“I think we’ve met before, Pat.” Nick Seymour has caught me off guard, right out of the traps, as I don’t remember this meeting he speaks off. And you’d think I would too, considering the fact that Crowded House are one of the greatest singles bands of the last thirty-five years, and albums like the classic Woodface aren’t too shabby either. Seymour fills in the blanks and it all comes back to me. There was another well-known rock star in the room at the time, who wasn’t being very nice. Good manners – and, quite possibly, libel laws – prevent me from naming them here but let me assure you that Nick and I had a good laugh slagging them off before we continued.

The handsome and charming Mr. Seymour is speaking to me from his home in Easkey, Sligo. He had been, famously enough, previously living on Exchequer Street here in Dublin, where he kept an apartment and a studio, although both are currently rented out as accommodation. Nick considers himself very fortunate to have been able to hide out in the west during the pandemic, reckoning that “the whole soul has gone out of the inner city, and my old stomping ground near the [previous] offices of Hot Press, but it will re-establish itself, I’m sure of that.” Let us sincerely hope so, before we all head West after him.

Once Seymour starts talking about anything at all, the interviewer can sit back and relax. In truth, I could have gone and put the washing out and left him to it, but he’s great company. I first asked him what was behind Crowded House’s “indefinite hiatus” after the Intriguer album way back in 2010, and he takes off.

“I think Neil [Finn, Crowded House’s front man and main songwriter] just felt that he had songwriting possibilities that didn't include what he possibly saw as the burden of being in Crowded House, having us all scattered across the globe,” he explains. “Neil and I have so much water under the bridge that there's an intuitive and instinctive chemistry when we get together, even after not seeing each other for a while, but with Mark Hart [former guitarist/keyboards] and, and Matt Sherrod [former drummer], Neil was possibly feeling estranged, and that the mantle of the combo would be rendering his songwriting possibilities. I think he saw it as being a lot harder work than he'd like.”

Nick jumps forward a decade. I throw several questions in the bin.

“Ten years later, after his foray with Fleetwood Mac [Finn toured with the group as Lindsey Buckingham’s replacement], I think Neil has rediscovered a voice and an energy that he sees as appropriate for Crowded House. When it dawned on him that it could include his two sons - one on drums [Elroy] and one doing duet harmony and filling in the guitar virtuoso side [Liam] - I think he had an epiphany and contacted me about it.”

Did Seymour jump at it straight away?

“I did, absolutely and unconditionally,” he says, without hesitation. “I knew that we were gonna have to get into a rehearsal room and just break through the threshold into the zone that is the sum of the parts. I knew both Liam and Elroy were capable of that, but at the same time, they must have felt pressure, throwing themselves into Crowded House, this thing that they'd grown up with it. Paul [Hester, original Crowded House Drummer, who sadly passed away in 2005] and I were their uncles, in a way, we were sort of an extended family, and I thought that might be an intimidating factor. When you go into a rehearsal room, or a recording studio, it has to be as equals, so I needed to know that was possible, and they were absolutely capable of it all.”

As a founder member, Seymour must have reserved the right to say, ‘this isn’t working’.

“I didn't need to say that; Neil knew that himself. He has a relationship with them musically, so I could have been the curveball in there, just my actual physical presence in the rehearsal room could have stifled that. These things are fragile.”

Could the reaction from outside have been ‘Look, Finn is just creating jobs for his boys’?

“I actually thought that that might be something that could impede Liam and Elroy,” says Nick, reasonably enough. “They would be judged in terms of a sort of dynastic nepotistic that could affect that confidence, but it doesn't seem to have, and none of us had anything to lose, really.”

I interrupt here to point out that if it had been less than great, it would have tarnished the band’s deserved reputation, so there was something at stake. Seymour puts me straight.

“We've never felt that we should tour for the sake of touring alone, it had to be on the back of having a new record. That was always a pre-condition for us getting together, that we were moving forward instead of just being purely a legacy act touring on the merits of our brand. With that in mind, we had nothing to lose in the sense that if it didn't work, we just wouldn't put it out and we wouldn't go any further. That’s always been a thing with Crowded House, we've never looked at it as being all we are as individuals, although I have been very protective of the brand over the years.”

Something So Strong

Our man goes back in time at this point, for a brief House history lesson.

