Simon Finn

Born March 4, 1951, psych-folk mystic Simon Finn moved to London in 1967 and made his professional debut by opening for Al Stewart at the Marquee Club’s weekly “Wednesday Folk Night.” Within months he began headlining at the London restaurant Borsch and Tears. That winter he cut his first demo, “Butterfly,” at producer Vic Keary’s Old Kent Road studio. The session drew no label interest, so Finn resumed busking across London and supported himself by updating share prices on the blackboard at the city’s Stock Exchange. In spring 1969 he again crossed paths with Keary and arranged to record at the producer’s new Chalk Farm studio in Camden. A few weeks later, at the Round House café in Camden, Finn met multi-instrumentalist and fledgling writer David Toop together with percussionist Paul Burwell and invited them to appear on his forthcoming session. The hypnotic, deeply beautiful Pass the Distance appeared on Keary’s Mushroom Records in early 1970. Legal squabbles soon forced Mushroom to withdraw the album, after which Finn withdrew from performing. In 1974 he relocated to Canada, taught karate, and later turned to organic farming with wife Emily. The Finns settled in Montreal in 1980. Over the ensuing decades Pass the Distance grew highly collectable and much discussed, yet Finn remained unaware of his developing cult stature until late 2003, when Current 93’s David Tibet wrote to outline plans for reissuing the album on his Durtro label. The remastered and expanded Pass the Distance was released in 2004 on the eve of Finn’s first live dates in over three decades.