Enough+Rope+Interview+Transcript

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 * Enough rope**

5 July 2004 Paul Kelly
Paul Kelly Photo by Ludwik Dabrowski For a generation or two of Australians Paul Kelly is the closest thing we have to a poet laureate. His songs are like postcards - little snapshots of the countryside with our experiences, dreams, hopes and problems scrawled in the lyrics. He's captured who we are like no other writer, but when asked once if he was the voice of ordinary Australia, he had the grace and wisdom to reply, "I don't know any ordinary people. Do you?" ANDREW DENTON: Delighted you brought your guitar. Is it like Willie Nelson's? Does it have a name, like Trigger? PAUL KELLY: No, this one doesn't have a name, but my first guitar had a name called Buddy - Buddy Love - after a Jerry Lee Lewis character. ANDREW DENTON: You've actually compared writing songs to the way Robert Hughes describes having a fish on the end of a line. What do you mean by that? PAUL KELLY: I guess what I mean is that you don't know when a fish is going to bite, so you don't know when a song's going to happen. I mean, if I knew how to write songs, I'd write a song every day. ANDREW DENTON: So what are the conditions? Do you have to sit in a Zen-like state in a particular room? PAUL KELLY: No, it's just really giving yourself time and, you know, not answering the phone and just time to play and fool around. It's a lot like doodling, I guess, if, you know... Like drawers or painters would just make marks on paper till something happened. You've just got to play around. I mean...There's no real rules to making a song. It's not like making a table...where you can...have the idea and the picture in your head before you start - you know, "If I follow these steps, follow steps A, B and then C and do that, I'll have a table at the end of it."... There are really no...mechanical...It's not really a formula to follow. ANDREW DENTON: How infuriating for you. You've said that songs come from other songs. Can you show us what that means?

PAUL KELLY:...I can show you. I can show you. (Strums guitar) There's a band from the '60s called the Lovin' Spoonful, which is...a songwriter called John Sebastian, and I always thought they were a wonderful band, and I used to hear these records through my big brother Martin. But this is one of their songs.

(Sings) Every time I see that Greyhound bus Rolling down the line Makes me wish that I'd talked much more to you When we had the time Still it's only wishing And it's nothing more So I'm never going back Never going back Never going back To Nashville anymore...

(Sings to same tune) From St Kilda to Kings Cross Is thirteen hours on a bus I pressed my face against the glass Watched the white lines rushing past All around me it felt like all inside me And my body left me And my soul went running

Every time I see that Greyhound bus Rolling down the line. ANDREW DENTON: Wow. That's amazing. So, is that... PAUL KELLY: There's a whole lot more. There's a lot more too. ANDREW DENTON: Is that a conscious thing that you do, or is it just a chord structure that appeals to you so you think you'll build on it? PAUL KELLY: ...No, often it's not conscious, but often...I might write a song...and then it reminds you of something. Sometimes you have to go back and check... ANDREW DENTON: So John Sebastian could probably sue you for everything you've got? PAUL KELLY: No, no, there's a few... No, no, you've got to just change a couple of... You know, Woody Guthrie always said just write tunes from other tunes and just change a couple of the notes. ANDREW DENTON: Is that right? PAUL KELLY: Yeah. I think that's pretty good advice for any songwriter. ANDREW DENTON: 'Cause, what, there's eight chords? There's something like eight octaves? I'm not very musical, I'm afraid. ANDREW DENTON: There's not that many notes out there. PAUL KELLY: Obviously not. ANDREW DENTON: No, no. Those black things on the page with the dots, you know? But there's not a lot of notes out there, are there, to choose from? PAUL KELLY: No, in our scale there's...I guess there's seven. ANDREW DENTON: Seven. Well, see, I was close, wasn't I? ANDREW DENTON: I just invented an extra one. PAUL KELLY: Notes, yes. ANDREW DENTON: That's right. So that's a pretty limited palette. It's inevitable, isn't it, that you're going to be, even subconsciously, borrowing from other artists? PAUL KELLY: Yeah, I think that's... You know, that's the way that I think most people write. I think probably every songwriter would have those songs that... You learn songs by... You learn how to write songs by copying other people, and, you know, you fall in love with a particular song or a songwriter and, you know, I guess it's a form of worship. You just soak them up and you work out their songs. And then they end up... You take them inside yourself. And then, you know, maybe 20 years later they pop out, and you've got to go and check. ANDREW DENTON: Who did you worship as a kid? PAUL KELLY: Way back... I mean, the first songs I remember hearing on the radio were...um...'My Boomerang Won't Come Back'. ANDREW DENTON: Rolf Harris. PAUL KELLY: Yeah. I don't know if I worshipped Rolf, but, you know...he made an impression. ANDREW DENTON: Yeah. (Imitates Rolf Harris panting) Sorry, that's my asthma. That wasn't my Rolf Harris impersonation. PAUL KELLY: I remember songs like, Johnny Horton songs - 'We Have to Sink the Bismarck'. That must have been when I was five or six years old. ANDREW DENTON: Yeah. PAUL KELLY: ...also 'The Battle of New Orleans'.

