Tim Finn has been an adopted Aussie icon since bursting on the scene with Split Enz back in the 1970s. These days he lives a quiet life in Auckland with his wife. He’ll be heading over to our shores in June to play at Adelaide’s Beer and BBQ Festival as well as some other Australian dates. We caught up with him as he reflected on his songwriting evolution, particularly his interest in experimenting with different musicians, including drummer Ricky Fataar. Finn touched on the challenges of maintaining relevance in today’s fragmented media landscape. He also shared his experiences with translating songs into Māori, such as “Six Months in a Leaky Boat.”
You’re about to go on the Escapade tour and album release. What drove you to re-release the album after 40 years?
Well, it was supposed to come out two and a half years ago and I just couldn’t get the record company moving right. I mean, it’s always a bit tricky these anniversaries. There’s so many of them anyway, so I kind of like the fact that it’s a 42-and-a-half-year anniversary tour, which, you know, not many people celebrate. It’s a record that stood outside this kind of 12 years, an obsessive Split Enz kind of Odyssey, which I loved, and I loved the people in it. It was never an attempt to walk away from the band or it wasn’t like I was dying to do a solo record. It was just we decided as a band to take a couple of months off. We’ve been touring relentlessly for five years, and I had a few songs left over from the band that we had jammed on, but they hadn’t quite clicked, or they were only half written.
And so, it had its own little evolution in terms of me as a songwriter, just wanting to try a few different things with different musicians, especially drummers. I was really interested in drummers. Ricky Fataar played on the Renee Geyer track that I heard on the radio. I just had to meet the guy. It’s just like one of the best grooves I’d ever heard. It turns out that he’s one of the best drummers in the world, in my opinion, anyway, and a lot of other people’s. But he was just a guy in Sydney who I wanted to meet.
“Fraction Too Much Friction” is the opening song on the album. How do you feel as a songwriter, that four decades later, people are still responding to your music, and that particular song,
Well, it’s a great feeling. Especially at festivals where there are going to be younger people who have never seen me play, yet they’ll kind of know that song, or they might know “I See Red” or something. There’ll be this sort of recognition. I can see physically the way they’re moving, that they go, “Oh, yeah. I know this song”. The gift to any performer is to have songs that people actually know. It’s really hard work when you’re a young band or young artist and they don’t know any of your songs. I can still remember that feeling. It’s all part of it, and you don’t mind doing it, but it’s tough, you know? Then you start to get one or two or three that they know, then end up with being able to build a set around songs from Split Enz and Crowded House, and my solo work that is stacked with songs that people, at least some people, will know. It’s a great thing. I never take it for granted.
That song, “I See Red”, when I was living in Darwin, one of my mates wanted to make a video of where he was living. We were driving around, and that song came on the radio, and there’s this clip of us speeding up before a red light.
Little kids like that one, and they like “Shark Attack” too, those fast ones.
I also remember back in the day, when Split Enz first came out on Countdown, you guys all dressed up in the outfits with the crazy hair and my parents just sort of dropping their mouths, going, “Who are these people”?
They’re just New Zealanders. Don’t worry.
But I guess that what that did, that sort of image, that disruption, was something that that made people remember you, and made people sit up and take notice. How do people get that edge in these days?
Oh, I mean, I don’t know. There’s just so many artists and so many platforms, and as you say, Countdown. I mean, you could guarantee that every Sunday night at 6pm there were probably 2 million Australians watching, all at the same time. It was sort of a communal thing, even if there were groans or rolling eyes or hatred or vitriol or euphoria or love or anything. All the different emotions, I’m sure, were coming back at the TV sets, but at least everybody was tuned in at the same time to something that clearly doesn’t happen anymore. You can stream movies whenever you like. You can stream music and do anything you like, anytime you like, and consequently, no one’s doing it at the same time as anyone else. It’s really a different thing, not necessarily saying better or worse, but it’s extremely different.
So, I think I consider we were lucky to live at a time when those big communal things like Countdown or going to the movies were part of our lives. You know, we lost something. We never thought those big, lofty thoughts when we were doing them. I mean, we just rolled along and there we were. Michael Gudinski in Mushroom did miracles with Skyhooks and all that, so we were able to get on Countdown. Almost immediately we came to Australia, we didn’t even have a record out, right? We played a song that was recorded in Auckland as a kind of demo and God knows what people thought, but it just was phenomenal the power that Michael had in those days and throughout his career.
Going back to your music, there’s a balance, I guess, between keeping something fresh and reinterpreting it. How do you keep that balance? How do you like keep a song true to its roots yet re-release it.
Well, I think playing live is when it all happens, the re-releasing, the anniversaries and things that’s really, I suppose, keeping a record in front of people and giving them another chance to buy some fresh vinyl. But playing live, is where I mean, some people will come up to me sometimes and talk about a gig they might have seen in 1975. It’s really amazing to me that happens. You think a gig is like an ephemeral thing, you know? Yeah, but actually, people have very intense memories of certain gigs, and it possibly even goes deeper than a record.
Your question is about how do I keep it fresh? Well, I keep it fresh by but not playing that often, but when I play, it’s to a crowd that aren’t necessarily there to see me at all. You know, they’re at a festival. They know I’m part of the bill, but you know they might be there to see somebody else, or they’re just happy to be at the festival. Drink a few beers, have some barbecue, you know, hang around up the back, talk to their friends, you know. Suddenly I come on and I do a song, and they go, “Sure, I know that song”, you know? Then maybe they kind of creep down the front a bit more, and there’s just a vibe going on. And that’s what keeps it fresh for me.
Speaking of beer and barbecue, what do you know about the Beer and BBQ Fest? Did you know about it before you got booked to play?
