The Talking Heads album Neil Finn couldn’t live without: “A giant leap forward”
You might think that Neil Finn’s musical highlight would come from his own career. As a founding member of Crowded House and a touring member of Fleetwood Mac since 2018, he’s had some major achievements and cool experiences. But his favourite live moment all comes down to the Talking Heads.
The New Zealand-born guitarist has done a lot. In 1984, it all got started for him after his earlier band, The Split Enz, called it quits. Soon enough, Finn found himself in a rented house in Los Angeles, surrounded by other anchorless ex-band members from favourite collapsed groups. They naturally ended up jamming together and eventually took those jams to the studio simply to get out of the house, which you could say was a little crowded.
The rest was history. Giving the world huge hits like ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ and ‘Weather With You’, they quickly became major players in the 1980s and ‘90s music scene. Their sound is exactly what history now associates with the era; merging classic rock rhythms with a clear pop catchiness that leaves songs spiralling around and around in your head. They’re the kind of songs you want to hear played loud and sing along to in a big venue with your heads in the air, making the band a storming live success and Finn a great live performer.
Finn has toured a lot, whether it be through Crowded House, his solo work or his later work in Fleetwood Mac. It’s clear that live music is his lifeblood and the thing that keeps him hooked and passionate about making new music. It’s always nice to know that for huge musicians like him, the basis of their love for music is just the same as yours or mine as it all comes back to one great gig.
For Finn, that gig was the Talking Heads, and he still holds the experience up as one of his favourite musical memories. That then leads to the question of his favourite Talking Heads album, stating that Remain In Light will forever remind him of those good times. He said that he “saw them play it live on Stop Making Sense. It was my favorite show ever.”
That experience of seeing the band in 1983 not only gave Finn his favourite album but also gave him an idol in the shape of David Byrne. Since then, he’s come back to the band routinely, seeing their transformations as motivation for his own. “For some reason I’ve connected with Talking Heads at pivotal stages of their development, and also mine,” he told Forbes.
“I saw them for in the first time playing in Amsterdam with XTC on their first or second record. It was really early on,” he said, adding, “That was a couple years into my musical life. And I saw them again at Central Park, the first time they did the big band. And again, two other times, with that big band on the Stop Making Sense tour.”
As the band split and Byrne continued onto a solo career, that proved deeply inspiring for Finn who was also wandering the same path. “Later on. And David Byrne came to New Zealand on a solo tour,” he remembered, “I was actually blessed to be able to get up and sing a song with him on that tour. I sang ‘Heaven’ with him.”
“As an artist, I’ve watched him and felt a relationship,” Finn said of Byrne. “Just his hunger and his thirst for creating and forward reinvention and reimagining what he might be able to do is very admirable.”
To him, Remain In Light is the album that bottles that feeling. He called the record “A giant leap forward for a humble four-piece art band into groove and a transformative state.” As it captures the band’s willingness to push their limits and grow beyond the place they started in, the 1980 album has always been a reminder to Finn to keep that attitude close. Holding the memory of a great gig and the motivation to keep changing and moving forward as an artist, it’s a sentimental selection.
