Why Tim Finn is finally ‘relishing’ his new beginning

Tim Finn has lived more lives than most.

In the 70s he was the twitchy, shock-haired, frontman of our iconic band Split Enz before wiping away the makeup and flattening his hair to reincarnate as a smooth solo pop star who sent idiosyncratic hits such as Fraction Too Much Friction and Parihaka to the top of the charts in the 80s.

In the 90s he was reborn as a backseat band member, pointing the way for Crowded House to take over the world with their essential album Woodface. He co-wrote most of the album, including hits Chocolate Cake, Four Seasons in One Day and Weather With You, before ducking out at the height of its success to again go solo, and again trouble the charts, this time with the classic pop-earworm Persuasion.

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During the 2000s the quintessential showman who had revelled in the spotlight was reborn as a sporadic collaborator.

Around the start of the 2010s he walked off the stage he once dominated so thoroughly, so thrillingly, in favour of working behind the scenes writing operas and musicals. Aside from the odd festival or guest appearance – mostly in Australia – Finn all but disappeared from public view for much of the past decade.

Until now.

In September Finn’s new life begins. It’s one that sees him reconnecting with fans to celebrate his past lives by playing a series of rare shows – one each in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland.

Titled The Lives and Times of Tim Finn it sees him throwing open his songbook of undeniable Kiwi classics, beginning at the start with Split Enz’s arty rockers like I See Red, I Hope I Never and Charlie before moving chronologically through the years – and the hits – from there.

“I did a show at the end of last year at Night at the Barracks in Sydney and it just went off so beautifully I thought I’ve got to do this again,” says Finn, smiling at the memory of playing the dusk slot at the Manly festival. “There was a feeling that happened between me and the 2000 people there. I realised inside myself that I had been missing it.”

When we Zoom in for our interview Finn’s at his Auckland home in the music room. It’s busy, but not cluttered and the muted pistachio-coloured walls have a soothing quality to them. There’s a piano to his left, an acoustic guitar behind him and, curiously, another piano off to his right.

“That’s the piano that Neil and I both learned on,” he says, referring to his brother, frequent songwriting partner and Crowded House frontman.

“It’s terribly out of tune,” he continues, walking over to it to bash out the classic syncopated groove of Split Enz’s 1982 hit Dirty Creature. “It gets really bad around the middle, see?” he says, hammering at a few keys. Then, with a glint in his eye, he sits back down and says, “That’s where most of the action used to happen.”

He actually has a third piano tucked away in the house somewhere but before I can ask about it he’s swung around and picked up his guitar.

“This is a lovely old Gibson guitar from 1957. It’s got a little indentation here in the wood,” he says strumming out a few chords before holding it up for inspection. “I was told that’s because it’s where the guy would put his pinkie when he played. It’s got a lot of history and story for me this guitar.”

Then he looks around the room and adds, “All the instruments do. I don’t have much, but it’s a treasured collection. The kids have realised how cool it is. One day they’ll get the few things that I’ve got that are pretty special. It’s like Dad with his record collection, he didn’t have a lot of records but they were all classics of the Swing era. I’ve got quite a few of those over there,” he says, gesturing back to a stack of vinyl sitting on top of his childhood piano.

“I haven’t played them for a while, but I put them on and immediately Dad’s there in the room with his glass of whiskey. I’m hoping when the kids play these instruments and I’m gone, you know, I’ll be there with them.”

With the shows a few months off he’s still working on finalising the setlist. He promises all the expected hits from every incarnation of his musical life, a few surprises as well as some fan-pleasing deep cuts. It will be his life in song, and I wonder how he’s felt looking back so thoroughly and really digging into his past lives.

“I think it’s hard to know yourself at different ages, to know anyone. It’s hard for me to know what it’s like to be your age, even though I was your age once,” he says. “But as you move into these different phases, there’s a sense of unknowing and mystery about yourself.

The songs are a great way for me to reference back. If I didn’t have those I don’t know what I’d hold onto because it’s very dreamlike. As the decades go by you just remember a few physical things and have a bit of a memory of what’s happened. But so much is lost.”

Perhaps he’s worried he sounds maudlin so he adds, “I don’t say that in any sad way, it’s just life. But the songs are a great way back for me – and hopefully for the audience. Those who come and remember the time that they were first released or when they saw Split Enz or me solo or me with Neil.

They’ll remember those moments. Or maybe they only came to it much later, they heard the songs on the radio or television or they’ve only just checked out one of our old records. I love that. That these songs just keep finding new sets of ears.”

It’s a funny old thing, life. Filled with good and bad and ups and downs that we have to do our best to muddle through. No matter which incarnation he’s been living, Finn’s also had his share of triumphs and tumultuous times.

This period of reflecting on his past has left him thinking about life’s bigger picture. The 70-year-old says he was extremely fortunate to meet his wife Marie when he was 44. He laughs and says even his sister thought true love would never happen for him and he describes their marriage as a “true partnership”.

“It’s the kind of relationship I’d always been looking for,” he says. “But there was a lot of chaos and mayhem along the way. And a lot of that was self-inflicted.”

Looking back on his life, he says music has been more than his job. It’s what has got him through and helped him to cope with his demons. He cites Dirty Creature as an example.

“I wrote it when I was experiencing panic attacks. I didn’t have any idea what they were, and no-one spoke about things like that back then so it was actually quite terrifying,” he says. “It felt like I would never be able to get back to a stable state. It always felt like I was fluctuating between being pretty freaked out and very scared and some kind of normalcy where I would carry on and live my life and nobody would know.”

“But it helped me so much because it put what was happening to me out there by putting a name on it and saying ‘dirty creature’. It’s like a kid’s fairytale where there’ll be a monster or a witch doing terrible things but it helps the child deal with all these nameless fears.

It helps to put it in a story form and that’s what I was doing. I didn’t realise that until way afterwards but it definitely helped me. It empowered me. When I sing Dirty Creature, I’m always feeling like I can get the better of that creature.”

The alchemy of his songs comes from what he calls the primitive part of his psyche – writing from impulse and feelings as opposed to thought. That they tap into those primal feelings preserved within all of us could be part of what makes them so relatable and enduring.

“I would hope that that is so,” he says. “I’m a very instinctive person in everything I’ve done.”

Then, with a gentle laugh, he adds, “I’ve never made a smart move.”

It’s obvious that he wants these concerts to not just be special, but to be meaningful. To that end, he’s drawing on his recent life in the theatre to heighten the experience.

“But I can’t give the game away,” he says with a sly grin. “I want people to really feel like they’ve actually got off the couch for a reason and had this flesh and blood encounter with somebody who’s been doing it for a long time – even though I haven’t done it for a while.”

“I just go the way the music makes me go.”

Which leads us not to the end of the road but to this new beginning. So what do the life and times of Tim Finn look like now?

“I have a very routine-based existence. I had so much chaos in my life for so long; living in different houses and places and touring all the time,” he says.

“I’ve really, really relished this period of my life. I’m pretty fit. I’m quite disciplined. I have my swim every day, I do meditation, I work on music, I read books. I’m here if my family needs me or I’ll go for a walk with my wife and we’ll sit around and talk.”

He sounds content, happy.

“It’s very much a privileged existence, really,” he smiles, before adding, “Although I feel like I’ve earned it. Music’s always there for me.”

Then with a knowing smile, Tim Finn says, “If I want it.”

See: The Lives and Times of Tim Finn, Christchurch Town Hall, September 20, Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre, September 21 and The Civic, Auckland, September 23.