BLUE NOTES

by Andrew Stevenson
Sydney Morning Herald - 5th October 2001

There's nothing wrong with Paul Kelly's life - he just wants to write mournful songs, writes Andrew Stevenson.

Now here's a coincidence. There's this muso, right, a great songwriter whose lyrics are revered for their power to encapsulate the poetry of life. And for years those songs have had an optimistic bent. Then the muso breaks up with his partner of many years and his mum dies. The next album he brings out sounds like a death wail, full of melancholy and paranoia.

But, you know what? Paul Kelly can look straight ahead from his sofa in yet another Sydney hotel for yet another press interview and tell you it's got nothing to do with him. Or at least his life.

He just happened to open the black drawer and, mouldering away in there, Kelly found a bunch of mournful songs. Enough for an album. Don't worry. Don't call for help. Next time he'll open the rose-pink drawer and the world will be put right.

Got that? Kelly is not telling stories about his life.

"No, not at all. I'm trying to get words to fit a melody," he explains. "It's as simple as that. The kind of rhyme I need determines where the song will go."

For Kelly, a song begins "with a little static in the back of your head ... it comes and goes; it's a bit unpredictable really"; where it goes depends on the words he needs or finds to fit the tune. Nothing else. There's no statement being made and no therapy.

"I'm not interested in telling the truth," he says. "I'm not interested in self-expression; I don't want to talk about my life. I'm not interested in writing as therapy. I'm just trying to make beautiful things. I'm just trying to make songs and get words to fit tunes.

"Look, I don't deny that if you looked through all my songs there are clues to my life and my character there. There is a subterranean story, a hidden story. You do end up writing about yourself, but in a much more indirect and hidden way."

Kelly calls Nothing But a Dream "my miserable, morose songwriter record", comparing himself with Leonard Cohen or Nick Drake.

"This record I knew would have this stark, confessional, downbeat feeling. It's not so much because 'Oh, the last 18 months of my life have been like this'. I've been saving those songs up. These songs have been sitting in a drawer waiting until I've had enough of them to make a record. My next record will probably move away from that. I'm a bit sick of it."

Kelly does concede, with a wry smile, that this album seems to occupy a very small space around his person. The big canvas, across which Kelly has at times appeared to glide like a bard charting the wrinkles on the nation's soul, has been stowed away up the back shed. Or at least in a drawer marked "newspaper songs".

"The political songs, for me, have always been the exception. I call them the newspaper songs, where you have an idea of what you're writing about before you start," he says.

Those listening out for politics could start with Mandawuy Yunupingu, of Yothu Yindi, with whom Kelly collaborated on Treaty.

"He's a big picture writer, that's how he sees his songwriting. He's a teacher; he's spreading a message, explaining a philosophy.

"I'm much fuzzier; it's more kind of groping. I don't write from a philosophy or a coherent world view. I write the song to find out what it is - rather than have an idea in my head of what the song is and then try and write it. Like probably all songwriters, my staple song is a love song. Those other ones come along now and then."

To help the sun shine in, Vika and Linda Bull will join Kelly and a five-piece band in touring the album.

"They're so joyous and uplifting on stage when they sing that even though we're singing a lot of these songs, the show is really quite celebratory, quite joyous. They're perfect for me on this tour because I have a lot of downbeat songs so they're a bit of an antidote and they help balance the
show. Otherwise it could be too wrist-slitting."