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Tim Finn Steels His Future

© Anne-Marie de Bruin

With all the recent publicity surrounding the release of Neil Finn's new album, you could be forgiven for wondering what his older brother and fellow ex-Enzer, Tim, has been up to lately.

Aside from a few appearances at various benefit gigs, nary a peep has been heard from the elder Finn in New Zealand since the 1996 symphonic Split Enz project, ENZSO and the Finn album with Neil, the previous year.

Across the Tasman, however, Tim Finn (who celebrates his 46th birthday this week) has been quite a newsmaker of late, having written the music for Steel City, the sequel to Australian Dein Perry's Tap Dogs.

Tap Dogs (which also had a season in Auckland), was a tap dancing show in the style of Riverdance- but with a difference: its robust tapping and frenetic dancebeats were all set in the everyday reality of a construction site.

Steel City runs in this same vein, yet takes the concept a step further. Set within an industrial backdrop of a steelworks, the show expands the six-man Tap Dogs retinue to a 14-strong male and female performance troupe.

With Dein Perry seeking a hardcore soundtrack, Finn would find himself drawing inspiration from a rather interesting, but fittingly apt source. In what appears to be an eerie co-incidence, he wrote the show's theme song while watching a league game between Newcastle (the Steel City) and Manly.

"I don't watch league, I'm a union man, so my naiveté about the game helped make an inspiring ambience to write to," Finn says.

Finn has composed for various film and television soundtracks in the past, but says he took a completely different approach for Steel City. In keeping with the theme, much of the writing took place in industrial surroundings.

"It was in a hot warehouse in Balmain, with 14 dancers, trucks, forklifts, power tools, Dein Perry and me. I worked out one routine by jamming with the sound of forklifts dropping pallets on a concrete floor. It was abstract and odd," he says. While the approach was different, the end result would be reassuringly familiar for Finn.

"With no lyrics, heavy guitar, distorted amp and long bits full of changes, it reminded me of early Split Enz."

The music may have turned out somewhat Enz-like, but when Perry sought out Finn as musical collaborator, he was not so aware of the songwriter's history.

"He approached me. He wanted a rock, hard, interesting time changes soundtrack. He didn't know much about Split Enz which I found endearing."

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