DJ: So, you and Neil Finn both solo at last. You've both escaped the bonds of collaboration at last.

NF: Yes indeed.

DJ: So he, he's got his whole family playing with him, or least he's, you've got your son playing on three...

NF: Lots of company, yeah. My son's been playing on the record and live actually.

(...)

DJ: Neil Finn's first solo album's an event for a composer of timeless melodies has a certain irony in calling it Try Whistling This, but the graduate of Split Enz and Crowded House confirms the judgement of critics who call him "heir to the song-writing throne of Lennon and McCartney and Brian Wilson and possibly a genius." He'll be singing the single from "Try Whistling This" which is "Sinner", I think is it?

NF: That's right. Here it goes.

SINNER (live)

DJ: Are you coming back?

NF: Yeah.

DJ: Er, Neil Finn. "Try Whistling This" - is the title ironic or is the, The Independent says it, "riley eludes to the record's less warble friendly content". I thought that sounded jolly warble friendly.

NF: I think it's pretty warble friendly, too. I mean, I'm not sure what ironic means any more. People have explained the meaning of that to me at least a dozen times and I'm still not sure.

DJ: The process seems to have been: go paint in a field and clear your mind, take those fragments of thoughts which emerge and refine them in a home studio in a cellar, find something's missing, go to New York for a shot of urban adrenalin, and then bring back to the boil and cool in acetate or whatever they make records with these days.

NF: That's an excellent... can I borrow that.... description? Cos people ask me to say in a few words and I can't seem to get it in better than about five sentences. But yeah, that was actually a gradual sort of scaling up of the thing I went to the, I had a friend in Brisbane, Australia, who's actually playing bass with me now, who's a painter, and he was reading an article after Crowded House broke up where I was expressing my confusion about what to do next. He said, "Don't worry about it - go and stand in the middle of a paddock and paint for two weeks and clear your mind out. It'll come in through the back door," and I thought that was an excellent lateral notion, so he and I.... I think he was actually angling for a painting trip to New Zealand cos I took him with me! And we just, we had a fantastic time and I discovered that I'm a much better musician than...

DJ: I can see David's making notes - he's going to be taking up painting any moment!

NF: It's a good thing to do if only to remind yourself that you're a better musician than painter, but it was nevertheless fun, and I got a few songs slipped in, sort of, round the back door at that time, and yeah.

DJ: You said somewhere, "Bands take years off you inside, but keep you young mentally."

NF: I think they do, yeah. All I know is that when I got together, my mother forced me to go to a school renunion at Saint Pat's primary two years ago. You know it's a horrible - I don't know if you've done that - especially primary school reunion because...

DJ: I haven't, no...

NF: ... because you have these endless images which are set in your mind of young children, and you go back, and they're not young children any more. In fact, some of them are looking really bad, and actually I had to admit, erm, it sounds rather vain, but that I actually looked like I'd shaped up better than most of them, and I think that it might have been music that...

DJ: Inspite of that life on the road?

NF: Yeah, well it's all happening inside, that's the thing - I'm slowly eroding from the inside.

DJ: What sort of culture shock was it when you came 22 years ago and sort of first landed up in London after this pastoral life in New Zealand, you finished up, I don't know, The Marquee or somewhere...

NF: Yeah, that was the first place I went to see a band, and I had this...

DJ: No good going there now; it's a big Conran restaurant now.

NF: Is it really? Oh, it's probably just as well cos when I went there my feet stuck to the carpet and there was a guy threw up just in front of me during the set and I was, I had a very romantic image of the place you know, from growing up so far away and hearing about The Who and all the great gigs that happened there and it was sort of dashed a little when I walked in but...

DJ: You take the family on tour. Liam's 14, he's fully a member of the group now. 15 now.

NF: Just turned 15, yeah.

DJ: Drums, keyboard and guitar. What about Elroy, aged 8 - have you started to make him work and earn his living yet?

NF: Oh, I'm giving him a couple of free years yet. I'm getting my little, I'm getting my pay-back for sleepless nights from Liam. I think in about two years' time he'll cut me loose and he'll be off on his own, so...

DJ: Yes, it's going to be awful when you get left, isn't it?

NF: Yeah , I know. Well we're facing that, it's, it looms up very large at the moment actually.

DJ: Well anyway, are you touring here or just bringing the record out here?

NF: No, I've been touring for the last two or three weeks, and we're doing one final show at the Festival Hall on Monday night.

DJ: Very good. Everybody will be there.