“There was a funny night, near the end with Fleetwood Mac ,” Neil Finn recalls with a laugh. “The crew sometimes used to dress up in the wings to surprise the band. It was nearly Christmas, and we’re doing a big, climactic Go Your Own Way .
Mike (Campbell)’s going like the clappers out front, playing about twice as long Stevie (Nicks) wished he would, because her arms are getting tired on the tambourine, so she’s kind of inwardly cursing: ‘Get him to finish! Lindsey never played this long!’ And I stepped over to the side of the stage to take it all in, and there’s seven of the crew doing the nativity, this whole beautiful tableau, and I didn’t see them at all.” The 66-year-old New Zealand singer-songwriter shakes his head. “There’s something about being in performance mode that has such a focus and you can miss details right underneath your nose.
I felt bad for the crew but Stevie didn’t notice either: ‘What baby Jesus?’” Finn notes, rather incredulously, that he is still listed as a member of Fleetwood Mac on Wikipedia. “It is quite weird because it almost seems like a dream now.” Finn has led something of a charmed life in music, recruited into his brother’s band Split Enz as a teenager (for whom he wrote and sang their enduring 1980 hit, I Got You ), later rising to global success with his own much-loved band Crowded House.
Finn’s plaintive voice, thoughtful yet elliptical lyrics and Beatle-y sense of melody and harmony made him a .