IT’S not known whether Crowded House still employ a roadie called Dougal, but if he’s still around he’ll surely not have forgotten the ribbing he once received at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

It was November 1993 and the band was playing the second of two sold-out nights at the venue. At one point the frontman, Neil Finn, indicating the shadowy figure of Dougal at the side of the stage, told the audience: “That's Dougal, one of our crew. He's a little hurt tonight because there's been a lot of talk about his doubtful parentage. We think Dougal's father was from Glasgow originally. His mother is owed a lifetime of child support. And it's one of you b———s that hasn't paid.”

Bass guitarist Nick Seymour couldn't resist joining in: “They haven't paid? Well, you do surprise me!”  Smirking, Neil taunted the audience: ”You’re not just going to sit there and take that are you? You're Glaswegians!" To which the audience, according to a later report in Q magazine, responded with a rousing “F—- off!”

There was quite a lot of levity that night, as ever with Crowded House. One particular song, Black and White Boy, was reprised specially for a fan who had the temerity to loudly inform the band that it was ''the worst thing you've ever recorded’’.

Crowded House's star was really on the rise at that time, thanks to the sheer melodic quality of the songs on their studio albums Crowded House, Temple of Low Men, Woodface and the latest, Together Alone. They had been playing clubs, and then medium-sized venues. By the time of their next date in Glasgow - the cavernous SECC, in May 1994, they were entertaining audiences of at least 10,000.

No-one had any reason to suspect that Together Alone would be the band’s last album for 14 years. To the understandable dismay of their fans, Crowded House took the decision to disband in 1996, a couple of years after their drummer, Paul Hester, had quit.

Hester took his own life in 2005, and it was this shocking loss that finally motivated Neil Finn to reconnect with Nick Seymour. As Finn told Mojo magazine earlier this year: “The aftermath of losing Paul was a really confronting time. I was making a solo LP and I thought it’d be great to have Nick involved, to hang with him and re-connect after losing Paul. I always had this lingering feeling that bands are the ideal way to face the world. I thought, if Nick’s around, maybe it’s a band record”.

Crowded House, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Creative peaks

The album, Time on Earth, came out in 2007, and a follow-up, Intriguer, in 2010. During those three years the band toured and enjoyed its customary high profile, but that version of Crowded House eventually ground to a halt. “To be honest”, Finn told Mojo, “I’d reached a dead end in my mind. We’d tried to record after Intriguer but I couldn't finish anything with that line-up. It felt like a good time to stop”.

Finn, somewhat to his surprise, was invited to guest with Fleetwood Mac on their 2019-2019 tour, as replacement for Lindsey Buckingham, who had been fired. Finn made his way to Hawaii, where the Mac’s drummer and co-founder, Mick Fleetwood, now lives. After an audition, the group and Finn each decided they were a perfect match for the other.

Asked by Mojo what he had brought to Fleetwood Mac, Finn said: “The naysayers said, ‘No Lindsey Buckingham, no Fleetwood Mac’, but I brought personality and the ability to sing with Stevie [Nicks] and Christine [McVie]. I could never be capable of sounding like Lindsey, but I put a similar intensity into his songs”.

Settling in to the big time. Crowded House, SECC, Glasgow

After the Fleetwood Mac tour Finn reassembled Crowded House for a second time. Nick Seymour returned, on bass guitar. Alongside these two ever-presents are Finn’s sons Liam (on guitar) and Elroy (on drums), and Mitchell Froom, the veteran producer behind the first three Crowded House albums), on keyboards.

The new album, Gravity Stairs, a follow-up to 2021’s award-winning, critically acclaimed Dreamers Are Waiting, has received solid reviews, and is being promoted on a tour that will see the band play Glasgow's OVO Hydro on October 9.

Andy Fyfe, writing in Mojo, noted: “While last album, Dreamers Are Waiting, had flashes of the old days, Gravity Stairs tracks such as Teenage Summer, Oh Hi and particularly All That I Can Ever Own and The Howl effortlessly withstand direct comparison with the band’s mid-’90s peak.

“OK”, he added, “there may not be anything quite like 1993’s near-perfect Distant Sun – few songs by anyone are – but Gravity Stairs is the most Crowded House thing that Crowded House have made in 30 years”.

Mention of Distant Sun, one of the tracks on Together Alone, is a potent reminder of how many great songs Crowded House have given us over the decades. Don’t Dream It’s Over, Weather With You, Fall at Your Feet, Four Seasons in One Day, It’s Only Natural, World Where You Live, and so many more: no wonder that Crowded House were once described as the Kiwi Beatles. No wonder, either, that the band has sold in excess of 15 million records worldwide.

In November 2016 the band was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the Arias, Australia's own version of the Brit awards. ”It's been a long time. It's been 30 years, so there's a lot of people to thank," Finn remarked at the ceremony. The award was dedicated to Hester; "We wouldn’t”, Finn added, “have been anywhere near as engaging, and amusing and wonderful as we sometimes were, without Paul”.

It’s unlikely that Mick Fleetwood will turn up at the OVO Hydro to play drums, as he did during an encore at a recent Crowded House gig in London. Nevertheless, the cheerful humour was as much on display as it had been at the Royal Concert Hall, that long-ago November of 1993.

“Sometimes”, the Guardian reviewer noted of the gig in the capital, “all pop music needs to do is spread a little happiness. Playing a small London show to mark the release of their eighth album, Gravity Stairs, Crowded House do rather more than that.

“There’s comedy, with Neil Finn teasing Nick Seymour… about his strapped knee, which leads through a summation of Seymour family history into the crowd singing Where Is Love? from Oliver! to the stage. There’s the beauty of the interlocking guitars and harmonies; on the lightly psychedelic All That I Can Ever Own the band are as perfectly woven as spun sugar”.

* Crowded House, OVO Hydro, Wednesday, October 9.