Paul Kelly On Seventy: 13th Floor MusicTalk Interview
Paul Kelly is Seventy and so is his new album. The veteran Australian singer-songwriter celebrates the big 7-0 with a dozen or so new songs.
The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Paul about the significance of that age and what he’s looking forward to.
Click here to listen to the interview:
Or, read the transcription here:
Marty: The album is Seventy, you are 70, and believe it or not, I’m 70 too.. I turned 70 this year. So I’m even more curious to hear about your thoughts of… ’cause it seems to be a major thing, doesn’t it? Uh, I mean, I’ve never been one to pay attention to how old I am, but suddenly it’s the way people treat you.
PK: It is. I mean, I remember 3 big birthdays, I remember. Forty felt a really, felt like a big birthday. It felt like, okay, you know, this is, I’m an adult now. I’m 40. Grow up. Um, you know, and 40 was also the first time that, you know, people I’ve grown up with or close to me or worked with or friends, you know, started dying.
That does, happen a bit in the music business. ’cause quite, there’s quite a few of us die young. So, and then, so that was, that, that sort of felt like a real, you know, different time that this is when, you know, some of us keep living and some of us don’t. 50 felt like a big one that was just 50, you know, like, you know, I, I love cricket, so that’s of half a century.
MD: Yeah. Right. Okay.
PK: That feels, good. But 70, you know, 70 does feel to me like a real marker. It’s not like, I wouldn’t call it an, achievement ’cause you know, it’s not really up to you. You have a lot of luck if you live. as long as 70.. But you know, it used to be, I mean, it’s, it was supposed to be the sort of the, the average lifespan of a person… 70 is what, you know, is a biblical number. That’s, you know, that’s the span of our years If we, if we get that far. So In case you get there, it’s like, okay, well, you know, if, if I die tomorrow, I can’t say I’ve been cheated. You know? From here on in, everything else is gravy.
So it’s, it’s kind of a, it’s a good feeling. You know, and of course I’ve got, you know, a friend of mine that’s turning 70 as well. So it’s just like , you’re coming through life with this group of people so you, you, there’s a sort of companionship about it as well.
MD: That’s true. Yes, yes, I agree. So were you always gonna have an album called Seventy? Or when did the concept come to you that this needed to be kind of memorialized?
PK: No, I didn’t, I didn’t know what record was gonna be called. But yeah, I think pretty early on when we sort of, um, see I don’t sort of get the band together and say, let’s get in the studio and make an album.
We sort of get together every, on average about once a year for a couple of weeks, and I just record the songs. I’ve got, you know, that I’ve written. And then sort of put them in folders and then start to, you know, see whether I can… there’s a group of songs that sort of start to talk to each other and that might sort of suggest hanging together as an album.
So it was sort of… I knew we put out a record last year, but we had quite a few songs still recorded that I, that didn’t go on that record, but I knew that would go on a, probably on a another record. Next record. So we were well on the way. We went in the studio in March this year and recorded, another group of songs and then shows from, you know, so this record is, the songs on this record are chosen from, I guess, recordings over the last three or four years. And then as I was putting it together and I thought, you know, there’s a lot of, themes to do with growing old, you know, enduring friendship, um, worrying about the future with your grandchildren.
All those things. I thought, oh, well this is, might just, you know, and I really liked Adele’s record 17, I thought, just bought 70. So it’s a little bit of a, there. A nod to Adele and the way she, she uses numbers and, um, I thought we could play around with that idea. It’s just, just a number I really like.
MD: Cool, cool. So when I was listening to the album, after hearing it, I got the feeling that Sailing To A Byzantium was maybe a song that’s kind of a centerpiece or, you know, you’ve got your No Country For Old Men line there, it’s Yeats. Would that be a fair statement or not?
PK: Oh, yes. Yeah. I hadn’t sort of thought of it as a centerpiece, but you know, for me it’s a crucial part of the record. It fits in well with the themes. I mean, I guess you could sum it up by saying life is short, but art is long, you know?
Art is what will survive us, know, I love his poetry. I actually wrote the music to that. Um. 12 years ago. And did an orchestral version of it, um, with a student orchestra, um, 2013. So, uh, but I always thought it’d be great, you know, with my band. So I threw it to, you know, when we came, got together early this year, I said, how have it got this?
