Help Is Coming
Neil Finn/Nick Seymour/Peter Jones
Help is coming
I heard a whisper
White caps turning
Breath of summer
Distant drummin’
Lyrebirds callin’
Escape the anguish of our past
And pray
Empires crumbling
Callous winter
Fear is running
No longer with us
We sail tomorrow
For Ellis Island
Escape, anger of our past
And pray that peace will come at last
And dream
Release the anger of our past
And pray that peace will come at last
And stay
Help is coming
Help is coming
We sail tomorrow
For Ellis Island
Help is coming
Dreams come true
We’ll sail tomorrow
Dreams come true
Help is coming
Song appears on:
Crowded House - Afterglow (compilation, 1999)
Previously available on Single:
Crowded House - Help Is Coming (limited edition 7” single, 2015)
“This was a song that we recorded as part of the last recording Crowded House ever did, with Peter Jones on the drums and at York Street Studios in Auckland, middle of a winter, shortly before we broke up. There were about five songs that emerged in this time and this was probably the only one that was reasonably well formed in the sense of having lyrics and it has a lovely atmosphere.”
Video: Crowded House - Help Is Coming (with an introduction by Benedict Cumberbatch)
Video directed by Mat Whitecross in 2015 in support of Save The Children's Refugee Crisis Appeal.
Interview footage:
Director/Filmed by: Simon Rawles
Producers: Mustafa Khalili, Richard Sprenger, Angela Robson
Assistant producers: Karl Schembri
Music produced by Crowded House
Recorded by Andrew Buckton & Nick Abbott at York St Studios, Auckland, July 1995. Mixed by Sam Gibson in 1999.
Released on the Afterglow compilation in 1999.
In 1999, when Afterglow first appeared, the album also served as an outlet for the standout song from the final session Crowded House recorded three years previously in Auckland before Neil decided to break the band up. Described by Neil back then as “a refugee song”, Help Is Coming beautifully evoked the journey made over the years by hundreds and thousands of people fleeing unrest in order to find a safer home for their families. With tragic acuity, this song, recorded almost two decades previously, also seemed to portend the awful scenes that unfolded last summer: the plight of Syrian families alighting overcrowded boats in Kos, without any clear idea of what would be happening to them next; the howling uncertainty that hundreds of thousands of families continue to go through in Hungarian holding pens, in Calais shanty towns and immigration detention centres.
Within a few days of those images hitting TV screens, my wife Caitlin Moran and I contacted Neil about effecting a stand-alone vinyl and download release of the song with all proceeds going to Save The Children’s relief effort for the Syrian refugees. Thanks to him and director Mat Whitecross – whose devastating film for the song amplified awareness of the refugee crisis all over the world – Help Is Coming lent its name to a campaign that spread through news programmes, football grounds and theatres over the ensuing weeks, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds as it did so. Songs sometimes go on mysterious journeys, unknowable and unimaginable to their creators. And the songs on Afterglow are no exception. In the cold light of day, they’re a motley bunch. But their story is far from over. That’s the thing about songs. As long as there’s someone to listen to them, their story is never over.
Pete Paphides, Afterglow Deluxe Edition liner notes, 2016
See the 2015 press release here for the Help Is Coming campaign.
“It was nice that Help Is Coming had a moment to shine because it was one of the standouts. It got a look-in on Afterglow obviously but deserved better and it was just a beautiful thing that that song can rise again from twenty years earlier and appear to be incredibly appropriate.”