Dancing in shadows

The Age (Melb), Sunday 10th May 1998
By DOUG AITON

I'LL never know why, but Paul Kelly became quite strange when I asked him if anything made him angry. He just sat there, looking as though he'd like the floor to swallow him up, occasionally giving me an embarrassed sideways grin.

I waited a while, nothing happened, and so I said: "Well, do you ever get angry anyway?"

"Yeah I do," he said. "I don't really jump up and down. What makes me angry? Oh, this is hard. I don't know where to start."

So he didn't. I suppose I asked him because Kelly is so mild, so withdrawn, so soft, that it seemed somehow an obvious question.

"Can I think about that for a while?" he said eventually, looking like a thin dark shadow.

"Sure," I said. "How about sad? Does anything make you sad?"

"It's hard to talk about emotion in such a pure state," he said. "I find things can make me happy and sad at the same time. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony can make me sad. But it can give me solace at the same time."

Now I felt I was getting closer. Another reason I wanted to ask Paul Kelly about such emotions is that he writes like a dream. His music is sometimes catchy, sometimes powerful, often sweet. His lyrics though, are something else. Everyone who knows his work talks about the deep emotional pull of the words.

Kelly has just put out another album, this time called Words and Music. The opening song, Little Kings, expresses a deep concern about the future of this country. "There's an ill wind blowing no good . . . in the land of little kings, there's a price on everything . . . they're so busy building palaces, they don't see the poison in the wells . . . profit is the only thing . . ."

No wonder you feel like asking him about anger and sadness. Someone once described him as "navigator of the soul". I asked him about that. Again, I got that quiet smile. "I'm just a song and dance man," he said.

"Well, you're also a bit of a philosopher aren't you?" I countered. "I mean, your songs have more to the words than, say, the songs of Buddy Holly."

"I think I'm more from the school of Chuck Berry. He wrote songs you could see. You could see the greasy chicken, the coffee on the bar. With Buddy Holly you just hear them. I always wanted to write modern love songs. You start writing about a boy and girl. A woman and a man. Then other things creep into it. Kids from another marriage perhaps. Or she doesn't like his brother . . . . I mean, I always wanted to write simple boy and girl songs, but other people kept creeping into the songs."

"It's not really rock and roll, is it?" I suggested. "I mean, some of it is quite rocky, but . . ."

"I call myself a pop musician," he said. "That's broad enough for me. I like that. It includes rock and roll, dance, folk . . ."

"And some autobiography?"

"No. They're fiction. But a lot of the details are real. I mean, in How To Make Gravy, the gravy recipe is real, the song's made up."

"What about when you were growing up in Adelaide," I said. "What music were you listening to then?"

"The first songs I remember are My Boomerang Won't Come Back, Rolf Harris, and The Battle of New Orleans. That was Johnny Horton."

Paul Kelly came from a large family where he was the sixth of nine children. He was born in 1955. His father, John, a lawyer, died when Paul was 13. It was a happy family and the kids learned the piano. Paul learned for two years.

His teacher was a Mrs Seecamp, who came to the family house to give the lessons. Kelly's mother used to supply Mrs Seecamp with a glass of milk into which was injected a slug of whisky.

"She was a strict old bird," said Kelly. "I couldn't have liked it that much because I always wanted to be doing something else. One of my sisters had a boyfriend who played the trumpet. So I got to love Herb Alpert. That's the early music I remember really loving.

"Then later it was Dixieland jazz. Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five. Basin Street Blues. And Kenny Ball."

"Did you learn anything from Mrs Seecamp?"

"Yeah. It's a good basis, the piano. Basic theory. I've written some songs on the piano. But usually I write them on the guitar."

"Were you good on the piano?"

"I was good enough."

"Classical too?"

"No. But it was always around the house. Mozart."

He said it was a big noisy house in the suburb of Kensington. John Kelly was 52 when he died of Parkinson's disease.