And they, they loved it. So it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s kind of got this sort of epic, epic..
MD: Very dramatic.
PK: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a dramatic song, a dramatic poem, and with quite a few Yeats poems, and you don’t fully, it’s not like a, you never get to the bottom of it. I never feel like, I mean, , I don’t think poems a thing that you can, sum up or analyze or, uh, you know, uh, package up. A good poem just keeps opening up. The language keeps sending you to new places. You can’t really exactly say what. Yeats is saying, but it’s just, yeah. A, a poem is just itself, you know, I think poetry is often killed at schools by, teachers trying to get students to, to pull it apart.
MD: Right. Yeah. Overthinking it is not, not what it needs to be. And, so I’m curious, when you’re in the studio say, recording a track like that, and you’ve been doing this for years now, do you still spend a lot of time and agony over it? Or is it like, if we don’t get it, it’s not worth getting? How, do you work in the studio these days?
PK: I’ve been doing this pretty much over the last 12 years. We just all set up all together and play the song live until sounding right. Um. We, you know, we, we’ve obviously, we’ve rehearsed it beforehand, so we have a pretty good roadmap, so, um, sometimes we get a song really quick.
Sometimes we do take after take after take. Which I also really love. I love chasing down a song. And then we’ve had some songs that take 19, 20 takes and each time, you know, we, we can feel ourselves getting closer. Doesn’t always happen. Sometimes you, like you said, you get sort of get, this is what’s great about our producer and engineer, Steve Schram. Having an outside listener there. He’ll, he’ll say, oh yeah, you think you do another one? You really getting close now I think you’re close. Or he’ll say you’re losing it. Just, you know, have a break, have a cup of tea, or let’s just leave that one for a while to play something else. Come back to it. So yeah, there is a bit of… we just sort of, but we all like, we all like sort of chasing, I guess, hunting down the song.
I like that group, that group mind when you’re concentrating, ’cause you’re trying to get it all at once, vocals, band, everything. Um, and it just, this is sort of, you can feel the concentration of, you know, six, five or six people in the room just concentrating. And, uh, it’s palpable and, uh, it’s a feeling I love.
MD: And I see that the album is bookended by, Tell Us A Story Part One and Two, which is one of the tracks that was recorded at Roundhead. So that obviously was an earlier one that kind of got left off the other ones, I’m guessing. So were you always gonna come back to that? Yeah. And was that the plan?
PK: Yeah, we got a recording that, we liked of that. And, um, can’t remember why I didn’t make the last record. It’s a long song, so maybe.. It was definitely in the, uh, in the, a team for the, this record in, you know, one of the first ones in the squad.
I always thought this is a song that will start the record off ’cause it opens up into, you know. Telling stories, this is what we’re doing. We’re telling stories. And then I was pretty late in the piece. I thought, well, we maybe just, we should just cut this song in half.
One. I thought maybe it’s a bit…the song’s a bit long to be the opening track. And then I thought, well, it’d be great to have it as a the first and last song. So we sort of, like you said, bookend the record. And it sort of contains all the storytelling within the record is sort of, is, um, suggested by the, by those bookends.
MD: You mentioned the Lord of the Rings in there. And while we’re on the subject of kind of Kiwi things, The Magpies is from a poem from Dennis Glover. So it’s kind of nice to see, see the, the back and forth of Australia and New Zealand thing with, especially with you, you seem to be embraced by both sides, whereas, you know, there, there’s always some kind of antagonism between a lot of, you know, and then there was a thing with Ryan Adams the other day. Did you see that? Where he announced that the, uh, Australia was terrible country…”worst one on the planet”.
PK: Uh, no. I heard reports of his concert and he was, um, criticizing Neil Finn for some reason.
MD: Yes. Yeah. I went to the show!
PK: Uh, you know, people, no one. No one’s speaking very highly of Ryan Adams or, yeah, he’s, he sounds like a real pratt.
I mean, remember, or maybe 20 years ago when I think the first time he came out and you know, of course it’s only in Australia, some, someone yelled out, play Summer of 69, the Bryan Adams song and he just lost it.
