Neil Finn.

Neil Finn.

On the occasion of his new album One Nil, GRAHAM REID takes Neil Finn for a stroll through his back pages.

Neil Finn gives the impression he's happier than he has ever been. This year he's been around the country playing solo shows in small venues with contributions by ring-in local musicians, billing them as the Band of Strangers.

On Monday week he starts a five-night stand at the St James in Auckland with a guest list that includes Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, a couple of the guys from Radiohead, Johnny Marr from the Smiths and others.

He's then off to Britain and also has Australian shows mid-year with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Oh, and his album One Nil released this week has already gone gold. He is a happy man very much at ease with his private and professional life.

"Everything I'm doing this year is completely unique for me and different to each other as well," he says with a broad smile, "so there's something wondrous in that. I've embraced my freedom and am thinking, I can do anything - so I might as well do it all.

"It's good to feel the strong passion for it. At this point it's not as career-based as it was, it's experience-based.

I want my records to be heard and am ambitious for them, to a degree. But I'm also not creating ridiculously punishing schedules for myself, I'm leaving spaces. The idea was to do less this year, but to put more energy into each and they would be the more powerful for that.

Let's take you through what might be considered pivotal songs of your career and hear how you reflect on them. Random memories or whatever - but first: when was the last time you sat down and listened to an Enz or Crowdies' album?

Not recently. I had a phase a year or two ago where I listened to them, but I don't often. I hear them on the radio by chance quite a lot.

Do you recognise them instantly?

Funnily enough I don't. If they're on at the supermarket and it's sort of ambient I'll take a while to pick up on it. They do take you back to specific memories in some way, how you did it or how you wrote them, or what you were doing at the time.

First one then: Give it a Whirl from the 1979 Enz album Frenzy?

I wrote it initially as a piece of music, just music, on acoustic guitar. It was at Chorley Wood [Hertfordshire] where Noel Crombie and I were living, in Split Enz's most broke but musically fertile year, 1978. I did it at 3 am, Noel was lying on his bed and I thought he was asleep but after an hour he went, "That's good." A month later we did the rehearsal and totally transformed it into a big rock anthem.