"I have good memories. He was the kind of father that, well, I missed him when he died very much. The older children were growing into him at the time he died. He was not well enough to play sport with me.

"I lived in the cellar, underneath my parents' room. I remember hearing my mother on the phone to his brother one morning. She said `John's dead.' I think I just felt numbness. Well, we went back to school, I remember that. There was that philosophy of getting on with your life. I don't recall my feelings. But I missed him later on."

"Was the family well off?"

"Yes. He was a successful lawyer. He loved music but he couldn't hold a tune. He had a very dry sense of humor."

Kelly's mother, Josephine, is now 74 and lives at a small town called Ormeau, near Brisbane. The family still meets there at Christmas.

"How do you work? How are your songs written?" I asked.

"I wish I knew. If I knew how to write a song, I'd write a lot more. It happens very quickly. Takes you by surprise. The slowest part is finishing it off. I usually write the music first, and the rhythm. I often get a title first, or one phrase.

"But I never write a whole set of words then put it to music. That way, to me, makes the music boring.

"Songs come from anywhere. Most come from things people say. It's often a matter of keeping your ears open. Songs can come from other songs."

"What about political songs?"

"I think everything you do is political."

"Well, yours seem to come from the Left perspective."

"I'll leave that for others to judge."

"Is Little Kings about Jeff Kennett?"

This time, Kelly's smile was wide, but he was still trying to disappear into his shadow. He was wearing a black T-shirt and black cotton trousers, his thin hair is black and his waist is small. He could be an athlete.

"If you want it to be," he said. "There's more than one little king."

"When did you first start making a living from music?"

"I'd say from September 1986. That was Before Too Long. It was on an album called Gossip."

"Did that get you going financially?"

"Yes."

"Have you got any closer to writing your song about Ned Kelly?"

"Actually, I've written one, with Michael Thomas. It hasn't been released. It's a bit more of a kind of bluegrass."

"Are you going to release it?"

"If I do a bluegrass album, it'll be on it."

"What do you think of Archie Roach?"

"He's one of the few people I know who can write a political song and a love song at the same time. He's a great soul singer. Every song of his is both politics and love. Like They Took The Children Away. Anything so beautifully written causes you to feel wonder. Wonder is a complex brew of emotions."

"Can I ask that question again," I said. "What makes you angry?"

Kelly withdrew into that darkness for a while. "Let me think about it," he said eventually.

"It's interesting that you can't talk about emotions when that's what all your songs are about," I said.

He brooded for a while. "That's probably why I write songs," he said.

"Do you try to make people cry?"

"If people cry, I think the song's working."

"What made you cry as a child?"

"I think I was a peculiar child, according to reports. I was quiet, yeah. As far as I know I was happy. My parents praised me. They praised us all. Which is a pretty good way to raise children. I praise mine."

Kelly is married for the second time. His wife is Kaarin Fairfax. They have two daughters aged six and four. He has a 17-year-old son from his first marriage.

I asked if he had become wealthy yet. His albums seem exceptionally popular.

"I've been making a good living off music for the last 10 years."

"But you haven't yet cracked it overseas, in America or Europe," I said. "I can't work that one out."

Kelly had little to say to that, except that he's still trying.

"What do you like to do with money?"

"Buy good wine. There's not a lot of things I buy. I buy a lot of CDs and books. I like reading Tim Winton, Robert Dessaix."

"What's good wine?"

"Brokenwood reds. Big bodied reds. Moorilla pinot."

"Do you ever get drunk?"

"Yeah. Not often. I'm a happy drunk."

"Do you want to have a go at what makes you angry again?"

"No. Can we pass?"

The next day, there was a message on my answer machine at home. It was Kelly.

"I have an answer for that question I couldn't answer yesterday, when my mind clogged up. What makes me angry is prejudice. When someone is judged by what group they're in, whether that grouping is by race, class, age or politics. That's all."

Paul Kelly's new album, Words and Music, is on Mushroom.