I didn’t, and it’s quite a few years since I played in Adelaide, so it seemed like a good chance to come back and just play a gig in general to a cross section of people. I mean, they made an offer, and I thought, yeah, why not? I mean, the bill was part of what drew me in. Quite an eclectic bunch of musicians. Yeah, it’s quite rootsy, some of it, which is good.
You’ve also done the Mundi Mundi festival and the Big Red Bash recently.
Yeah, I really love those too. You know, people come from all over Australia and their camper vans, whatever. It’s just phenomenal.
Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of Mundi Mundi ones, and it’s a unique Australian experience.
It really is. Broken Hill is a great town. I didn’t realise until after being there for a day that a lot of the town is quite empty. Now, you’re just seeing a lot of houses and a lot of really interesting old buildings, but because of the mines not working, it’s in some ways a ghost town. But it’s not really, because you’ve got that whole overlay of Priscilla and, like, drag shows on, it’s kind of interesting. You know, it’s a real mix.
I think that a lot of Australians that live in the city don’t realise how much goes on in the outback, as much does.
I’m sure that’s true, let alone going out to the Big Red Bash, the edge of Simpson Desert; you stand up on that big sand hill and look out into the desert, and it is exactly like looking out into an ocean. It’s a vast sort of space that just calms you down, and you feel your heartbeat kind of coming, and it’s beautiful.
You’ve reinterpreted “Six Months in a Leaky Boat” and you’ve done it in Māori language; how did that come about?
Well, there’s a series of albums called Waiata albums. Waiata is Te Reo Māori for song, and so Waiata anthems are basically well-known songs in New Zealand that have been translated. I’d been through a whole translation process prior to that, because I collaborated on an opera, of all things. I didn’t really see that one coming, but it somehow came along, and I thought, well, I’ll give it a go. I’ve never done that, and a lot of that was in Tahitian. So, I learned the complexities of trying to work with Polynesian languages. The Tahitian language has a lot of glottals and a lot of syllables, like some very long words. We’re used to quite short words in English. Something like six months in a leaky boat, ending on a t like that, a hard consonant just doesn’t happen a lot. All the words end with A’s or E’s or O’s or these long vowel sounds. And so melodically, it’s quite challenging. I’m trying to rethink how the line will finish. There’s a lot of other things as well. I’m just glossing over it, but it’s incredibly complex.
I was lucky on that one that you mentioned “Ono Marama”, which we call it, because I was working with a really great young translator, Hannah. She went through it with me. Just to give you one example. Like, the key phrase is obviously six months in a leaky boat. She was asking me what do I feel about using a different metaphor? So, she gave me examples. There’s a famous Māori story about a whirlpool, but I really want to keep that leaky boat thing, because that was like a key image for me when I was going through a rough time. She came back couple of days later, she found a word that I didn’t even know, and it’s to do with a split hull of a waka or a canoe, right? She was excited, I was excited, and off we went. And that can be one of the joys of translation.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful interpretation.
Yeah, I love it too. It’s very female, much slower, you know, the women’s voices are there. I’m just kind of tucked in, and just as it has a whole different thing about it. But it felt pretty natural. It felt like you could hear that being sung in a garage, just somebody sitting on a beer crate, you know, singing with acoustic guitar. And that’s the kind of vibe I was going for.
I was thinking about the difference between, “I See Red” and, you know, “They Won’t Let My Girlfriend Talk to Me” and “I Got You”. Then you have songs like, “I Hope I Never”, and “Six Months in a Leaky Boat”, which is a very contemplative song. There’s quite a range of music.
Yeah, thank you. I think looking back, I can see that too, and I don’t try and change that. I mean, I like that about myself and about that writing, you know, and that’s why I enjoy writing songs for musicals now, like writing for characters, getting into characters who might be male or female or old or grown. I just really enjoy that.
So do you prefer the songwriting or the performing side?
Well, I think they both go hand in hand in a way, like the playing live. If I never played live, I think that would have a detrimental effect on my writing. I think you’ve got to get out there and play to people and feel that chemistry and that energy, and then it feeds back into the writing. But I think ultimately, it’s the songwriting. I really like being at home, I like routine. I’m not looking for life to be madly exciting or different every day. I like a routine. Part of that routine for me is when I swim laps every day, and then I do some playing on the piano, even if I’m not writing anything. That’s a simple, soothing kind of life that I like. Well, it is exciting because music is always exciting. It energises you and inspires you, but at the same time, it’s quite a soothing pattern that I seem to enjoy, that seems to be creative for me.
After the Beer and BBQ Fest, you’re playing a couple of shows around Australia as well.
Yeah, Sydney, Melbourne, and Thirroul on this Escapade run. The band will be the band that I actually played with at Mundi, Mundi and Big Red Bash. They’ve got a couple of backing singers, a really good rhythm section, and they’re just a great band. So, we’re going to go out, we’re going to add in a horn player and a percussion player and really try and do justice to the record. You know, it’s exciting to think of playing those songs again after so long.
The Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival 2025 is celebrating 10 years of beers! Kings Birthday Weekend over 3 nights and 2 days. Pre-Sale tix available now!
Catch Tim Finn Sunday night along with Mondo Psycho and Captain Hellfire and the Wretched Brethren and more. You’ve got The Chats, The Gooch Palms and more Saturday night, Friday night features Wolfmother, Custard and Rocket Science.
Of course there’s also an incredible array of beer, bbq as well as festival faves such as the Dad Bod wet T-shirt comp, wrestling comps, bmx and skating demos.
Tim Finn is also playing these dates:
Friday, 1st August: Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul NSW
Saturday, 2nd August: Palais Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Saturday, 9th August: State Theatre, Sydney NSW
