“I don’t think he was very happy about the situation. I would hope he might have thought, ‘Oh well, at least somebody that can write a good song has taken my part’”: Crowded House’s Neil Finn on replacing Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac

New Zealand darling, Crowded House's Neil Finn, had the enviable position of joining Fleetwood Mac and becoming part of their legacy between 2018 and 2022, in lieu of Lindsey Buckingham.

With tension between Buckingham and the rest of the band at an all-time high, and a looming 88-gig world tour, Finn joining the internationally well-loved band meant learning the famed lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist's parts to a tee. However, despite stepping into his shoes, Finn never actually had the opportunity to meet Buckingham.

“I've not met him. I have a feeling we'd probably get on just fine. [But] I don't think he was very happy about the situation,” he says on the Broken Record Podcast.

“I don't think he would have blamed me for it particularly. And I think he probably had some awareness of my songs, and probably, you know, I would hope at some point he might have thought, ‘Oh, well, at least somebody that can write a good song has taken my part.’”

Finn goes on to say that he wholeheartedly believes that a band can very well redefine and reinvent itself – especially one that has been around for decades. “Fleetwood Mac have redefined themselves so many times, have been so many different kinds of bands. I related to that and I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I can do that.’”

Learning songs as iconic as Fleetwood Mac's came with its own unique and perhaps unexpected challenges, however. “You think you know the way that songs work, but then when you actually learn them, you find that there's more going on than you realized.”

As he points out, even songs that you've casually heard hundreds of times can be tricky to learn when you sit down with them.

“Even Go Your Own Way, which you think you've heard. You think, it is a very simple song, but it's just learning it is more difficult than you think. I think I have more quirks and nuances in the way that I put songs together than Lindsey does, but somehow they're hard.”

Neil Finn and Crowded House are currently on the UK leg of their tour supporting their recent album, Gravity Stairs.