They arrived in Sydney on the Friday, warmed up by two mid-week gigs at the tiny Corner Hotel in Richmond. Credit:Simon O’Dwyerįarewell To The World was a glorious afterthought on that live career, a surprise postscript months after the band had broken up and two years after Paul Hester’s departure had exposed the weakening bonds in the molecule. Thanks to my job, I must have seen them 20 times in the following years.įinal tour: Neil Finn, Paul Hester, Nick Seymour and Mark Hart on Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne, days before the Sydney concert. As a young music writer, I had covered the Split Enz farewell tour for RAM (Rock Australia Magazine) and by the arrival of Crowded House was starting to scribble for The Sydney Morning Herald.
I first saw them play in a slightly grubby room above a sex shop in Goulburn Street, Sydney, at the launch of their debut album. And if everyone who discovered them along the way felt a kind of ownership, is it any surprise so many turned up to wave them off? For perennials.Īnd ask yourself, have you met a former Crowded House fan? No one ever stopped liking the band. The band’s songs appealed not to the jacaranda blossom whims of pop kids – two weeks of bloom then instantly forgotten – but to more adult yearnings for tunes that last, that you don’t grow out of. Crowded House fans skipped the singles and went straight to the long players, knowing the extra investment would be worth it. Well, they were a supreme example of that thing favoured by music industry accountants and the kind of chin-strokers who still buy vinyl: an albums band. Which makes you wonder, how then did the band convince upwards of 150,000 people to sardine themselves into the Sydney Opera House forecourt on the evening of Sunday, November 24, 1996? 2 in June/July 1988, kept at bay by Kylie Minogue’s Got To Be Certain. 59) not even make the Top 40?īetter Be Home Soon did threaten to pull off the feat, but it spent four weeks stalled at No. 31), not get there? How could works of peerless craft such as Four Seasons In One Day (No. Wait, what? How could tunes of the weight and brilliance of Don’t Dream It’s Over (peaked at No. No Crowded House song ever made it to No. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size
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