Neil Finn
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Neil Mullane Finn (born May 27, 1958 in Te Awamutu ) is a New Zealand rock musician with Irish ancestors.
Finn sings, plays guitar and piano and is a pop songwriter. He became known to a larger audience as the singer and main songwriter for the bands Split Enz and Crowded House . Critics consider him one of the most important songwriters of his generation.
Life
Childhood and youth
Neil Finn was born in Te Awamutu, New Zealand, the son of the accountant Richard Finn and his wife Mary (née Mullane), the youngest of four children. The children's musical talent, which was encouraged by their parents, first appeared in Neil's older brother Brian (better known as Tim Finn , after his middle name), who was born in 1952 and who listened to and soon played British rock music intensely with schoolmates.
Neil, influenced by his older brother, heard a lot of music from the Beatles , the Kinks , the Dave Clark Five and the Bee Gees . He learned to play guitar and piano and tried out the polyphonic harmony singing of his role models as a child.
When Brian founded the avant-garde combo Split Ends with his school friend Philip Judd in 1972 at the age of 19 and adopted his middle name Timothy / Tim as his stage name, Neil began to emulate him.
At Split Enz
After a short-lived band After Hours, which the 18-year-old had founded with two friends in 1976, Neil joined Split Enz as a guitarist in 1977 immediately after leaving school (the changed spelling should indicate New Zealand origins - NZ for New Zealand ). He went through a steep learning curve with the band, which at the time had already released three albums and was considered a discovery by Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera . First cautious steps as a songwriter led to the band's first international success in 1980 after two flops with the single I Got You, which reached number 12 in England.
From then on, the brothers Tim and Neil shared the main work as songwriters at Split Enz. Tim left the band three albums later to pursue a solo career. Without frontman Tim, the future seemed questionable despite continued success; therefore the group broke up after a final tour in late 1984.
Transition period
In 1983, shortly before the end of Split Enz, the young drummer Paul Hester joined the band. With him, Reels guitarist Craig Hooper, and an enthusiastic bass player named Nicholas Seymour , Neil performed as The Mullanes, who went on a tour of Australia that turned out to be a total flop. Hooper resigned soon afterwards and the continuation appeared again in question. Finn and Hester went to Los Angeles for months looking for a record label and producer. In 1986 they got a contract with Capitol Records and a talented producer with Mitchell Froom . Towards the end of the recording of the first album, the band decided on the strange name Crowded House.
Crowded House
The debut album of the same name (1986) threatened to be a flop when the first two singles World Where You Live and Mean to Me went down without a response. The breakthrough came with the third single and a sophisticated “guerrilla” promotion campaign: Don't Dream It's Over, a melancholy rock ballad with a soulful touch and an old-fashioned sounding Hammond organ in the instrumental section, made it to number 2 in the US charts. In their wake it also brought the album to larger sales figures and the follow-up single Something So Strong reached the US Top 10. But the second album Temple of Low Men (1988) brought again disillusionment; sales in the US and the rest of the world were disappointing. In 1989, in the midst of a creative crisis, Finn even broke up the trio for a few weeks.
In 1990 his brother Tim (whose solo career had stalled) joined the band. Together, the Neils brothers overcame writer 's block and Crowded House brought out the album Woodface as a quartet in 1991 , which received little attention in the USA, but with several singles the band brought success for the first time in England and continental Europe. Since then, the track Weather with You has been an integral part of rock-oriented radio stations. Tim Finn left the band soon after the album was released.
Another album, Together Alone (1993), is now considered the artistic highlight of Crowded House and Neil Finn, who was a mature and versatile songwriter. Here elements of song-oriented rock music were skillfully mixed with New Zealand-ethnic influences.
Crowded House had already won the Brit Award for "best live act" in 1992 ; In 1992 and 1993, Neil won two consecutive Q Awards as the world's best songwriter for his work on Woodface and Together Alone . But when Paul Hester left the band due to mental health problems during the 1994 American tour, the end was in sight. Two years later, Finn broke up his second band after a big farewell concert.
