The Brag

Photo from Paul Kelly – Stories Of Me courtesy of Shark Island Productions

Paul Kelly
A Man For All Seasons
By Krissi Weiss

Paul Kelly’s latest album, Spring & Fall, arrives at the same time as the biopic, Paul Kelly: Stories Of Me – but the timing is one of pure coincidence. The songwriter, often cited as Australia’s greatest, manages to write humble stories of life in Australia without the clichés that usually cause a collective cultural cringe – he’s no John Williamson. Yet Kelly has managed to so far allude the vetting of his private life. Anyone searching for evidence of the real Paul Kelly is hard-pressed to find it within his music – he holds firm to the position that he is a fiction writer. Luckily for Kelly, his astoundingly simple and yet powerfully affecting music has overshadowed failed relationships, a heroin addiction, and his past tendency to fall victim to the trappings of a rock star lifestyle.

Kelly is warm and personable – a surprise for someone who has dealt with the media for nearly four decades – although talking about himself is not his favourite thing to do. “These days I like to set it up so I can talk and play,” Kelly says, after discussing some radio interviews he has scheduled. “If I can do the thing that I do, which is play music, then the promo is fine. When I just go around talking all day, by the end of the day you feel like a fake, you know?”

Anticipation is high for Paul Kelly: Stories Of Me, and while Spring & Fall is sure to be received with open arms, the insight into Paul Kelly, the man, could potentially eclipse his latest album. “The doco was meant to come out last year,” he explains of the shared release date, “but they’d followed me around for a year and a half and got so much footage, as well as archival footage, things I’d forgotten about. So in the end it took them a lot longer to edit than they planned. I was always on track to release an album around the end of this year, so we figured if they’re gonna come out around about the same time, we may as well make it at the same time.”

“The film and album aren’t connected at all, apart from coming out at the same time,” he reiterates. “The songs and records for me are fiction; the film is non-fiction. I wrote a book, a memoir [How To Make Gravy], and the film took a lot of cues from that book, looking at my wider family history, the musical times I was in, and the different musicians and songwriters who have influenced me. It’s been a long period in my life – four years or so, with the book and the film – where the focus has been on my life, the non-fiction. I’m pretty keen to get it back to the fiction again. That’s where I work.”

Surely, I suggest, his music has been heavily influenced by his life? “It’s pretty much fiction, but all fiction writers borrow things from what’s around them,” he explains. “They borrow little bits from their own lives and little bits from their friends’ lives – I think everyone does that, but you reassemble things and put them back together. I’m not really interested in self-expression… Most of my family by now know better than to try and search for hidden meanings, but it’s human nature to try and figure out what has happened in someone’s life to bring about a song. I probably do it to other artists too.” While Kelly values his audience to the point of finding them essential, he’s aware that there’s no way to anticipate their expectations. “A song doesn’t exist for me until it’s heard. Until it lands somewhere, it’s not really a song. But I wouldn’t know how to serve an audience; they’re all different people, they’re not just one big ear.”

Spring & Fall was recorded in a chilly hall out the back of Gippsland, with nephew Dan Kelly and Machine Translations’ J. Walker on hand to round out the album. A host of Australian musical stalwarts add to the sonic texture via various musical contributions, but it was three men and a quasi-camping trip that really brought this album to life. “It was cold in a hall and we had to mitten up and put the wools on,” he laughs, discussing the recording process. “It was almost like camping. I guess for me some camping trips can be disasters, but this was one of the good camping trips. The company was good. I really love working with Dan; we’ve been working on and off for ten years, we have a wide shared language, and we’re both big fans of Machine Translations.”

It’s hard to image that Paul Kelly feels the need to bring in outside opinions to his thoroughly familiar sound, but it turns out he’s a collaborative creator in the truest sense. “That’s how I work; I deliberately try and work with people who have strong opinions,” he says. “Everyone in my band is opinionated, and Dan’s no different. I don’t come with a finished song; my songs are written on fairly simple chords and, well, I’m not Prince,” he continues laughing. “I don’t have the basslines or the groove in my head. I need other people to help me arrange my songs and I like ideas being thrown around. A good band is a band that knows how to have a fight with each other, and how to fight with respect.”

What: Spring & Fall is out now on EMI/Capitol; Paul Kelly – Stories Of Me opens exclusive to Dendy Newtown on October 25