“Crowded House has been through so many different stages, that it always seems quite cathartic to me to embrace a new one. Our first album [Crowded House, 1986] broke very well in the United States and we had a hit with ‘Don't Dream It's Over’. We went into record our second album, which was well received, but it didn't get the push. It had three very strong songs that could have broken at radio, but it didn't really do it and it was considered a mediocre follow up.”

I could name five great tunes off the top of my head from that album, 1988’s Temple Of Low Men, but I let him continue.

“Neil then had a bit of writer's block, and he asked his brother Tim to join the band for the third album. Now Paul and I, at the time, felt we had an unshakable potential and momentum, and having somebody join the band from Neil's old band [Split Enz] - and his older brother - was a real shock to us. But we adapted, and Woodface was the album that broke us in Western Europe. We weren't really known in Ireland prior to our third album, so we adapted and then we adapted again when Paul left the band after our fourth album [Together Alone, ‘93]. Neil and I recruited a drummer friend of mine from college [Peter Jones] and we went on, but we didn't make a fifth album, that was the clincher. We didn't feel we could record a fifth album without Paul being in the equation, or Neil didn't think he could. But we've always been able to adapt, that’s my point."

We jump back to the now, and Nick explains how he and Finn got the ball rolling on the new album, Dreamers Are Waiting.

“Neil sends me multiple MP3s and they'll just be a verse looking for a chorus or a chorus looking for a verse, or just an instrumental groove. He's not looking for ‘what do you think of this?’ with me. Everything is workable, we have to exhaust every possibility of every little nuanced idea, and I can never say what the piece of music reminds me of for fear of jinxing it. Everything is a fragile little baby.”

Is he telling us that Neil Finn has a delicate ego that must be catered to?

‘It’s not so much about ego,” he smiles. “It's the fragility of creativity. It's not that he doubts himself but whenever he's writing, it's a very fragile moment, trying to find that muse, and the muse can be shattered by an unthoughtful…”

Boot?

“… comment, and that's the same with anyone making anything. You can't be too bombastic; you can't cull ideas before you've actually tried them out and given them their due. He is, as any artist is, very fragile in what he actually tables as an idea, and that's always been the same since day one. You’d think after the incredible quality of some of the arrangements that he’s done, he’d be different?”

He’s had a few hits, and you can’t argue with that.

“He doesn't doubt his talent,” laughs Seymour. “But every song is equal right up to the point where we're actually looking at eleven or twelve songs for an album and we’ve got eighteen that we have to whittle down. We then say which is our favourite and go down the line. You have to be really careful, even at that stage!”

Does the benign dictatorship kick in at that point, or is there a unanimous decision about what actually ends up on the record?

“I think that in this stage of our lives - Neil and I are both in our early sixties - we're experienced enough to know when a song stops feeling like an exercise in your craft and inspires something that is beyond the piece of music that's in front of you. I think we're both experienced enough to be able to recognise that magic, and Mitchell Froom is as well, definitely.”

Froom produced the first three Crowded House albums as well as the new one and is now a fully-fledged member of the band on the keyboards. He also worked on Los Lobos’ 1992 masterpiece, Kiko, Richard Thompson’s Rumor And Sign, and many, many more. That having been said, Seymour has been there from the start, so would Finn still listen to him more than anyone else?

“I couldn't answer that, he demurs. “I'm always as diplomatic as I can be, knowing that if you say the wrong thing, it'll take a turn where the baby is washed out with the bathwater.”

It sounds a bit like you’re tiptoeing around on eggshells.

“You’re actually on eggshells until you're stomping the thing around live on stage in front of an audience and slapping high fives. Not that we do that!”

Distant Sun

Once the decision had been made to do something, Seymour headed for Los Angeles, where the various Finns were based at the time, and to the Valentine Studio, full of gear that had been sitting, gathering dust for decades while the studio was closed. The idea was to work up demos and then go to a ‘proper studio’ but the vibe in the room was good and, as Nick says himself, “we ended up getting a lot of the album tracks from Valentine, we had rhythm tracks – a lot of the bass and drum parts were recorded, a lot of keeper vocals, and then COVID happened, and we all left L.A.”

