Paul Kelly: It's My Only Job

Paul Kelly's new album Seventy is out now. Lisa & Russell chatted to Paul about his song writing inspiration, new songs and favourite Perth memories. Tune in to hear the full chat.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back on August twenty six, I was at the rasc
Arena for one of the greater shows I've ever had
the pleasure of seeing mister Paul Kelly celebrating turning seventy.
And now the album that celebrates it is out and
he's with us this morning. Hello and Cah. Can I
say thank you for that show? It was absolutely magnificent.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh, thank you very much. That was our first one. Yes,
we were pretty fired up, you were.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Indeed was a hell of a warm up.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
It was hell of a warm up. So the album seventy, now,
no surprise, it's seventy because you've turned seventy. A milestone age,
a milestone album. Rolling Stone says, at its heart, seventy
is Paul Kelly's storytelling at its finest. How do you
keep just drawing from that well of great stories?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, I a lot of stories around that really start
with the story usually sort of start with music and
and they start sort of singing stuff to it. But
I guess my natural bent is to songs that you
can see visual sort of visual songs, storytelling songs that's
I read a lot, So I guess it's just the
way it's sort of influenced me over the years.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yes, well, thirty albums over those seventy years. That's that's
pretty prolific. There's a lot of ideas, there's a lot
of stories that you're finding.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, I don't have to do you know, it's my
only job, so what else am I supposed to do? Exactly,
I write a dozen songs a year. That it's funny.
They doesn't. That's not you know, stops very quick. That
songs don't happen that quickly. But you sort of keep
out it. They just start to build up, so I've
got they just accumulate.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
So one of the greatest stories has become Australia's unofficial
favorite Christmas song because how to Make Gravy. In August,
death notice was published for Joe in the Age. The
obituary claim the character died of sudden misadventure as he
would and listed his family. Dan read a Stella, Roger Mary, Angus,

(02:05):
Franken Dolly, alongside a nod to his love of reggae
and Junior Marvin. But then you came out with the song.
Rita wrote a letter tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, for many years I thought it would be good
to do a song more from Regier's point of view,
because the original how to make Bravy Songs, she just
gets a parting mention. You know Joe, he's in prison
and he's worried about his brother Dan and Rita getting
too close together on the dance floor Junior Mervyn. So

(02:38):
there's the little seed there, and I thought I'd love
to hear more from reader's point of view. I wrote
the title about six years ago. Reata wrote a letter
thought that, well, that sounds like a good song title,
and I kept coming back to it trying to see
if I could, you know, conjure a song. Nothing, nothing
really happened for a while, which is usual. That's a

(02:59):
you'll feeling you have with a songwriter that nothing is
happening until it does. Yeah, I guess it kicked off
with my nephew Dan Kelly bringing over a piece of
piano music that he like, a new Allan style to
the rhythm piano and started singing over that, and then
the song just sort of fell out pretty quickly. That
but the first a lance I came up with, we

(03:21):
you know, I don't know how I'm talking six feet
down under the clay, and so I knew straight away,
I'm running it. I'm running a sort of a beyond
the grave song here, a ghost story. So that sort
of gave me the kick key for the song.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
And it was big news when it came out.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
Because, as Lisa was saying, everybody loves It's become a
Christmas classic and.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Not too many songs are made into a movie.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
Well that's true, so it's nice to kind of tie
the story up, really the loose end at the.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
End, Yeah, I guess it could. It could go on
with don't know what's going to happen?

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, Joe, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
We actually had the song written and recorded a year
and a half ago, so it was I was thinking
about putting it on the record we put out last year,
He've Along Your Steel. But I knew the movie was
coming out and I'm my friends with with MEB Washington,
who made it, she and her husband Nick, and I
rang her up and said, listen, I didn't mean to
have written a song I've killed Joe off. I'm sorry.

(04:30):
Can you just wait? You put it that next year?
I said, the band pretty keep okay started start now.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
I mentioned that I was at that show at the arena,
and you can imagine how tought I was when you
gave ninety six a FM a bit of a shout out, Paul.
You talked about how we were the first station to
play before too long. I think it was Steve Gordon.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Gordon was doing the Australian Music Show back then.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yes, that's right side was a great friend to us.
He was. He was at that concert and when we
first started coming over in the mid eighties and Perth
was sort of ahead of the country in lots in
lots of ways we got we can always get bigger
crowds in Perth. I mean, I'm not from Adelaide. We
struggle to fill you know, one hotel, the Tivity Hotel.

(05:19):
If we've got one night that the Tivity, we'll be doing
all right. We could come to Perth and then play,
you know for a week, you know, five or six
shows we play. There was all the great live venues
and the outdoor sessions, you know, the Sandringham and the.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Fitzgerald Sunday Sunday.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
We love the Sunday Sesson. So we didn't have him
over here. And you know, you go listen to a
band here music four o'clock because generally it's always sunny
and warm and it was, yeah, the very w a thing.
So we love coming to Perth. We came a lot
and became friends with Steve and he was at ninety
six f M at the time and he would always plays,

(05:59):
i mean played a lot of Australian music. Is a
great champion of Australian music. So we were fortunate to
be part of that.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
All right, Well, for old time's sake, we're going to
play that one now. Meantime, the new album So Many
More Stories seventy is out now. Lovely to chat to you, Paul,
and once again thanks for a great show. It was
really a great night.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Thanks Lisa, thank you.