THE GENTLE DREAMS OF AN URBAN TROUBADOUR

Hearld Sun - 15th August 1999

Paul Kelly has worked his way from independent pub rocker, through songwriting legend and into Australia's cultural psyche. What more could a quiet, skinny kid from Adelaide want? He tells CLAUDIA SAMMUT he fantasises about learning Brazilian chords, playing the drums and writing songs for Willie Nelson.

Dream words, he calls them. They're the words that first come to Paul Kelly's mind when he starts conceiving a song. Triggered by the tiniest detail, an observation, the way someone says something, they form the beginning of a lyric that works its way into song.

In the preface of his newly released book, Don't Start Me Talking, Paul Kelly speaks of the metamorphosis that his music and words undergo. From stabs of phrases sung over a band jamming or mumbled into a late-night tape recorder, to a prototype somewhere between sounds and words. The dream words.

"(They) fall from grace, from possibility to actuality, from dream words to real words, the real words always a little disappointing at first, bald and skinny until they are sung over and over again and the dream words disappear and the real words approach sound again..."

Don't Start Me Talking is an interesting title for a book which is essentially about words. A complete chronicle of Kelly's lyrics from 1984 to the present its release signifies the mid-point of a lively year for the artist who, in May, was crowned Songwriter of the Year by the Australasian Performing Right Association. Kelly spent most of the following month in a Fitzroy recording studio mixing his new bluegrass album Smoke (to be released by EMI later this year). At the same time he is collaborating with Australian soul diva Renee Geyer in the production of a gospel album for R&B sister duo Vika and Linda Bull.

Kelly still devotes a significant part of the year to live performances. Twice awarded best male performer by the Australian Record Industry Association, he tours nationally on a regular basis. This month he departs on a four-week pilgrimage through the UK performing at the Edinburgh Festival, in London and in Ireland.

However, it is as a songwriter that he has earned the greatest respect. With his etchings of urban reality, Kelly has worked his way beyond the popular music culture into the Australian subconscious. His lyrics are studied in university poetry courses. In the outback he is a mentor to indigenous bands.

Yet at 44 and now in the third decade of his musical career, Kelly seems relatively unchanged by his success. He remains an intensely loyal Australian Rules fan (Adelaide Crows and St Kilda) and cricket follower, enjoys good food and wine, and is an enthusiastic supporter of charity. A one-time owner of a HQ Holden, he now drives a brown Mitsubishi Magna.

Kelly's hair has been cropped and his side-burns neatened, but the dark, intense eyes, the wry smile and his lean build are much the same as those of the skinny singer who first appeared on the Melbourne pub scene in the late '70s. In publicity shots and on stage, he exudes a relaxed presence that seems to encapsulate the essence of rock 'n' roll cool. However, despite these trademark features, it is difficult not to wonder whether Kelly, in the flesh, will look different.

From our reserved table at The Continental Cafe in Prahran, I watch a tallish man wearing a baseball cap and jeans drift unassumingly through the morning coffee crowd. Immersed in chatter, no one notices his entry. Sitting waiting, facing the door, I recognise him instantly.

If success has affected Kelly on the inside, he does not show it. He comes across as mild-mannered and gentle, someone who would prefer to listen rather than talk. A quiet observer, as Linda Bull puts it. Journalists who have interviewed him have said he is a difficult subject. Certainly, he is not overflowing with conversation. His answers are succinct, usually one or two sentences. And he has a tendency to look away before he speaks. Public speaking is his one great fear, admits Kelly. Even live performances still cause a degree of anxiety.

But the man who sits before me, dressed in a checked fleece shirt and windbreaker jacket, clean-shaven and youthful in complexion, does not strike me as nervous. More, he seems to be someone who has never become accustomed to his own fame. When asked his views on such recent events as Kosovo (in June he partook in a CARE fundraising event for the war-stricken nation) he is bemused. "Why are my views any more important than anyone else's?"