The Finns went to New Zealand, Froom to his house in Santa Monica, and Seymour went back to the West Of Ireland, but they continued to tinker remotely with what they had, with unexpected benefits.

“When we’re all together in the studio ideas are sometimes shot down before they've actually been tried out, because you're moving quickly, it's getting toward five in the afternoon, you're thinking about dinner, there's a myriad of reasons why. In our remote individual studios, we could actually try ideas out. There was a lot more of a conversation, but the fact is, the energy of the live rhythm tracks was still there.”

Was that energy more easily captured because you didn’t really think you were making the album at the time, you were just, as far as you were aware, fooling around on some demos?

“That’s exactly it,” Says Seymour with two thumbs up. “After the fact, I thought, if Neil came up with this, thinking ‘I'm going to trick them into not being too precious about recording takes’, or if it was suggested by Mitchell, it was a great ploy, because with some of those Valentine tapes, we were just having fun, and there was no pressure, because we were going to a formal recording studio after that to ‘do it properly’.”

To The Island

That’s all very well and interesting and there’s no doubt that Dreamers Are Waiting is more that worthy of the Crowded House imprimatur - I’ve never heard a record by them I didn’t like - but what we all really want to hear about is the tour of New Zealand that they’ve just finished. Actual shows with actual audiences, at a time when such a notion was unthinkable almost everywhere else on the planet.

“Originally, the schedule pre-COVID was to record an album in six weeks, put it out in June or July and then do all the summer festivals,” he fills in the backstory. “I thought that made no sense, we were never going to be able to do this, but we were at the mercy of that schedule, so when COVID happened, it almost brought a sigh of relief, we’d have more time to make this record as good as it can possibly be.”

It would have been a different record then, if COVID hadn’t come along?

“I think it probably would have been. It's hard to know. A lot of the tracks that ended up on this album are co-writes, we've all had a hand in their development. That might not have been the case had we done it the other way.”

Right, right. Now, New Zealand!

“Yes, that was on the previous schedule, and there was a window of opportunity that still existed because New Zealand was COVID negative, and we thought why not see if we can actually do that tour, if Live Nation still wanted to do it, but of course they couldn't get any insurance, so we were really taking a big chance with me and Mitchell going to New Zealand. Neil, Liam and Elroy were already there. We did a two week quarantine in a hotel and I had to apply for an essential worker permit, which was deemed fair because we were hopefully generating goodwill. As with a lot of the sporting events that had been scheduled, it was seen as something within the domestic environment that could be a very positive thing. The concert tour just sold like hotcakes, we were the hottest ticket going…”

You were the only ticket going.

“We were the only ticket going. We were a month in Auckland and then there was a lockdown which conflicted with the first three dates, so we added them on at the end, but it worked out beautifully. We were playing really well-attended big arenas, and the attendees were comfortable, roaring and singing and not being socially distanced.”

I had my head in my hands listening to this and I told Nick about seeing a TV report of one of the shows and being very moved, longing for what was lost.

“It was really moving,” he agrees. “There were a couple of moments where I had to really collect my thoughts, not be overwhelmed, and actually remember the words because you can be reduced to tears. There were a couple of very, very emotional moments and the Kiwis that were at those gigs were absolutely giving thanks for the privilege.”

Not to belittle it at all, but surely the band must have thought that as long as we go out here and not fall over, this is going to go ok?

“Absolutely,” he says, grinning from ear to ear. “Although to go out in front of the audiences in New Zealand on this tour, and play the songs without mucking about too much between them was a real discipline and a new reality for us, because you can rely on your onstage repartee too much.”

For shows like these, which were probably even more of a celebration for the audiences than the band, did you decide early that, despite the fact you had the album ready to go, you had to give them the hits?

“We knew that we had to play the hits, and we tried to keep it as up tempo as we could, but in the middle of the set, we had a couple of atmospheric journeys..”

Ah, the time-honoured opportunity to go to the bar.

“We had to be really careful how we decided to plot the onstage dynamic.” he continues, laughing me off. “It wasn't the same every night, but it was pretty close because the lighting and the additional bells and whistles needed to be cohesively planned, and we did have a great light show.”

Liam Finn has said elsewhere that they all knew how lucky they were to be pretty much the only band in the world playing a gig.

