A BOOKLET BECAME A BOOK

Most songs were recorded live between 2004 and 2010 at various places during the A to Z shows. These usually ran over four nights – each night a different song list as I worked my way alphabetically through around a hundred songs. The idea was to present the songs undressed, in many cases close to how they sounded when they were first written, before being arranged with a band.

I imagined a nice chunky booklet to accompany the recordings – some storytelling, notes on the songs and influences, and so on. I started writing a few things down and didn’t stop. Two years later I had a book. To replace the booklet that became a book, I decided to assemble pictures that would tell stories another way. I hope you enjoy them. The text on the following pages comes from , published by Penguin. PK, May 2010 I spilled my wine at the bottom of the statue of Colonel Light After Don Dunstan you could drink wine at tables on the pavement, just like they did in Europe Michael, Pedro, Paul, Jon and Steve with Exile on Main Street, 1987

‘Beautiful Dreamer’, the last song Stephen Foster completed, was published the year of his death. It’s still going strong Steve Connolly came from a line of vaudevillians, writers and communists

Behind the bowler’s arm

Catherine Kelly, big fine girl. No-one on a mobile phone ever snapped her with her head thrown back and laughing The minor key and falsetto were borrowed from Skip James

They always came for Bradman ’cause fortune used to hide in the palm of his hand Fads and fashions came and went but Slim stayed Slim for sixty years

I saw Died Pretty a number of times after I moved to …. They were a dangerous band. Some nights they fell in a heap. Other nights they were incandescent In 1996 the WOMADelaide festival gathered a group of artists from around the world to journey across the great Nullarbor Plain by non-metaphorical train from west to east…. Along the way we made music

I melted wax to fix my wings

Everybody wants to touch me

Rembrandt paints age and beauty, health and decay…. I just stood there and wept – for her, for him, for you, for us all One Saturday, after rehearsing with Professor Ratbaggy in Prahran, I headed across the river to sit in with Uncle Bill at a Fitzroy pub. I needed to change my way of thinking…

Vika and Linda’s voices have that elusive twinned quality you only get when siblings sing together – two swallows swooping and spiralling in the air as if joined by an invisible gird In each and every monk’s cell was a Fra Angelico mural I thought I’d died and gone to heaven And Thomas the Dominican? If he walked among us today and listened to classic French pop, what would he make of ‘Je T’Aime’? ‘Me no more’ sounds like something he could have uttered during one of his famous late-life ecstasies

Dragon were huge at the time, all over the radio, the notorious bad boys of Australian pop. When they came to town they laid everything to waste And through Vincent’s fingers he poured a handful of sand

Hobbema’s lonely avenue, darkly remembered, hovered above me for a few days God told me to Ercole was born for the part – he had the build, the voice and the gusto. There was never a dry eye in the house Jo never stopped loving her one true love, John. She talked to him every day for thirty-two years after his death…. She used to say, ‘If I get to heaven, it’s John first, God second’

Nonna gave me a great piece of advice. She told me to breathe in and out slowly and deeply if I was nervous before going on stage. I use this all the time

Mavis was always gonna have the last word: ‘Mmmnph! . . . oaa . . . uhhh . . . mnh . . . oaahh . . . uuunnhh!’

So here comes Etta one more time, happier now, luxuriating in the pleasure of ‘At Last’ ‘I sing the body electric’

I toted my twenty-pound treasure back home on the bus, along Punt Road…. I leaned my head out the window to breathe in the smell of burning leaves in the parks, then pulled it back in to plunge deep into the fresh, sweet-smelling pages of Volume III: Tragedies and Romances was jumping in the late seventies. There were a lot of small venues in the inner city – pubs mainly – which put on live music most nights of the week The High Rise Bombers only lasted nine months but, strangely, seemed to get more famous once we’d broken up. My main memory of being in was people in the crowd yelling, ‘Play faster!’ This is a rainy land I carry Grant McLennan’s voice in my head every time I speak the words to the third verse of ‘Don’t Harm The Messenger’

Ways and Means

All heaven breaks loose ‘I am a widows son outlawed and my orders must be obeyed!’ He’s got another name, it’s spreading all across the valleys – Jandamarra! – like a burning flame