For a person honoured in the ARIA Hall of Fame alongside legends Slim Dusty, Johnny O'Keefe, the Bee Gees and AC/DC, as well as Dames Nellie Melba and Joan Sutherland, he is also humble.

Songwriting is a mysterious craft he says. "I still feel like a total beginner I don't feel like I have got it nailed yet."

Born in Adelaide in 1955, Kelly's upbringing was one of a typical large Catholic family. His parents, John and Josephine, had nine children; Kelly was the sixth. By all accounts he was a quiet child, but there were plenty of brothers and sisters around to jostle him into play. He speaks with fondness of his childhood: of family picnics in the Adelaide Hills, of trips to the country town of Gawler with his cousins. The times they visited interstate, when two siblings had to take the train because the station wagon would not carry them all. "We were just one big rolling, tumbling gang."

Musicality was in his genes. His maternal grandparents are credited with having introduced opera to Australia, establishing the fist Italian opera company in the 1920s. Contessa Anne Filipini, Kelly's grandmother, was also the first woman to conduct an orchestra in this country, while her Argentine-born husband, Count Ercole Filipini, was a leading baritone with the La Scala Grand Opera Company in Milan.

But the singer-songwriter speaks with equal enthusiasm about his father, John Kelly, a lawyer who worked with the migrant community. John Kelly died of Parkinson's disease when his son was 13 years old. "My dad loved languages, he also had a love of word play. He would read to me when I was little in Greek and Latin. He read Homer in the original version."

Kelly attended a Christian Brother’s school in Adelaide where he played the trumpet and captained the cricket team. "They had a three-pronged
philosophy: religion, academic aptitude and sport. I was good at sport and I was good academically. I even had a religious face for a while," he reflects. An interlude studying arts at Flinders University followed, but Kelly left disillusioned with academic life. He began writing, first prose - he and his friends started a magazine for writers - then, at 21, he discovered songwriting.

To what extent Kelly's lyrics are autobiographical is uncertain. Clearly some songs depict his youth - take Adelaide, for example, where he speaks of his dying father and of the hedgerows on Kensington Rd where he was raised - but the origins of others are more blurred. Kelly himself denies his lyrics reflect his own life experiences, but what is important are the messages he conveys. He has the ability to turn a simple observation or fragment into a lyric that penetrates the mind and tinkers deep inside. "There is something unique and powerful about the way Kelly mixes up everyday detail with the big issues of life, death, love and struggle - not a trace of pretence or fakery in there," former Crowded House frontman Neil Finn has said.

Have you seen Kings Cross when the rain is falling soft? I came in on the evening bus, from Oxford Street.

These lines from Kelly's 1985 song From St Kilda to Kings Cross typify the writer's ability to evoke a sense of place. "He is the voice of urban Australia, the modern-day Banjo Paterson," says Geyer.

Intensely private, Kelly refuses to talk about his immediate family - wife Kaarin Fairfax, daughters Memphis, 5, and Madeleine, 7, and son Declan, 18 - from his previous marriage to Hilary Brown. "It's just something I don't talk about."

But it is clear the children are a vital part of his world. ("You'll always know my love will never end": Madeleine's Song). One colleague describes him as a great dad, able to juggle family and career with ease. Kelly has said he likes doing with his kids the things all fathers like to do, although he doesn't elaborate.

He made his public debut singing a folk song to a Hobart audience at the age of 19. Two years later he moved to Melbourne, formed Paul Kelly and the Dots which secured him a presence on the local pub scene, released a hit single (Billy Baxter), and made two albums, Talk (1981) and Manila (1982). What followed was a period of instability. The Dots broke up and the singer found himself without a record contract. He was also the victim of an ugly bashing outside a Richmond cafe that broke his jaw. He once said: "1982, '83 and '84 are lost years for me. I'd like to remember them. I wish I could remember them."

