NEIL FINN & FRIENDS 7 WORLDS COLLIDE
A live collaboration with Johnny Marr, Eddie Vedder and members of Radiohead, revisiting their catalogues over five nights at the St James Theatre, Auckland It was a beautiful diversion. I’d got to know Ed O’Brien through the Parlophone connection. He’s the guy Radiohead send to awards because he’s so good looking and charming. He and his partner came to stay with us at Piha, at our place on the beach, and we had a lovely few days. They’d just made Kid A and I’d just made [second solo album] One Nil, so we played each other our records, and thought, “Why don’t we just try to organise a few shows?” I’d run into Johnny Marr at a benefit concert at the Albert Hall. Should I give him a call? Ed thought that was a fucking radical idea! We discussed Ed Vedder. It was a convergence of good fortune and timing. I was really expecting to be fobbed off, in a nice way, but before you knew it we had this stellar cast of people descending on this little barn on the west coast of New Zealand. Complete panic set in immediately, because we only had three days to learn 26 songs. But it’s proof that if you have good people in the room, with a shared sense of responsibility, it can work. We saw the southern lights on our first night of rehearsal – the Aurora Australis, incredibly rare north of Wellington. That was a good omen. They were a joy, those shows, although the first one was hairy as hell. Lifetime friendships were forged, for sure.
“I got a call from the head of Parlophone: ‘We love the record – we just wonder if there’s something you could add to it?’”