As a band, Crowded House was renowned for its crafted pop melodies as Finn garnered more and more critical praise world-wide for his songwriting with each successive record. A key component of the group's public appeal, though, lied with their superb live performances and the humorous on-stage antics of the group's core trio of Finn, drummer Paul Hester and bassist Nick Seymour.
Last year, music journalist Chris Bourke released Something So Strong, a book that chronicles the band's meteoric rise to fame. Along the way from the band's beginnings in Australia to their shock break-up announcement in London in 1996, we are taken for a ride through the band's highs and lows, as we learn the true story behind Crowded House.
For Real Groove editor Bourke, researching the book meant taking a year off from his regular journalism work (he then worked for the Listener) as he flew around the world to interview the band and various key participants in the story. "I made up a list first of New Zealand people because they were close, then I went over to Australia and spent about a month there, most of it in Melbourne and it took ages, but Paul Hester was available in Melbourne and we got into a routine of several sessions and he was great to talk to."
While drummer Hester proved to be one of the easiest participants to talk to and perhaps the best story-teller of the group, it would prove a bit harder to corner bassist Nick Seymour for a chat as he was busy globe-trotting while working on the cover for the greatest hits collection, Recurring Dream. "Nick was of course going around the world so it was cheaper for me to come back home and go back when he was there doing the cover of Recurring Dream and that went on forever it seemed."
In addition to band members, Bourke interviewed the band's management, insiders and friends, record company personnel such as staff of Capitol USA and EMI/Parlophone UK and even the odd dedicated fan who had a tour story or two to tell. Through all this, it would have seemed obvious that Neil Finn was one of the first interviewed. "Actually, no. Neil wanted to talk to me last so that I could've already have got the story from other people - the less time he needed to talk about it the better! But we did quite a few sessions."
