Ten Questions for Paul Kelly

Claypots - great food, wine, laughs and 10 questions for PK!!

My friend Martin Hardie and I caught up with Paul Kelly at the wonderful Claypots in St Kilda when I was in Melbourne recently. I’ve known Paul since the early 1980’s when I used to carry his black boxes around the pubs and clubs of Melbourne and elsewhere for him (i.e. I was his roadie!).

For mine Paul has made the most evocative songs about people and place in the Australian urban landscape – when I hear his early songs like Adelaide, From St Kilda to Kings Cross, To Her Door and Dumb Things it is like a hook gets caught under my skin and drags me back to my joyfully wasted youth and the few years I spent living in Melbourne.

Later songs – From Little Things, How to Make Gravy, They Thought I Was Asleep and The Ballad of Queenie and Rover speak to the (Australian) human condition in a way that no other songwriter has.

And though I’m no great fan of Leonard Cohen, he and Paul are playing together around the country in late January and early February – should be a great set of gigs.

You can find out more about Paul Kelly here.

So, at the end of a tasty and relaxing meal at Claypots I got to ask a (somewhat reluctant) Paul Kelly some questions.

Here they are.

Cats, Dogs, both or neither?

Paul Kelly: Neither, don’t have the pet gene!

Most treasured possession?

PK – Collected works of William Shakespeare in three big volumes. Weighs about 50 pounds.

When did you last break the law?

PK – Can’t remember. Probably driving recently.

What is your Desert Island Disc?

PK – Dusty in Memphis, by Dusty Springfield.

What do you sing in the shower?

PK – I don’t sing in the shower and I don’t sing in the bath. I sing for a living. I do other things in the shower!

What was the first record you ever bought?

PK – Either Chunga’s Revenge by Frank Zappa or a Grand Funk Railroad record. I reckon Chunga’s Revenge and I paid less than $4.99 for it.

Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else before.

PK – No!

Who would you like to be in a band with?

PK – Johnny Marr (ex-The Smiths)

Where do we go when we are dead?

PK – We don’t go anywhere. We don’t exist anymore.

What are you reading at the moment?

PK – Fiction – Just finished Far from the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy. Non-fiction – now I’m reading Darwin’s Armada by Iain McCalman in a proof copy – it is coming out in March. It is all about Charles Darwin and the others who helped him with the theory of evolution – it’s all about Hooker, Wallace, Huxley and Darwin.