The singer-songwriter on the mystery of writing songs, Shakespeare and why he isn’t a natural musician
‘Every now and then, there’s a surprise. And then you have to try and follow it down,’ says Paul Kelly, on songwriting. Photograph: Ellen Smith/The Guardian
Kelly, wrapped in a well worn corduroy jacket, bends down and clicks his fingers in a vain attempt to summon her. This hunger in Kelly to expand the limits of his own talent has seen him work with some of the world’s greatest musicians in a bewildering range of contexts – from touring with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to recording a live album with Neil Finn at the Sydney Opera House. But really, this experimentation is happening continuously with his core band, which includes sisters Vika and Linda Bull and his nephew Dan Kelly.
His new album, Fever Longing Still, is in many ways a quintessential Paul Kelly album, full of songs that wouldn’t seem out of place slotted into records like Life is Fine or even Under the Sun . And yet for all its familiarity, it doesn’t feel remotely like pastiche; there’s an immediacy and emotional honesty typical of Kelly and impossible to fake.
“Raymond Carver is an influence on my songwriting. His stories are very minimal, but there’s always something happening at the edges. They’re often unresolved,” he says. “I grew up with folk music,” says Kelly. In that tradition “it’s quite normal for lines and titles and melodies to float around and get picked up on”. Literary allusions “kind of slip past, I think”, overlooked perhaps because they’ve always been there. “Shakespeare’s been floating in and out of my songs for a long time.”
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