Paul Maurice Kelly (born 13 January 1955) is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter and guitarist. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor Ratbaggy and Stardust Five. Kelly's music style has ranged from bluegrass to studio-oriented dub reggae, but his core output straddles folk, rock and country. His lyrics capture the vastness of the culture and landscape of Australia by chronicling life about him for almost 50 years. David Fricke from Rolling Stone calls Kelly "one of the finest songwriters I have ever heard, Australian or otherwise". Kelly has said, "Song writing is mysterious to me. I still feel like a total beginner. I don't feel like I have got it nailed yet."
After growing up in Adelaide, Kelly travelled around Australia before settling in Melbourne in 1976. He became involved in the pub rock scene and drug culture and recorded two albums with the Dots. Kelly moved to Sydney by 1985, where he formed Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls. The band was renamed Paul Kelly and the Messengers, initially only for international releases, to avoid possible racial interpretations of the word "coloured". At the end of the 1980s, Kelly returned to Melbourne, and in 1991 he disbanded the Messengers.
Kelly's Top 40 singles include "Billy Baxter", "Before Too Long", "Darling It Hurts", "To Her Door" (his highest-charting local hit in 1987), "Dumb Things" (appeared on United States charts in 1988) and "Roll on Summer". Top-20 albums include Gossip, Under the Sun, Comedy, Songs from the South (1997 compilation), ...Nothing but a Dream, Stolen Apples, Spring and Fall, The Merri Soul Sessions, Seven Sonnets and a Song, Death's Dateless Night (with Charlie Owen), Life Is Fine (his first number-one album) and Nature. Kelly has won 14 Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Music Awards, including his induction into their hall of fame in 1997. Dan Kelly, his nephew, is a singer and guitarist in his own right. Dan performed with Kelly on Ways and Means and Stolen Apples. Both were members of Stardust Five, which released a self-titled album in 2006. On 22 September 2010, Kelly released his memoir, How to Make Gravy, which he described as "it's not traditional; it's writing around the A–Z theme – I tell stories around the song lyrics in alphabetical order". His biographical film Paul Kelly: Stories of Me, directed by Ian Darling, was released to cinemas in October 2012.
In 2001, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) listed the Top 30 Australian songs of all time, which included Kelly's To Her Door, and Treaty, written by Kelly and members of Yothu Yindi. Aside from Treaty, Kelly wrote or co-wrote several songs on Indigenous Australian social issues and historical events. He provided songs for many other artists, tailoring them to their particular vocal range. The album Women at the Well from 2002 had 14 female artists record his songs in tribute.
Kelly was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2017 for distinguished service to the performing arts and to the promotion of the national identity through contributions as a singer, songwriter and musician. Kelly was married and divorced twice; he has three children and resides in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne.
Early life and education Paul Maurice Kelly was born on 13 January 1955 in Adelaide, to John Erwin Kelly, a lawyer, and Josephine (née Filippini), the sixth of eight surviving children. According to Rip It Up magazine, "legend has it" that Kelly's mother gave birth to him "in a taxi outside North Adelaide's Calvary Hospital".
Although Kelly was raised as a Roman Catholic, he later described himself as a non-believer. He is the great-great-grandson of Jeremiah Kelly, who emigrated from Ireland in 1852 and settled in Clare, South Australia. His paternal grandfather, Francis Kelly, established a law firm in 1917, which his father, John, joined in 1937.
John Kelly died in 1968 at the age of 52, after having been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease three years earlier. Paul Kelly was thirteen years old when his father died. Kelly described his father: "I have good memories, he was the kind of father that, well, I missed him when he died very much. The older children were growing into him at the time he died. He was not well enough to play sport with me."
Kelly's maternal grandfather was an Argentine-born, Italian-speaking opera singer, Count Ercole Filippini, a leading baritone for the La Scala Opera Company in Milan.
Filippini was touring Australia in 1914 with a Spanish opera company when World War I broke out; Filippini stayed and later married Anne McPharland, one of his students. As Countessa Anne Filippini, she was Australia's first female symphony orchestra conductor. She sang the role of Marguerite in Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio Perth's performance of Faust in 1928.
