{"id":148,"date":"2005-03-14T22:39:38","date_gmt":"2005-03-15T03:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=148"},"modified":"2012-07-13T22:18:57","modified_gmt":"2012-07-14T02:18:57","slug":"a-conversation-with-crowded-houses-neil-finn-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/a-conversation-with-crowded-houses-neil-finn-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Crowded House’s Neil Finn, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Neil Finn<\/p><\/div>\n

Crowded House was a great band that actually had considerable success worldwide, and that’s pleasant to report. I also like to reflect on when they first emerged in America, in 1986. At the time I was a DJ with a late-night radio show at WWWV, an FM AOR (that’s album-oriented rock for you young ‘uns) radio station in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I was doing graduate work at the University of Virginia. One day program director and afternoon drive-time jock Jay Lopez brought me a 12-inch piece of vinyl from Capitol Records. On it were three songs from a new band called Crowded House. Well, they had me from the downbeat. They sounded like a rootsy version of Squeeze, or maybe an antipodean Beatles around the time of Magical Mystery Tour crossed with a kind of spare, dreamy rock that reminded me of certain Robyn Hitchcock songs. I was an instant fan and played the grooves off that record on my late-night show.<\/p>\n

Jay Lopez was a fine DJ and a great guy to work for. He arranged for me to do a phone interview with Crowded House several months later. The album had been out for quite a while by then, but it hadn’t done much in the market. That, however, was about to change: “Don’t Dream It’s Over” had just been released when I did the interview, and of course that song took Crowded House to the top of the charts and made them famous all over the world.<\/p>\n

It was a very interesting time, then, to talk to Neil Finn, the songwriter, guitarist, and lead singer for the band. Crowded House had not yet toured the US. Capitol was trying to break the album one more time with a new single. And Neil was in the mood to talk about this wonderful album that not many people knew about yet.<\/p>\n

This is part one of three parts I’ll podcast over the next few days. As you’ll hear, there are some goofy radio moments I’ve left in, even though the interview wasn’t aired live. In fact, I edited the goofy stuff at the beginning out of the version I aired. But for the podcast, you get (almost) the whole thing. (There was some nonsense at the beginning when I thought I was talking to Nick Seymour, not Neil, but I’ll save that for the Director’s Cut.) I think the interview holds up pretty well all these years later, and I’m still very moved by how open, warm, and intense Neil was willing to be with a guy he’d never met before.<\/p>\n

I hope you enjoy the interview. Here’s part one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/podcast\/Neil_Finn_Part_One.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a> (8.3MB) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crowded House was a great band that actually had considerable success worldwide, and that’s pleasant to report. I also like to reflect on when they first emerged in America, in 1986. At the time I was a DJ with a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardo_stuff","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bHwM-2o","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1832,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}