Shine on, immortal ones She’s a volcano under snow

Step right up, step right up, one and all! Shane Warne, bowler of mystery

‘Goodbye, Street Of Early Sorrows and may I never set eyes on you again!’ Henry Miller says goodbye to Brooklyn

‘The older I get, the surer I am I’m not running the show’ Up the front at Angels gigs, scary-looking young men with shaved heads and missing teeth would needle you relentlessly during each song, intoning in low voices, just audible, ‘Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off . . . ’

Hey, Ad, take a look at these, won’t you try some? It seemed to me that Mandawuy and I were songwriters with completely Nukkanya, Roger. Nukkanya, opposed methods. Lily. Nukkanyas, both, sweet Could we meet brother and sister somewhere in the middle? Frank came back from that dark night down at the crossroads like Robert Johnson, needy and dangerous, armed with a whole new power IMAGE SOURCES & PERMISSIONS

Front and centre-spread photos in the Spiegeltent Andy Doherty (stills from video by Evolving Communications); Statue of Colonel Light State Library of South Australia; Don Dunstan Newspix/ News Limited; Michael, Pedro, Paul, Jon and Steve, 1987 Mushroom Music; Steve Connolly Francine McDougall; Behind the bowler’s arm Mark Ray; Skip James Dick Waterman; he’s out! newspaper headline State Library of South Australia; Died Pretty poster John Foy/Skull Printworks; Paul and Slim Dusty Tony Mott; Womadelaide train journey Bill Bachman (clockwise from top left: Paul and Lucky Oceans, The Bauls of Bengal, with Ruby Hunter and band, Shu-De, the train); Lily Brayton as Desdemona National Library of Australia/an22942294; Renée Geyer poster Tony Mahony; Bathing Woman painting Rembrandt; ‘I melted wax to fix my wings’ drawing Spencer Jones; Bluegrass jeans ad courtesy of ; Bull Tania Jovanovic; Paul with Uncle Bill Russell Shakespeare; Professor Ratbaggy Tony Mahony; The Annunciation painting Fra Angelico; Thomas Aquinas painting attributed to Botticelli; Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin Snap Photo/Austral Press; Dragon record cover courtesy of Chris Pepperell at Red Eye Records; The Avenue at Middleharnis painting Meindert Hobbema; Gough Whitlam and Vincent Lingiari Mervyn Bishop/Licensed by Viscopy, 2010; Sacrifice of Isaac painting Caravaggio; Paul in Suddenly we had an Elvis/Lefty Frizzell kinda thing going on ropes Narelle Sheean, still photo from the filming of God Told Me To, directed by Natasha Pincus; with Spanish country piano and we knew we were in the clear, How to Make Gravy record cover design by Jason Griffiths, tomato sauce painting by Spencer out of the enormous shadows of Tex, Don and Charlie Jones; M photo Anthony Tran; poster photography by Kim Batterham; The Staple Singers Stax Museum of American ; The Tell-Tale Heart poster courtesy of Kerry Ratcliffe at Koru; Walt Whitman National Library of Congress; The Boys Next Door poster The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne; Bleeding Hearts at Martinis poster The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne; Grant McLennan Bleddyn Butcher; Ways and Means drawing Chris Dyson; Roy Orbison Snap Photo/Austral Press; Ned Kelly drawing – A Strange Apparition State Library of Victoria; Dharma Bums book cover Penguin Books/John Arne Saeteroy; Ned Kelly photo Public Record Office Victoria; Jandamarra poster Gary Marsh/Black Swan Theatre Company; Aboriginal men in chains, circa 1890 State Library of Western Australia/Battye Library; The graves of Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas Bill Cullen; Balangur Hills painting Queenie McKenzie; Jimmy Sharman’s touring stadium Jeff Carter/National Library of Australia vn3104828; Grace Kelly Snap Photo/Austral Press; Leonard Cohen Dirk Lindner; Shane Warne Mark Ray; Henry Miller National Library of Congress; Adam and Eve painting Lucas Cranach the Elder; Poster of The Angels, Sports, and PK Nick Vukovic; nickrockposters.com; drawing by Reg Mombassa; Yothu Yindi Tony Mott; Roger Bennett with Paul Mark Ray; Frank Sinatra, young and middle-aged Snap Photo/Austral Press; Fingerprints poster Robert Pokorny; Tex, Don and Charlie Daniel Guerra; Dancing Skeletons print (overleaf) Jose Guadalupe Posada.