MD: Yep, yep, yep. Well, I imagine it does get tired, but do you realize they both have the same birthday? Bryan Adams and Ryan Adams?
PK: Oh, I bet you he hates that he can’t escape. Yeah. Anyway. Enough said. Yeah. Well, yeah, The Magpie just, yeah. Yeah. I love that. Uh, I love that poem. And that was, um, it was one of those, it’s a poem that looked, it’s like a song lyric, you know, that was a really quick song to write.
It just looked at the poem and then the song came out. Really quickly. It’s very… so many things I love about, it’s so deceptively simple. It’s got this lightness, but great, you know, it’s darkness mixed with the light. And then, just to think, oh, I think I’ll try and write down and, you know, syllables, letters, the sound of a magpie quite, [00:10:00] I mean, it, it’s just, it’s just, just fantastic.
I remember playing it… because I’d written it a while ago… and I remember, I think I played it in a trip to New Zealand quite a few years back, you know, before I’d recorded it, and, uh, I just played the song ’cause I loved the poem and people recognized it straight away. So I think it was in the, your, I mean, it was in the high school curriculum for a while or may, you know, maybe, maybe not so much these days, but it’s, but it’s well known, very well known poem, isn’t it?
MD: Now of course, I gotta address, uh, the, uh, sequel to How to Make Gravy, which is Rita Wrote A Letter. So why did you feel that, uh, this had to be revisited?
PK: I’ve thought that for a long time. I just thought it’d be fun to write a song more from Rita’s point of view ’cause she just gets a passing mention in the original song. So I wrote down many years ago, five or six years ago, I wrote down, in my notebook, Rita wrote a letter, said there’s a good song title right there. Um, and I sort of scratched away, scratched at it intermittently come back to it didn’t get very far.
I mean, that’s, that’s normal. That’s sort of the normal state of songwriting. Nothing much happens until it does. So it was just sitting there as an idea. And then my nephew Dan, came over the house one day and he had his little piano riff, melody. Um, and I, I just started singing along to it.
And, um, off we went. But the very first lines I sang were, um. I really don’t know how, I’m talking six feet down and under the clay. And then I thought, oh, am I really, am I really gonna go there? Am I really gonna kill Joe off? Um, and I thought, yes, I will. It’s gonna be fun. Fun song to write. And it’s fun to play. We started playing it this year and it’s, you know, um, audiences are really responding to it.
MD: Yeah. Well, we all gotta go sometime., I mean, if you gotta go, probably a good way is to get written off by a great songwriter, right?
PK: But that’s the irony is that he, you know, he’s, he hasn’t got, he still, he won’t stop talking. He talks all the way through the song. But I mean, he’s still shouting, he’s still ranting as the song fades, fades out. So now I, I can’t keep him down.
MD: I like the album art. It’s a very closeup, extreme close up of your face, which you, I’m guessing, uh, you know, is kind of, you’re confronting your, who you are at age 70.
PK: Yeah. Well, I had this, I, I thought it’d be good to do… i try and mix up the covers, so don’t do a photo every time. The last album cover was a, you know a graphic one. Um, the Christmas album, I did a couple years backwards, you know, again, sort of, um, more artwork and graphic than any pictures.
So I thought it’d be good to do a photo. Yeah. The last photo I’d put on of myself on a record was 2017. So I think every now and then put a photo of yourself on the record. And then I thought, we’ll just do a closeup. And then I, remember this old photo that I had when I was when I was 33 or 34, um, we decided to actually recreate that photo. In terms of the framing, the light and everything. And the, looking at the camera so direct at the camera. So I dunno whether you’ve seen the full artwork. So there’s a photo of. Me on the back. And you’re talking physical CD or…
MD: I think that I have access to that, yes. We’ll wrap it up. Thank you very much for taking time. Good luck with the record. It’s out, what, a week from now and uh, hopefully we’ll see you. Yeah, you were just here recently so I, so I imagine it’ll be a few months before we see you again, but, uh, looking forward to it when it happens.
PK: Yeah, me too. Love coming to New Zealand. Yep. All right, see ya.
Seventy is due out Friday, November 7th on EMI
