Sessions at West 54th Street

David Byrne: When you started off with Split Enz, what was the music scene like in New Zealand at that time? Because I saw the group when you first played the Bottom Line here in New York...

Neil Finn: That was before I was even in the band, actually. I was in school.

David Byrne: Gosh -- I saw this and I thought, "What is going on down there?"

Neil Finn: Yeah. Well, it was strange in New Zealand, and strange everywhere. But at the time it was all bands playing covers, with bellbottoms, a status quo kind of time. And Split Enz was an oddity right from the very beginning. There was a guy called Noel Cromby who used to design the costumes, and he would wander down Queen Street, which is the main street of Aukland, in a cape with a piece of a lightning bolt in his hand, full makeup, and big flared gingham pants. He was one of those kind of characters. He started making costumes for Split Enz, he wasn't a musician at all, but ended up playing spoons one night at one of the shows and that was good enough to get into the band, in those days. And he just brought his costumes with him.

But,there were two bands that I remember. High Roving Tongues, which I always thought was a really good name, and the In-Betweens -- those were the two bands we used to like.

David Byrne: Did you feel that coming from New Zealand, which for us is pretty far away -- and I might preface that by saying that I didn't grow up in New York, I grew up in a slightly smaller town. Still in the United States. But I felt in some ways it was an advantage...

Neil Finn: Oh, yeah.

David Byrne: ...not to be quite in the center of things. It gave you time to develop and think about things, and you could make mistakes...

Neil Finn: Yeah. Also the world had a slightly romantic tinge to it from afar as well. We had a certain amount of culture coming to us in a very random way. We didn't know the difference between Motown and R&B and pop. And, in fact, we only had one radio station and they played everything. So it was a romantic sort of impression we had of the rest of the world, and it enabled you to grow up with big dreams, which, inevitably got slightly soiled. [LAUGHS]

David Byrne:There's songs on the new record, "Sinner" and some other ones, that refer to sin.

Neil Finn: Yeah.

David Byrne: You've mentioned in some of the interviews that I've read, about having a Catholic background. Is that Catholic as in Irish Catholic?

Neil Finn: Yeah.

David Byrne: There were a lot of immigrants that went to New Zealand from Ireland and Scotland.

Neil Finn: Yeah. The Irish have had an impact on the world everywhere. But my mother was an Irish Catholic and we grew up around it. We had priests over every few days for drinks and cups of tea. In fact, it was usually drinks. And very memorable parties where everybody would end up singing, and by the end of the night the priests would be flirting with our aunties. In fact, in the song "Sinner," there's a line about, "the closest I get to contentment is when all the barriers come down." I relate that to the feeling that happens when reasonably strict Catholics get together and have a bit of a shindig, a party, and suddenly all the barriers are dropped and the kids are able to get away with anything, stay up all night, and steal drinks and...

David Byrne: Do you think they have to have those parties to let go every once in a while?

Neil Finn: Well, I think it's necessary to shed those kind of doctrines and dogmas. And the Irish are the best in the world at playing off both sides of life against each other. Sometimes with bad consequences -- there's some pretty screwed up people coming out of that country. [CHUCKLES]

David Byrne: But there's a sense -- there's always the sense, at least in Catholicism, that you can be redeemed, or you can be forgiven.

Neil Finn: Oh, yeah.

David Byrne: You can feel horrible that you've done something terrible, but you kind of always know that, "Well, I can be forgiven this."

Neil Finn: Yeah. I know, it's a very comforting religion in that respect. I probably should still be going to confession now, but, umm...

David Byrne: We can arrange to have a priest come in.

Neil Finn: Can you? You just need to have a little thing there (points to neck,) and you could just about do the job yourself, Dave. [CHUCKLES] But, yeah, confession was a very amazing thing. The idea that you could do anything and go and see the priest and say three "Hail Marys" and three "Our Fathers" and all would be well. And still, it's a rich and fertile breeding ground for lyrics for me. I sometimes get a bit self-conscious about drawing on it too much, but nevertheless it keeps popping up.