Non-fiction – paperback; Allen & Unwin; 304 pages; 2023. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.
If I had to nominate a single musician (or band) that has provided the soundtrack to my life, it would be the subject of this biography.
Forgive the indulgence, but anyone who knows me well will be familiar with my love of Neil Finn.
Don’t Dream It’s Over: The Remarkable Life of Neil Finn is the first biography to focus exclusively on the singer-songwriter from Split Enz — which was formed in New Zealand in 1972 and became the nation’s first rock band to gain significant international recognition — and Crowded House, which achieved enormous critical and commercial success across the world, but particularly in the UK and Australia.
Neil has also forged a successful solo career, made two albums with his older brother Tim (under the banner of the Finn Brothers) and, more latterly (and unusually), been a member of Fleetwood Mac, replacing Lindsay Buckingham on guitar and vocals.
He’s also the master of collaboration, having created the 7 Worlds Collide charity project — with the likes of Johnny Marr (from The Smiths), Eddie Vedder (from Pearl Jam) and Phil Selway (from Radiohead) — and the Pajama Club band with his wife, Sharon, a bass player.
He has also worked with his own children: Liam, a musician-songwriter, and Elroy, a drummer.
Traditional rock biography
Don’t Dream It’s Over is a fairly traditional type of biography, tracing Neil’s life in chronological order, from his happy upbringing in the rural town of Te Awamutu, in the North Island of New Zealand, where he was born in 1958, the youngest son of an accountant, right through to the dizzy heights of a career spanning more than 40 years.
For dedicated Neil fans, there’s nothing much surprising or new in this biography based on third-party sources (mainly TV, radio and print publications) and Neil’s extensive music catalogue, rather than first-hand interviews with the subject. But Jeff Apter, who has more than 20 other music books to his name, is clearly a fan and treats Neil’s story with care and respect.
It’s a compelling narrative, not least because Neil became famous as a teenager when he was roped in to join his big brother’s band, Split Enz, in 1977, following the departure of co-founder Phil Judd. He went on to pen many of the band’s hits, including their breakthrough commercial hit I Got You, which topped the charts in Australia for a record-breaking eight weeks when it was released in January 1980. In fact, this song is the one that first brought Neil to my attention — and began my lifelong affair with his music.
From here, the book charts how Neil led Split Enz after his brother Tim, the elder by six years, left to pursue a solo career. When Neil wound up the Enz in 1984, he went on to form Crowded House (initially called The Mullanes) with Split Enz drummer Paul Hester and Melbourne-based bass player Nick Seymour (the younger brother of Mark Seymour, the lead singer and driving force of Hunters and Collectors, whose own biography I have reviewed here).
Commercial success and critical acclaim
It’s a fascinating portrait of a man who achieved astonishing commercial success and songwriting kudos (he’s often compared to Lennon and McCartney, probably because there’s a definite Beatlesque sound to his music) through sheer hard graft.
In fact, it becomes clear he’s quite driven and a bit of a perfectionist — for instance, the Finn Brothers’ second album, Everyone is Here, was recorded twice, once in upstate New York, then in Los Angeles with different musicians and producers, because Neil wasn’t happy with it.
“It’s mysterious what makes things right or not right in music,” Neil said of his reaction. “I can’t be more specific than that. It wasn’t Tony’s fault [Tony Visconti, the producer]. It just didn’t seem to have the vitality we wanted it to have.”
While it seems Neil’s never really had any bad press, nor a whiff of scandal, around him (he’s been married to Sharon for more than 40 years), it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. For instance, the book covers his conflict with Tim, especially when he briefly joined Crowded House in 1990 and disrupted the equilibrium of the band, and the untimely death by suicide of Paul Hester in 2005 (which, humble brag, I wrote about in the form of a letter, which was published in The Age newspaper, although my name seems to have fallen off it after The Age revamped its website).
As much as I enjoyed this trip down memory lane (I have all the albums and have seen Neil perform in various guises — Split Enz, Crowded House, Finn Brothers and solo — multiple times in multiple cities), the book lacks intimacy. Apter never really gets inside Neil’s head — we never find out how he feels about certain events or what makes him tick. Instead, we are kept at a distance because his story is filtered through indirect sources.
The book also lacks an index, a particular bugbear of mine because this is relatively easy to sort in Word (I can only posit that it’s just a cost-cutting exercise for publishers to keep page counts down), and the table of contents is no help because the headings are all quirky Neil quotes instead of helpful place markers such as album names or career phases.
But it does include a selected discography and bibliography, as well as an intriguing list of “ten musical moments” that demonstrates the strength and breadth of Neil’s career.
All in all, Don’t Dream It’s Over: The Remarkable Life of Neil Finn is one for the fans.
Jeff Apter has also written a biography about Neil and his brother Tim — Together Alone: The Story of the Finn Brothers — which has been sitting in my TBR for more than a decade!