved it, absolutely loved it. And I think she was disappointed when she heard the vocal. So whether or not we improved it, I don't know. But it's a beautiful piece of music. The way the chords flow is just effortless and very elegant.

1:23:14Yeah. picked my ears up and I found a melody that seemed to work with it and ran with it. And then Elroy, you know, helped. We sort of to and fro'd on what the lyrics might be. To me, it took on a kind of a Simon and Garfunkel vibe at some point as to falling in love with it, I think. And then the idea of some people never getting thirsty. That just was so abstract to me. Yeah, I didn't know if it was appropriate to even have that in as we fought against that a little bit because it was like, what? But it had a really evocative feeling for me because there are people like Mick Fleetwood's mother never drank water for 30, that he said he never saw her drink water.

1:24:01She only ever had drank tea. Cups of tea. Cups of tea. I suppose that still quenches her thirst. But it's also now, it's got a modern. Well, yeah, to be thirsty is kind of hungry for sex. in the modern concept. If someone's too thirsty, they're like showing off too many signs of being into it. And so suddenly some people never get thirsty. It has a very different meaning if you think of it that way. It's a bit of a complaint. I wish you'd separated that from Mick Fleetwood's mother. I didn't even really intend that. You can do that in post, right? You can chuck a bit of time in between those two.

1:24:38It's a good juxtaposition. I'd be happy with that in a lyric. We'll talk to Mick about it first, but yeah. You know, we haven't talked about this because this is one of your many bands, but you did tour with Fleetwood Mac. Did that? Yeah. Did you learn anything about bands? Not a thing. Or just how things operate? Yeah, it was an amazing experience, like stepping into another life for a while, you know, and so unexpected. We knew Mick well enough for me to know that I would have a good time with him, that wasn't entirely unknown, but really unexpected. And learning somebody else's songs and the way they put songs together is really fascinating, getting deep inside it, because you think you know the way that songs work, but then when you actually learn them, you find that there's more going on than you realized.

1:25:27And they're harder to learn other people's songs too. The little nuances that they add, and mine would be hard for people to learn. I understand that as well. Can you give me an example of just one of their songs that once you got into it, you're like, well, this doesn't work the way I thought. Well, maybe all of them, really. I think they're all like that. They're all sort of, even Go Your Own Way, which you think you've heard. And I wasn't like a big fan of the band in those days, particularly. I admired them for what I knew that they were really big, great pop songs and they had something. And I'd seen a couple of live things back in the day that were amazing when they were at their prime.

1:26:04And it is a very simple song, but it's just learning it is more difficult. than you think and it's not that they're I think I have more quirks and nuances in the way that I put songs together than than Lindsay does but somehow they're hard and like things like I was learning Monday morning which is quite a strange song and a weird lyric as well actually but so much singing in it's really high it's very hard to sing it's because there's no gaps in the vocal and I found I had to actually in the end so I can't don't think I can do that one unless we drop the key quite a bit and we stopped doing it anyway because I just I was blowing my voice out every night trying to do it so uh yeah things I would have if I'd been doing that myself I would have created space somewhere so I get a breath these are not particularly interesting details what I did learn was that classic bands are a result of and music is a result of five in that case individuals having quite distinctive personalities musically and something about that being undeniable and unreplaceable although having said that i did replace lindsey but um did you ever talk to him about it i've not met him no um i have a feeling we'd probably get on just fine and i don't think he was i mean he was very he was not happy about the situation i understand that but I don't think he would have blamed me for it particularly and I think he probably had some awareness of my songs and probably, you know, I would hope at some point he might have thought, oh, well, at least somebody that can write a good song has, you know, taken my part.

1:27:46But the believing in a band and actually it can be redefined, especially Fleetwood Mac have redefined themselves so many times, there have been so many different kind of bands. I related to that and I thought oh maybe I can do that and at the same time as I thought that and I was appreciating that about Fleetwood Mac I thought oh I got I've been playing music with Elroy and Liam for the last few years and it's been feeling great so why not just you know one ring to bind them all and I put it to Nick and he was super enthusiastic about it and then we thought well what about Mitchell as well like why don't we ask him we asked him 25 30 years ago and He was too busy trying to be a producer, but maybe the time will be right.

1:28:24It just was, you know, was right. I was interested when I saw you the other night, which was a great show, that the crowd got to vote on the song they were playing. And you seem surprised, and I don't know if you were genuinely surprised, that they chose Into Temptation, which I think is just… We give them an option of… It's an experiment on this, too. we haven't done this before but we thought they like having some degree of people request songs all the time and we often don't do them because they come at the wrong time or it's a way of people being able to express an opinion um i got you gets a lot of nods and that into temptation is a surprising one but it has endured for a lot of people as a one of our best songs and we don't play it every night because if we've got four seasons in the set they occupy quite a similar dynamic and feels like sometimes too many of that kind of song might lower the tempo of the show.

1:29:27But it actually finishes the show quite well, strangely. It doesn't leave people feeling depressed. It leaves them feeling sort of content in a funny kind of way, it seems. Well, it seems like a very Catholic song. So maybe it's like mass. It does express all the dimensions of temptation and guilt. Yeah. So what's next for you? You're going to keep touring and then? Well, we are in the short term. We're going until the end of the year, pretty nonstop now, which is amazing for developing as a band and has some degree of, you know, a bit of a wrench for Liam to be away from family. And we all have the, and Nick, you know, and Mitchell, although Mitchell's son's just left home, so he's free as a bird.

1:30:15Yeah. So, yeah, but we're going to be touring next year, a little bit less, but we're going to make a new record next year, I think. Yeah, we didn't know until we did an interview, but it's 30, 40, 30, 40 years since the band started next year. So we've got to, you know, that's kind of impetus to make the best record that Crowded House has ever made. Yeah, after 40 years. Well, we're capable of it and everyone will be coming with a clean slate, a fresh palette. But there's no other, you know, nothing else that is competing for our attention next year. And we can be together in a studio more often if we can navigate it from a geographical point of view.

1:30:58Well, listen, thank you so much for coming in here. It's been a complete delight. Thank you. Thank you. A real treat. Very nice conversation. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Bruce. Thank you. Thank you. Great honor. Thanks so much to Neil Finn, Liam Finn, Elroy Finn, Nick Seymour, and Mitchell Froome of Crowded House for talking about their new project and their long histories together. To hear a playlist of our favorite songs from Crowded House, you can go to this episode's description or visit us at brokenrecordpodcast.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast where you can find all of our new episodes.

1:31:37You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Toleday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats.

1:32:13I'm Justin Richman. The more you learn about your favorite artists, the more you want to know. Claude helps you keep digging, finding new threads and rabbit holes to explore. Whether it's discovering deeper meaning behind a detail in an interview, or figuring out the influence behind an artist's particular era, Claude thinks with you to find the next clue. If you can't get enough of the stories behind your favorite music and artists, Claude will help you discover new layers you didn't know existed. Try Claude for free at Claude.ai slash Broken Record. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve.

1:32:50Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? Well, actually, yeah, with Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. First, you will earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. And the card gets you into Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences. Whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next week in escape, discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC.

1:33:27Subject to credit approval, terms apply. Every day has a to-do list, but adding enjoy Belvita to yours can help you knock out the rest of it. Belvita breakfast biscuits are a tasty and convenient breakfast option when paired with low-fat yogurt and fruit that provides steady energy all morning. While Belvita Energy snack bites give you the perfect mid-morning refuel. Best part, they both taste great. So make the most out of your morning with a bite of Belvita. Pick up a pack of Belvita at your local store today. This is an iHeart Podcast.