“Yeah. Without a doubt. It's hard to explain, I had to kind of pinch myself every now and again, to stop myself regressing into asking if this was making sense? Is the media making enough out of this? Are we now finally the biggest band in the world?” he laughs again. “All these questions. Just forget about it, you're the luckiest band in the world.”

World Where You Live

What with being able to travel and work in New Zealand, did Seymour see how they got it right, while we, living on another island, were less successful?

“They could actually shut down completely. The difference with Ireland is the porosity of the border with the UK. If they were unprepared to lock down completely and stop international traffic, we couldn't do that either because people would be coming in from the northern counties. I was absolutely gobsmacked though that in the second lockdown there were still tourists coming in from the US. That seems scandalous to me. The one thing that New Zealand does have - either love it or hate it when you live there - is that it is isolated.”

“And I might make another point on this, they were able to rally because Murdoch isn't in New Zealand. You look at any of the countries that have had issues with a uniformed war against this virus, and they've been divided in countries like Canada, the US, Australia and the UK. I think the media has been seeing this as a hyperbole event to sell their product. Whereas in New Zealand, the media really did rally to speak with one voice in order to understand what was coming from the scientific community, liaising with the government.”

Whereas the press in the rest of the world were undermining what was coming down from the top?

“Exactly. They were undermining it to sell their product, and seeing it as an opportunity. Australia is quite divided over it and the United States were in complete denial.”

As he mentions America, the lyrics of ‘Whatever You Want’, the lead single from the album, could only be referring to one man really, an uncouth chap who used to live in the White House.

“Oh, without a doubt. It's about the culture of reinforcement, yes men surrounding a person that has unfortunately risen to the top and charged as an alpha type, completely and inappropriately, and it happens again and again and again."

‘To The Island’ could be about retreating to New Zealand. Is it?

“I actually do think so. Neil, having grown up in New Zealand and lived abroad for a good part of his adult life, had always yearned for his New Zealand childhood. It was always in a lot of lyrics, you could hear this ghosting of the muse of place, and I'm sure a lot of it does come from mountains to the sea, temperate climate, melody and rhythm. And, in a way, that has an estrangement of isolation that New Zealand does evoke for a lot of its population. So I would say the island is a metaphor for a lot of things, a lot of places, but it really did make sense that Neil - a kiwi - wrote it. He channelled it.”

Private Universe

It’s a weird time for an act of Crowded House’s size and stature to be putting out an album. Seymour would normally be in the middle of a media storm rather than talking to that Herbert from Hot Press in his garage.

“Yeah, I’m looking over at the garden thinking those weeds might need a bit of attention, rather than having to fly to Amsterdam tomorrow. Maybe this is the way it should have been years ago?”

Don’t say that, I might never get a free drink again. Taking an alternative route, Crowded House are, like everyone else, offering a streaming event of performances from that New Zealand tour.

“We had a film crew for two nights at an arena in Auckland, and we cut together the best versions of the songs. I think we did three songs from the new album, but primarily it is the ‘best of’ show that we toured New Zealand with.”

That’s as good as we can hope for until The ‘House play in Ireland, microbes permitting, next summer. There are some Australian dates in November, but what will they do in the meantime?

“Management have actually told Neil, and whoever was listening in the zoom conversation a week and a half ago, that we should be writing a new album, so I assume Neil and Liam are heads down doing that!”

Good news for all there. Seymour and I then had a long chat about the music industry which we don’t have room for here, but his last words lay out his hopes for this record.

“Success to me is that we’ve made a record we’re happy with and we get to make another one. And it will be our choice, which is great. We were lucky enough to do that tour of New Zealand too, and we came away with a nice healthy wedge in our pockets. When a band like us do a tour, we usually make a profit, and we enjoy touring, we enjoy being in each other's company. I listened to a podcast a couple of days ago, Sinéad O'Connor talking to what's his name, the fella that wears the Dunnes Stores bag on his head? Proud boy? Dog boy?”

Blind Boy?

“Right. Sinéad was talking about how it’s is only from playing live that you generate any income you can talk about. I'm relaxed enough to know, coming off the back of that New Zealand tour, how strong the bond and excitement is amongst the members of the band and know that we can go on and do that for another couple of years. Definitely.”
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Dreamers Are Waiting: The Hot Press Review