Froom and the Finn brothers

Press, 19 July 1989, Page 24

Froom and the Finn brothers

By

RUSSELL BAILLIE

If the Fab Four’s producer George Martin was called "the fifth Beatle,” then Mitchell Froom deserves a moniker something like “the third Finn.” But Froom would probably reject that, or any other label. In an age where record producers are known by groovy nicknames and valued for their ability to churn out assembly line pop songs to induce a wallet-opening trance in teenagers, Mitchell Froom is a record maker of quiet restraint. And he likes New Zealanders. The classically-trained musician’s career as a name producer effectively started with Crowded House’s first album. More recently, he’s produced the second by the band led by Kiwi Neil Finn and done the same for elder brother Tim Finn’s third and best solo album. Then there are the two albums he’s produced for guitarist Richard Thompson, and Froom also played keyboards on Elvis Costello’s strange-sound-ing but successful “Spike” LP. And by the time you read this he’ll be in rehearsal in London with Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders for their next record. A busy guy. Maybe not: “Mitchell’s gone home already,” says the voice that answers the phone at the Los Angeles studio where he’s working. Tracked down to his home and apologetic for the interview muck-up, he says the singer he was working with just didn’t have it today. Knowing when to take a break is a valuable quality in making records, says Froom. “If you work six or seven hours in an intense way, after that, it’s sort of downhill. If you keep coming fresh so you’re constantly feeling good about it and hearing things, you don’t spin your wheels as much; you tend to get real things and have better judgment "Otherwise I suffer from a real studio burnout.” The musical flame started for the 35-year-old father of one in a fairly typical way. Learning classical piano from the age of five, he later included pipe organ in his studies and did "a bit of harmony in college. “I also played in a rock ’n’ roll band from the age of 13 and was most interested in that. I have had a good schooling in music, which I’ve finally figured out how to apply.” His production career started with work on the sound track for the movie “Cafe Flesh” on big American independent Slash records. Slash put him together with the band Del Fuegos. “It was really a situation where I didn’t want them and nobody wanted me and yet we made a record a lot of people liked and that sort of started it all off.

"Crowded House was the second real band I had ever produced. I was grateful for it because I was immediately pigeonholed as an American roots-rock producer. I don’t even like that sort of music very much.” There are. sound similarities between the Tim

Finn and the Crowded House albums beyond the obvious vocal trademark of the brothers who led Split Enz to near-stardom, As well as his work on the mixing desk, the records feature Froom’s distinctive but natural-sounding organ and piano style. “I have a lot of synthesisers,” he admits, “but I’ve tended to go the other way. You can go with everyone else and buy the newest synthesiser, but I'm looking for older and older, more exotic instruments. “I bought a bass organ when I was in England and bought these old, weird organs when I was in Italy and that sort of thing. “If you approach' the instrument and play it in a way it’s not supposed to be played, you can get some great noises out of it. You get a lot more emotion out if the instrument. It’s not quite as flat somehow. *T’ve just sort of gone that way out of a certain perversity, I guess a desire to not do what other people are doing. I’ve got a sort of closet of strange keyboards. “For example, the ‘How Am. I Going To Sleep’ solo, that’s a combination of this medieval organ and Indian harmonium, which is a hand-pumped busker’s instrument which sounds a bit like an accordion.” Froom has no regrets about being a backroom boy relegated to the small print on album sleeves rather than the faces on the front. “I constantly have offers to be a live musician, Elvis Costello just called me; Crowded House have been on to me a couple of times and I’ve played a bit with them. I like playing with them, I jam with them. And I did a very small tour with Elvis Costello. “As a keyboardist in a rock band, your influence is the least of anyone involved. “If I were a singersongwriter, I’d feel more of a need to perform, but I feel I have a greater impact with what I am doing — and after a certain amount of years, that is -what you end up caring more about.” Froom is not too particular about keeping track of the albums’ sales performances. He says if it’s good news he hears about it and because he is constantly ; working he doesn’t really want a ‘Tailure” depressing his

work on another recording. However, he says he has a particular soft spot for the Tim Finn album, and he was in on it from the start. “He started sending me some songs — he didn’t even have a record deal — and I said, ‘why don’t we just work for a few days, I’ll just get a drum machine, you get a guitar and I’ll play keyboards.’ “We just made noise for three or four days and had fun, just really enjoyed it, worked on the arrangements.” Froom recorded the two-man sessions on a ghetto blaster and took the tape into an agreeable Capital Records — Crowded House’s label. “Nothing was based on whether it was successful or what it had to do with his brother,” he says. “We just worked together to see if we could have a bit of fun musically. “It was almost like forming a band, and that started the whole thing. It just felt great for us that way; it had nothing to do with any financial thing or any political thing or anything.” Unsurprisingly, he’s a great admirer of the Finn siblings: “They are just so talented. It’s pretty astounding, really, when I think of them being in a band together. It’s pretty hard to believe they didn’t do a lot better. “Both of them are on the easy-going side, just into having a good time in the studio; they are very loose and open to the moment.” The "American rootsrock producer” tends to be more impressed by bands outside the States. “There’s a bit more originality and they’re a bit less tied in to American standards. Neil told me he learned r’n’b through the Beatles, which is great — that’s where music is most interesting, where it’s cross-cultural and it comes from funny places. You are not just imitating an old style.” With his Slash connection, there’s a possibility he may produce another New Zealand act — recent signees The Chills. •■‘l continually ask the person. I don’t try to bully people. The way I feel, if the person writes a song and hears some ideas, their immediate instinct is usually the most true. If it rubs them the wrong way and they don’t like it then it’s usually the wrong thing.” v