If you see a street musician, just pay attention: in nine out of ten cases they have the Crowded House song Don’t Dream It’s Over on their repertoire. The kind of song that always stands up, no matter how much you destroy it, and you just can’t get it out of your head. In New Zealand, frontman Neil Finn is pretty much Paul McCartney due to the stream of hits he wrote in the eighties and nineties – radio hits that still come in regularly and work great here at Pinkpop too.
Neil Finn was already on Pinkpop in 1980 with his previous band Split Enz. This afternoon he refers to that by playing a really beautiful acoustic version of their hit Message To My Girl and closing it for the connoisseurs with the biting I Got You. In 2019 Finn was part of Fleetwood Mac, so Pinkpop is not unknown to him. Crowded House has now become a family business. Finn, a sharp 64-year-old boy, looks relaxed and fit. With his sons Elroy and Liam on guitar and drums, veteran Nick Seymour on bass, and star producer Mitchell Froom on keyboards, it is a group of friends. Anyway, the vocals sound great.
Crowded House makes romantic music for married couples, who use it to open the dance floor at their wedding, sing-alongs to sing along in a traffic jam or to clap along on the festival meadow. But who cares when they sprinkle with classics like Four Seasons In One Day, Into Temptation, Better Be Home Soon, Weather With You and Fall At Your Feet. Excellent performances in which Finn keeps switching from electric guitar to acoustic. There is not even time for the radio hit It’s Only Natural, and the set is still rock solid.
THE MOMENT
A man with an awesome white beard is spotted in the audience by the band. Hilarity everywhere, and he even gets a can of beer from the band – ‘one, because we only got a six-pack’. Neil Finn also praises the security, who hand out cups of water to the public, scooping from a bucket. The band also records the crowd with a Super8 camera. Crowded House is having a good time, and the audience with their songs.
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