(Sings) We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin' There wasn't quite as many as there was a while ago They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico... ANDREW DENTON: Whee-ha! PAUL KELLY: Yeah. ANDREW DENTON: That's all I remember from it. PAUL KELLY: I guess that, you know, songs like that really...made a strong impression on me because they were...guess they were so...so visual. You could really see those songs. ANDREW DENTON: When did you realise that songwriting was actually what you were gonna do? PAUL KELLY: It happened really quickly when I was 21. I mean, I wanted to be a writer pretty...from about the age of 15, 16. Um, I think, like most people, I, you know, wrote poetry as a teenager...and then I started to make... I went to university for a little while, after school, and met a whole new group of people, and some of them played guitar and...that's when I started to, you know, just pick up...chords and so on from them. And then, uh, one day, I can still remember, you know, when I was...21, I wrote a song. And...then I wrote another one. And then...it just felt...like a knack. ANDREW DENTON: Yeah. PAUL KELLY: You know, "I can do this." And then I just got hooked on it, and, yeah, I've been pretty much hooked on it ever since. ANDREW DENTON: Lucky for us that you did. We have a clip of one of your many songs, 'Before Too Long'. PAUL KELLY: (Sings) Before too long The words will be spoken I know all the action by heart As the night-time follows day I'm closin' in Every dog will have his day Any dog can win... ANDREW DENTON: Now, that was... You're actually your own biggest critic. You're not very enamoured of yourself as a singer, are you? What is it you don't like? PAUL KELLY: No, I think I'm an OK singer. Don't get me wrong ...It's not any false modesty. I mean, I know...I'm a certain kind of singer. I think there's quite a few of my songs I probably sing better than anyone else. But, I'm not what I would call 'a singer's singer'. So sometimes I write songs that I think other singers can do better. ANDREW DENTON: Is that frustrating for you? You sometimes write songs which are actually not suited to you? PAUL KELLY: Yeah, quite often I'm trying to write a certain kind of song and it's more ambitious than what my voice will get to. I guess...that's how I started writing songs with other people in mind. 'Cause, I mean, my voice is fairly limited. I don't have a great range ...But my songwriting ambition is much larger than what my voice will do. So...I write songs and imagine other voices quite often. ANDREW DENTON: What was the first song you ever wrote? PAUL KELLY: The first song I ever wrote sort of sounded like a Van Morrison song. ANDREW DENTON: Yeah. PAUL KELLY: It was something about...a train, but I couldn't play it now. ANDREW DENTON: Lots of transport in your music. From being on the road, I guess. PAUL KELLY: Yeah. And cars too. ANDREW DENTON: Yeah. PAUL KELLY: Mmm. ANDREW DENTON: You have seven siblings, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think, at latest count, the list included a teacher of disadvantaged kids, a nun, a social worker, a Buddhist, a music teacher, and a candidate for the Greens. Uh, not a single merchant banker in there. What is it with you Kelly's? Where did this social responsibility come from? PAUL KELLY: I've gotta say, the Buddhist used to work for the World Bank and has just retired. ANDREW DENTON: But the World Bank does GOOD things, by and large. Where is this... There's a strong streak of social responsibility in there. PAUL KELLY: ...Yeah. And...that definitely came from our parents. Dad died pretty young, so I'm more familiar with what...our mother was doing afterwards and she's always been involved... At the dinner table, you know, most times, Mum would be interrupted by a phone call about, you know, someone needing something - some money or someone had to get into a house or someone was, you know, in some domestic trouble and...it was always...the call went through to Mum. ANDREW DENTON: How did she manage all of that and still have eight kids, look after eight kids? PAUL KELLY: You know, I really don't know... I don't know, myself. When Dad died, some of the older kids were grown up and had moved out of home, so she had, some of us younger ones. I'm, like, in the bottom half of the family. ANDREW DENTON: The bottom half of the draw. PAUL KELLY: Yeah. So, later on, when she didn't have to look after all of us, she got more and more involved, yeah. ANDREW DENTON: Because you've got this wonderful gift of music, did you ever write a song for your mother as a gift? PAUL KELLY: You know, I've always wanted to...and I've got one that I've been...sort of had worked on for a while, and I've abandoned it. Um, but I had certain songs of mine that were favourites with her. ANDREW DENTON: Yeah. PAUL KELLY: I could play you her favourite song. ANDREW DENTON: OK. PAUL KELLY: I'll play some... I don't have to play all of it. ANDREW DENTON: Just give us a burst. PAUL KELLY: (Strums melody) You'll notice that the first line of this song...is lifted from an Elvis Presley song. ANDREW DENTON: (Laughs) And it's got a bus in it, right? PAUL KELLY: It's what? ANDREW DENTON: It's got a bus in it too? PAUL KELLY: No, but it's got a car. There's a reference to a car. I just realised.

(Sings) Are you lonesome tonight? Are you feeling Like me? Bet you're dancin' tonight Runnin' round so carelessly Somebody's forgettin' somebody Somebody's lettin' somebody down The door to my heart Your kiss, darling Is the key The keys to the car Now they're useless To me... And I'm singin'... Somebody's forgettin' somebody