In 2007, Neil Finn and Nick Seymour teamed up with other musicians (Hester had taken his own life in the meantime) again as Crowded House, released the album Time on Earth and went on an extensive world tour. The album Intriguer was released in June 2010, parallel to another world tour.
Solo career / collaborations / Finn Brothers
In 1998 Neil's first solo album was released. Try Whistling This was a respectable sales hit; it reached number 5 in the English charts. Three years later, Finn tried his hand at being the sole producer with his album One Nil . He presented the album together with well-known musician colleagues such as Eddie Vedder , Johnny Marr and Ed O'Brien under the title 7 Worlds Collide in a series of live concerts in Auckland that were later released as live CD and DVD. Also in 2001, Neil Finn composed his first score for Christine Jeff's film Rain .
The 7 Worlds Collide concept was continued in 2008/2009.
Together with his brother Tim, he had already recorded a lo-fi album in 1995, on which the brothers played all the instruments themselves and let the songs speak for themselves relatively "uncut". Another duo album followed nine years later with Everyone Is Here , the sound of which is strongly reminiscent of Woodface .
The song of the Lonely Mountain , written and sung by Finn based on the dwarf song by Howard Shore (with lines from Tolkien), is part of the soundtrack for the film The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey by director Peter Jackson , which was released in December 2012 .
In April 2018 it was announced that Finn had joined Fleetwood Mac and would go on tour with the band.
Private life
Neil Finn has been married since 1982 and has two sons with his wife (* 1983, * 1987) who work in the music business themselves.
Discography
Albums with Split Enz
- Dizrythmia (1977)
- Frenzy (1979)
- True Colors (1980)
- Waiata / Corroborree (1981)
- Time & Tide (1982)
- Conflicting Emotions (1983)
- See Ya Round (1984)
- The Living Enz (live double album, 1985)
Albums with Crowded House
- Crowded House (1986)
- Temple Of Low Men (1988)
- Woodface (1991)
- Together Alone (1993)
- Recurring Dream (Best Of CD, 1996)
- Afterglow (rarity album, 1999)
- Farewell To The World (Live album, 2006)
- Time On Earth (2007)
- Intriguer (2010)
Albums with Tim as "Finn Brothers"
- Finn (1995)
- Everyone Is Here (2004)
Solo albums and other publications
- Try Whistling This (1998)
- One Nile (2001)
- Rain (soundtrack, 2001)
- I am Sam (soundtrack, 2001) - the Beatles cover Two of Us with his son Liam Finn
- One All (2002, US only)
- 7 Worlds Collide (Live album and DVD, 2002) - with Eddie Vedder , Radiohead members Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway , Johnny Marr and Lisa Germano
- 7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out (double album, 2009) - with Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway, Johnny Marr, Sebastian Steinberg, Wilco and KT Tunstall
- Song of the Lonely Mountain (Theme song for The Hobbit , 2012)
- Goin 'Your Way (Neil Finn & Paul Kelly , 2013)
- Dizzy Heights (2014)
- iTunes Session (2015)
- Out of Silence (2017)
- Lightsleeper (2018) with Liam Finn
literature
- Chris Bourke: Something So Strong. Sydney 1997, ISBN 0-7329-0886-8 .
- Kerry Downey, Chris Twomey: Private Universe. London 1996, ISBN 0-7119-4816-X .
- Mike Chunn: Stranger Than Fiction. The Life And Times Of Split Enz. WellingtonZ 1992, ISBN 1-86956-050-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Chart sources: New Zealand Australia UK UK2
- ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK NZ AU
- ^ The Q Awards
- ↑ Press report in Amplifier Magazine ( Memento of the original from August 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-finn-reaches-epic-heights-on-song-of-the-lonely-mountain-song-premiere-20121112
- ↑ Press report in Rolling Stone
Web links
- Works by Neil Finn in the catalog of the German National Library
- fan page
- Fan club info (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Finn, Neil |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Finn, Neil Mullane (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | New Zealand pop and rock musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 27, 1958 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Te Awamutu , New Zealand |