Post, a solo acoustic album recorded in the home studio of Clive Shakespeare (the original Sherbet guitarist) on a self-financed budget of $3500, heralded his recovery. Consisting of 11 songs with distinctly Australian references and Kelly's signature melancholy tunes, it was not a huge commercial success, but it earned him a reputation as a singer-songwriter of worth. Australian Rolling Stone named it 1985's best album.

In '86 he was back in the studio, this time with a new band, Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls - an all-male group, the reference to the coloured girls being "a joke name that stuck". With his first commercially successful album Gossip selling platinum within the year - and hit singles Leaps And Bounds, Before Too Long, and Darling It Hurts all making the Australian national charts - the band recorded Under The Sun soon after. The song To Her Door was a summer sensation in 1987, rising to number 14 in the charts.

In Los Angeles, record company A & M - distributor of Bryan Adams, Police and Janet Jackson - signed Kelly in a deal that saw the two Coloured Girls albums released across America. The company also launched his '87 tour of the continent. On the cusp of the big-time, and after changing the band's name to Paul Kelly and the Messengers (to avoid controversy), he embarked on a journey that held the promise of a dream. In 1988 Under The Sun became the No. 1 played record on American college radio. But he enjoyed success on the live-club circuit, securing a following that would enable him to tour America annually for the next 10 years, mainstream success never came"

“A lot of Paul's songs are so Australian - they talk about Bradman, St Kilda, the Randwick bells - perhaps Americans didn't get it, in the same way as some UK and American bands don't work here," says Paul Costello at Mushroom Records which distributed Kelly records for 13 years (Kelly has just switched to EMI.

Today Kelly says he does not have his sights set on any definitive goal in terms of the American market "To have a strategy you would have to pack up and live there, but I don't want to do that, I've got too much here to start making a new one over there."

In his fantasies, where there is time for all things. Kelly dreams of learning Brazilian chords and the drums. In his real life, where things are hectic, resorts to staring at the wall of his backyard shed to collect his thoughts. "You need a lot of time when nothing happens to make something happen," he says of the songwriting process. "Uncluttered time, it's most precious time of all."

Drinking his double order of coffee and orange juice, Kelly talks about Smoke - (not to be confused with k.d. lang's album of the same name). Recorded with bluegrass band Uncle Bill, it is clearly something he had a lot of fun doing - "I've always loved hillbilly" - although he doesn't wish to reveal too much before the album's September release. What he can say is there will be a mixture of old and new songs - the old ones redone in the bluegrass style - well as country instrumentals, the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, stand-up bass, acoustic guitar, and harmonies.

Asked who in the music world he would most like to write for, Kelly is quick to answer, Frank Sinatra then breaks into a smile, "but I've missed the boat there!" Willie Nelson is another idol. "I love him as a stylist." Kelly has sent Nelson a few songs. So far there has been no response.

In Australia he has written for the likes of Geyer, Vika and Linda, Joe Camilleri, Archie Roach and Jenny Morris as well as indigenous bands such as Yothu Yindi, for whom he co-wrote the hit song Treaty.

And while he shakes off the title of role model, Kelly is positive about the opportunities for aspiring musicians. "In the days when record companies had the balance of power, you would see artists trading away their rights. That doesn't happen so much now. Sure I think it's harder for young bands to get gigs because venues are trying to compete with a whole range of entertainment options but, on the other hand, it is east and cheaper to make records. You can make records at home and sell them through the net. The whole do-it-yourself philosophy has become more workable."

Rock 'n' roll is at the precipice of change, he says, but is not in danger of extinction as a result of the rap revolution. "When TV first came in, everyone said cinema was dead. And when the net came in, they said bookshops were dead. Rock borrows from rap and vice versa. They all start hybridising and affecting each other. Rock as we know it might die, but it will (resurface) in a slightly different form."

Kelly himself looks forward to "mixing things up”, “trying new things". Letting the lyrics run to a new rhythm and take on a new life, as he says in his book. The final stage of their metamorphosis.

Don't Start Me Talking, Lyrics 1984-1999, by Paul Kelly, Allen & Unwin, rrp $24.95.