‘Okay, do you know about the Gary Puckett song cycle?’ says the bass player. ‘Forget Schumann or Schubert. Gazzer says it all in less than twenty minutes’ You can’t take it with you Recording, mixing and front-of-house engineers: Simon Polinski, Adam Rhodes, Greg Weaver, Aaron Cupples, Chris Thompson, Rob Miles, Tim Millikan, Michael O’Connell, Tony David Cray, Tim Matthew Stage and lighting crew: Craig Bird, Andrew Lawson, Simon Blanch, Joe Yammouni, Marc Royal, Benjamin Lyons, Shannon Ward Letter holders: Gabi Barton, Declan Kelly Musicians: – guitar and harmony vocals. Sian Prior – clarinet on ‘Coma’, ‘From St Kilda To Kings Cross’, ‘Lately’, ‘Shane Warne’ and ‘Summer Rain’; harmony vocal on ‘Love Is The Law’ and ‘Zoe’. Mary Jo Kelly – piano and harmony vocal on ‘Love Is The Law’

Final mixes: Adam Rhodes at Sing Sing Mastered by Ross Cockle at Sing Sing Recording venues: The Famous Spiegeltent in Melbourne and Edinburgh, The Spiegeltent in Christchurch, The Studio at Sydney Opera House, The Space Theatre in , The Quarry Amphitheatre in Perth, ABC Studios Southbank, The Basement in Sydney. Mastering for website downloads throughout 2008 and 2009: Andy Beck at Damien Gerards

All songs written by Paul Kelly (Sony/ATV Music Publishing) except: ‘Coma’: P Kelly, P Luscombe, S Hadley, B Haymes (Sony/ATV/Mushroom/Control) ‘’: P Kelly, R Jacobs (Sony/ATV/Control) ‘Don’t Stand So Close To The Window’: P Kelly, A McGregor (Sony/ATV/Orient Pacific) ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’: P Kelly, K Carmody (Sony/ATV/Song Cycles) ‘Gathering Storm’: P Kelly, J Saarelaht (Sony/ATV/Orient Pacific) ‘Jump To Love’: P Kelly, C Anu, S Crichton (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Lately’: P Kelly, R Geyer (Sony/ATV/EMI) ‘Leaps And Bounds’: P Kelly, C Langman (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Midnight Rain’: P Kelly, W Matthews (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘My Way Is To You’: P Kelly, D Kelly (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Nothing But A Dream’: P Kelly, D Kelly (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘The Oldest Story In The Book’: P Kelly, D Luscombe (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Our Sunshine’: P Kelly, M Thomas (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Please Myself’: P Kelly, P Luscombe, S Hadley, B Haymes (Sony/ATV/Mushroom/Control) ‘Rally Round The Drum’: P Kelly, A Roach (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Shane Warne’: P Kelly, D Preston, E Ros, A Roberts (Sony/ATV/EMI) ‘Thoughts In The Middle Of The Night’: P Kelly, D Kelly, D Luscombe, P Luscombe, W McDonald (Sony/ATV/Mushroom/Control) ‘Young Lovers’: P Kelly, D Kelly, D Luscombe (Sony/ATV/Mushroom) ‘Zoe’: P Kelly, D Kelly, D Luscombe, P Luscombe, W McDonald (Sony/ATV/Mushroom/Control)

Design: John Canty Front cover photo: Russell Shakespeare Image sourcing and permissions: Judy Toohey Thanks to Bill and Edrei Cullen, Cath Wells, Nick Walsh, Briese Abbott, Greg Weaver, Bleddyn Butcher, Meredith Rose and Rob Barnham

Management: One Louder Entertainment www.onelouder.com.au

www.paulkelly.com.au