Paul Kelly

There’s little doubt that Paul Kelly is considered one of Australia’s finest songwriters, capturing the essence of his time on this part of the planet as a by-product of his songwriting labours - a story-telling Banjo Patterson of his day.

The sixth of nine children, Paul Kelly was born in Adelaide in 1955. After school he wandered around Australia for a few years, working odd-jobs, writing poetry and thinking about a career as a short story writer. Somewhere along the line, already in his late teens, he picked up a guitar. Kelly made his public debut singing the folk song ‘Streets Of Forbes’ to a Hobart audience in 1974, and two years later moved to Melbourne, to join R&B pub band The High Rise Bombers. With a large line-up and three songwriters the band’s splintering was inevitable, Paul Kelly forming his own group, Paul Kelly And The Dots.

Paul Kelly immediately established himself as his peers’ favourite songwriter. On nights off, Melbourne’s musicians went to see Paul Kelly. He also had a big fan at Mushroom Records. One of the company’s PR people locked herself in a room refusing to come out until Mushroom signed Paul Kelly And The Dots to a record contract.

The result was two roots rock albums, ‘Talk’ and ‘Manila’, albums perfectionist Kelly himself was never completely happy with. By late 1984 Kelly had broken up The Dots, and moved to Sydney where he recorded a defining solo album. Without a record contract and no real idea how the album was going to be released ‘Post’ was recorded over two weeks on a shoestring budget, delivering the essence of the Paul Kelly we’ve seen and heard ever since in a loosely structured song cycle signposting Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney placenames.

On the strength of that album Mushroom picked up Kelly’s contract again and he formed a new group, Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls (a reference to Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’). In September 1986 Paul and his group delivered everything he’d always promised in the shape of a 14 song double album. As well as the hit singles ‘Darling It Hurts’ and ‘Before Too Long’ the album ‘Gossip’ included three re-recorded songs from ‘Post’. Three more albums followed, during which time the group name was changed to Paul Kelly And The Messengers. The albums were being released in America now and Paul didn’t want any racist connotation drawn from the Coloured Girls name.

But in 1991 Paul decided to disband the group with a farewell tour. It was a move that surprised a lot of people, but proved to be an insight into Paul’s attitude to his work. The band members were his friends but Paul Kelly thought he’d taken that combination as far as he could musically. That decision gave Paul Kelly the freedom to live and work in America for a while, to record the next batch of albums with an assortment of musicians, and to apply himself to all kinds of extra curricular projects, including writing songs for his acting role in the stage play ‘Funerals and Circuses’ (about racial tensions in small-town Australia) and releasing his first book of poetry, ‘Lyrics’.

In the meantime, a new group of regular musicians had bonded around Paul. He was in the process of capturing that band on record when he was convinced to release a greatest hits album, 'Songs From The South', including a couple of new tracks as a promise of what was around the corner. The success of that album (Paul's first national Number One, and nearly four months in the top ten) caused a delay in the completion of the album that became 'Words And Music'. Then Paul Kelly moved on again. In 1999 he delivered two very different albums at the same time, a bluegrass album with Uncle Bill called 'Smoke', and a technology-influenced reggae album as part of a new group, Professor Ratbaggy. 2001's '...Nothing But A Dream' returned to more traditional singer-songwriter form.

Although the double album 'Ways And Means' was released as a Paul Kelly album, it was a group record, the double guitar attack of the previous Kelly 'rock' albums replaced by the inclusion of the more atmospheric guitar adventurism of nephew Dan Kelly. Some of the songwriting credits were shared by band members, although the songs and themes, about the politics of love clearly were Paul's. Kelly then stepped back to serve purely as a band member when this group of musicians donned the name the Stardust Five for an album of eclectic techno pop.

2007's 'Stolen Apples' started out as a group effort like 'Ways And Means'. In the process Paul added other songs and colours to make this more representative of the whole Paul Kelly experience rather that another aspect of it. The album starts with rock experimentation, includes a country songs and closes with Paul Kelly alone on piano with one of his heartbreak songs.

It's hard to imagine any working Australian musician more deserving of a "living treasure" accolade than Paul Kelly. Aside from the actual content of his songs, for every song he records himself there's another he hands to or tailors for someone else. For every Paul Kelly album there's another he's produced or worked on. An illustration was the 2002 album 'Women At The Well', comprising female artists who had recorded Paul's songs over the years, with a couple of especially recorded performances. In 2009 in a venture called the Paul Kelly Project, 20 artists used his lyrics "to create an evening of performance installation that will transport you through a series of unique Australian stories" at South Yarra's StMartins Youth Theatre. Paul Kelly's influence over Australian music and Australian culture is wide and significant. His songs have been made part of the Australian highschool curriculum,