STACK #241 November 2024

MUSIC INTERVIEW

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A FEVER YOU CAN’T SHAKE

The fever still burns for the legendary Paul Kelly. Words Jeff Jenkins

I t’s tempting to tell Paul Kelly that his 29th studio album, Fever Longing Still , is another classic. Not that he’s hanging for reviews – good or bad… though it’s hard to imagine the artist has ever received a bad review. “Yeah, there have been bad reviews,” he smiles. “I try to forget them. Try to forget the good reviews, too. It’s probably best to read them and forget about them.” Kelly’s new album takes its title from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147, which tells the tale of a poet torn between two lovers. He sees his tryst with his mistress as an illness, but it’s a sickness he can’t quite shake. The sonnet starts: “My love is as a fever, longing still.” EXPERT OPINION Paul Kelly has never been afraid to revisit an old song. Taught by Experts , the first single from Fever Longing Still , originally turned up on his 1992 live album. And a second version appeared on the 1999 album Smoke . SUMMER FEVER Paul Kelly made the new album at Neil

Finn’s Roundhead Studios in Auckland. The Crowded House legend is a big fan. “There is something unique and powerful about the way he mixes up everyday detail with the big issues of life, death, love and struggle,” Finn says. “Not a trace of pretence or fakery in there.” GRAVY DAYS

traditional Australian song about Ben Hall. I can’t really remember how it went – I remember I had a lot to

Fever Longing Still

by Paul Kelly is out Nov 1 via Universal.

drink afterwards from relief. I was incredibly nervous.” A SCAVENGING ART Paul Kelly is the great Aussie bard. But he struggles to explain the secret of songwriting. “For me, it’s a bit from here, a bit from there, fumbling around, never quite knowing what you’re doing. It’s a scavenging art, a desperate act. If I knew how to write a song, I’d write one every day.” EVERY POST A WINNER Has Paul Kelly got a favourite Paul Kelly album? “I don’t think so. What tends to happen is some songs fall away, some songs remain. They’re what I call working songs, the songs that you take to work, tools in the kit. I often forget what songs come from where, they just become the songs in the swag. But if I had to pick an album, maybe [1985’s] Post . Even though it was my third record, in my mind it’s my first. It was the first record where I felt I was starting to hoe my own road. Is that the phrase?”

CHART FACT Paul Kelly didn’t score his first number one until 36 years after his debut album. But since Life Is Fine topped the charts in 2017, he’s enjoyed three more chart-toppers – 2018’s Nature , the best-of Songs From The South: 1985-2019 in 2019, and Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train , which hit number one in 2022.

Another fine songwriter, Megan Washington, is turning Paul Kelly’s Christmas classic How to Make Gravy into a movie. Directed by Washington’s husband, Nick Waterman, the film stars Hugo Weaving, Daniel Henshall, Damon Herriman, and Kate Mulvany. 50 YEARS Fever Longing Still comes 50 years after Paul Kelly made his public singing debut, in Hobart. “I was living there at the time and there was a folk club in Salamanca Place. They had a night, I think a Monday night, where anyone could get up. I sang [Dylan’s] Girl from the North Country , and Streets of Forbes , a

78 NOVEMBER 2024

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