Since he first started releasing music, Tim Finn has never just sat on a singular project or been satisfied by creating music through a single means.
Over his multi-decade career, he has played a vital role in bands Split Enz, Crowded House, as well as writing his own music and collaborating with a range of different musicians.
Recently he had taken time away from performing, to focus on writing music for musical theatre. However, he is now returning for an Australian tour in September. Entitled The Life and Times of Tim Finn, the tour will see him perform at the notable Palais Theatre on Wednesday, September 13.
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The run of shows will involve performing hits from all the significant moments throughout his involvement with Split Enz, Crowded House and his own solo works.
“So this show is about music from the 80s to the early 90s,” says Finn. “Almost the mid-90s and then it stops and so there’s another show that I could do, but that would involve lesser-known songs. It would still be enjoyable for a lot of people though. I might get to that, but this, that’s what this show will be, the known songs to create a nostalgic experience for all of us.”
Despite the upcoming tour being about a chronological showcase of music that he’s been responsible for writing, whether individually or as a collaborative effort, Tim is still writing and recording today. A mentionable collaboration is the long-standing relationship he has maintained with poet and singer-songwriter Andy White.
“I did two albums in ’94,” says Finn. “One with Neil called Finn and one with Andy and Liam (Andy White, Liam Ó Maonlaí from Hothouse Flowers) called Alt. Altitude is the name of the record, the project was Alt. Last year, they released the album on a boutique UK label called Needle Mythology. Finn and Altitude were both released on vinyl. Andy had talked about our friendship in Dublin in the early 90s and what a wonderful summer we had together writing songs.
“Andy would say ‘the sea holds the memory’, which was so beautiful because Liam and I used to swim a lot, especially at this particular swimming hole. What’s more, was that my dad was dying towards the end of it and when we made our first record of ‘94, Liam’s dad had just died. So, there were always connections and powerful kind of triggers going on. Andy is also so good at the lyrics. So, our relationship has evolved to where I can just send him a draft and he can rework it and send it back or vice versa.”
This ongoing relationship with White is just one example of the plethora of poets, musicians, playwrights and creatives that Tim has collided with throughout his life. In the early days of Finn playing bands, Talking Heads acted as his contemporaries in the 70s and 80s.
“Talking Heads are a good example,” he says. “David Byrne, I see more as a contemporary rather than an influence. We watched Talking Heads in Amsterdam in 1976 and as millions had gone to England, we’d already been going for four years. They were a marvel to watch. They were this twitchy, nervous band with highly literate lyrics littered with ecstasy. We felt contemporaneous with those bands.
“We’d all picked up on the energy of the 60s. Velvet Underground were a huge influence on a lot of bands out of that period but The Beatles were the major influence on us, with their rich harmonies and melodies. David Byrne is somebody who, right now, I think he’s a true artist and you know I always look with interest for what he’s doing.”
However, it was the versatility and creative prowess of David Bowie, and his covert fascination with musical theatre that really sparked inquisition in Tim.
“I’m glad you mentioned Bowie before,” he says. “Because I found out recently that his greatest dream and his desire, his singular desire was to write a musical. At the time when musicals had come off that huge wave of classic musicals in the 50s and the 60s. A lot of the time, musicals would have been thought of as not so interesting because everybody was just so cool and so rock.
“Bowie was a revolutionary, yet why would he want to do that? But I find it fascinating that he had that little engine going back then, which I think he used again and again in creating characters like Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke.
“Although I didn’t know about all that as a kid, I was still writing plays and putting them on. I wrote a parody of My Fair Lady cause someone had taken me to see My Fair Lady when I was about eight or nine and it blew my mind. I can remember jumping to my feet and shaking just, you know, in exultation.”
For Tim, whose creative undertakings span so far and so extensively, it is perhaps best to witness his stage presence live. To reconnect with songs that have held important moments in your life, or to simply, for the first-time bear witness to one of the most prolific musicians of the last 40 years.
If this interests you, grab tickets to Tim’s Melbourne show here.
