Remastered & re-released: Tim Finn’s great Escapade
It’s 42 years since Tim Finn returned home from a world tour with Split Enz to ‘take a break’ and make a solo album that’s widely regarded as the most critically successful record of the artist’s career, Escapade.
Tim Finn was restless. It was 1983 and he’d just turned 30. The singer had been fronting Split Enz for the best part of a decade and the band were as popular as they’d ever been.
The New Zealand group, now based in Melbourne, were enjoying success on both the albums and singles charts at home and in Australia, and were making strong in-roads everywhere from Los Angeles to London.
Finn was working on a new batch of songs for the band, but one in particular just wasn’t gelling. The tune was a Fraction Too Much Friction. Finn had been carrying it around in his back pocket for a few years, but he could never find the groove to make the song work.
That changed when Finn heard Renee Geyer’s new single Say I Love You on the radio. Playing drums was South African expat and former Beach Boy, Ricky Fataar. Connections were made and Finn began work on a solo album that arguably became the most commercially and critically successful record of his career, Escapade.
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Now, all these years later, Escapade has been remastered and re-released on both blood red vinyl and CD. Finn has even locked in some shows to mark the occasion.
“Everywhere you look, there’s an album having an anniversary,” Finn muses on the phone from his home in New Zealand. “We were trying to do it on the 40th anniversary of the release, but couldn’t get the record label motivated. We were rattling the cage and (initially) nothing happened. So it’s the 42nd anniversary of the album which, I think is, you know, pretty significant,” he laughs.
Alongside Fraction Too Much Friction, the album features other choice titles from the Finn cannon such as Made My Day, Staring at the Embers and In a Minor Key.
In Split Enz’s world, at the time, they’d just released the compilation Enz of an Era and the studio album Time and Time. The latter featured Finn’s hits Dirty Creature and Six Months in a Leaky Boat. After touring the world to support Time and Tide the band, in Finn’s words, “decided to take a break”.
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“We’d been touring so hard and working our asses off for probably the previous four to five years, and long before that,” recalls Finn of the period. “We were exhausted with each other and with being on the road. And so we said, ‘let’s have a break’. And, I mean, these days, a band might say, ‘let’s just have a break for two years and make some solo records’. But in those days, you didn’t talk like that. It was just, ‘We’ll take six weeks off’.
“It was during that period that I started writing or finishing, actually, a few songs like Fraction Too Much Friction and, possibly, In a Minor Key, and one or two of the others that I’d had. We’d actually jammed a couple of them in Split Enz, and they just hadn’t worked at all. I was just starting to play the piano, and the new songs just flowed.
“I heard that Renee track when I was driving around Melbourne in my Zephyr. Rick was playing the drums. I just thought, ‘Wow, who’s that drummer?’ And that led to (Escapade), because I reached out and found who the drummer was and he knew (producer) Mark Moffat who put the studio band together. And that opened up a lot of doors and windows for me, because I met a lot of
people, not just musicians. Ricky was living with (model) Penelope Tree in Sydney, and she became a dear friend as well.”
‘It was a great joy to work with Vanetta Fields on vocals. We also had Wilbur Wilde and Joe Camilleri on saxes’
Looking for a venue to record the album, Moffat (who earned his stripes recording (I’m) Stranded for The Saints) suggested Festival Studios in Sydney. The now demolished space was once the recording home of everyone from Johnny O’Keefe to the Bee Gees and Cold Chisel. Moffat’s assembled studio band were stellar players.
“It was a great joy to work with Vanetta Fields on vocals,” recalls Finn. “We also had Wilbur Wilde and Joe Camilleri on saxes. I actually asked for those two to be on board. I just thought they were kind of maverick characters, and they were going to bring more than just horn lines, and they did. And then we had Richard Tee passing through town, who was touring with Paul Simon at the time.
“Ricky knew him. He came in and played piano on Fraction Too Much Friction and a couple of the others. Vince Gill knew Mark, and he played mandolin. Sadly, Mark Moffat and our engineer Timmy Kramer have died. So there’s only me and Ricky left of the four that drove that record.”
At the time, the writing that made up the bulk of the songs on Escapade was a departure for Finn. Escapade was an album that shied away from the pioneering themes of Time and Time and focused on romantic relationships and their arc. Escapade went on to win the 1983 Countdown Album of the Year.
“I think I’m only going to do eight or nine songs from the record per night,” he says of touring. “It’s only a 10-song album. Then I’ll mix it up with other songs from that period. Time and Time was still in the air. I’m trying to zone in on 1982-83 and possibly 1984 and see how many songs I can bring in from that period.”
For Tim Finn’s Escapade tour dates, go to ticketmaster.com.au/tim-finn-tickets/artist/735065
Tim’s Finn’s Escapade album is now available on vinyl and CD and by streaming.