Kelly's grandparents started the Italo-Australian Opera Company, which toured the country in the 1920s.
Josephine raised the younger children alone after John's death, but found time to assist others in need. Paul's oldest sister, Anne, became a nun and went on to write hymns, while a younger sister, Mary-Jo, plays piano in Latin bands and teaches music.
His eldest brother, Martin, worked for Edmund Rice International, he died in 2021 at the age of 69. Another brother, Tony, a drug and alcohol counsellor, ran as an Australian Greens candidate in the 2001 and 2004 federal elections. Josephine Kelly moved to Brisbane, where she died in 2000 at the age of 76.
Kelly attended Rostrevor College, a Christian Brothers school, where he played trumpet and studied piano, became the first XI cricket captain, played in the first XVIII football (Australian rules), and was named dux of his senior year. He studied arts at Flinders University in 1973, but left after a term, disillusioned with academic life. He began writing prose and started a magazine with some friends.
Kelly spent several years working odd jobs, travelling around the country and learning guitar before he moved to Melbourne in 1976.
Career 1974–1984: Early career and with the Dots
While travelling around Australia, Paul Kelly made his first public performance in 1974 in Hobart. He later recalled:
His first published song, "It's the Falling Apart that Makes You", was written after listening to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks at the age of 19, although in an interview with Drum Media he recalled writing his first song: "It was an open-tuning and had four lines about catching trains. I have got a recording of it somewhere. It was called 'Catching a Train'. I wrote a lot of songs about trains early on, trains and fires, and then I moved on to water".
In 1976, Kelly appeared on Debutantes, a compilation album featuring various Melbourne-based artists, and joined pub-rockers The High Rise Bombers from 1977 to 1978. The High Rise Bombers included Kelly (vocals, guitar, songwriter), Martin Armiger (guitar, vocals, songwriter), Lee Cass (bass guitar), Chris Dyson (guitar), Sally Ford (saxophone, songwriter), John Lloyd (drums), and Keith Shadwick (saxophone). Chris Langman (guitar, vocals) replaced Dyson in early 1978. [Langman never played with the High Rise Bombers and is incorrectly listed as a guitarist on the Melbourne Club album]. In August, after Armiger left for The Sports and Ford for the Kevins, Kelly formed Paul Kelly and the Dots with Langman and Lloyd. The High Rise Bombers recorded two tracks, "She's Got It" and "Domestic Criminal", which appeared on The Melbourne Club, a 1981 compilation by various artists on Missing Link Records.
Kelly had already established himself as a respected songwriter—other Melbourne musicians would go to see him on their nights off. Richard Guilliatt, writing for The Monthly, later described Kelly from a 1979 performance at Richmond's Kingston Hotel, the singer was "a skinny guy with a head of black curls framing a pale face and a bent nose... singing with his eyes closed, one arm outstretched and the other resting on the body of the Fender Telecaster". Kelly was introduced to Hilary Brown at one of the Dots' gigs and they later married – the relationship is described in "When I First Met Your Ma" (1992). Brown's father supplied Kelly with a gravy recipe – used on "How to Make Gravy" (1996). Their son, Declan, was born in 1980.
The Dots included various line-ups from 1978 to 1982. The band released their debut single "Recognition" in 1979, which did not reach the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart top 50. The Dots then signed to Mushroom Records, and at the record company's insistence, were renamed Paul Kelly and the Dots. They issued "Billy Baxter" in November 1980, which peaked at No. 38. Rock music historian, Ian McFarlane described the single as a "delightful, ska-tinged" track. Kelly's first television performance was "Billy Baxter" on the national pop show Countdown. Their debut album, Talk, followed in March 1981, which reached No. 44 on the Kent Music Report Albums Chart. Late in 1981 Paul Kelly and the Dots recorded their second album, Manila, in the Philippines' capital. It was issued in August 1982, but had no chart success. Release was delayed by line-up changes and because Kelly was assaulted in Melbourne – he had his jaw broken.
In an October 1982 interview with The Australian Women's Weekly, Kelly indicated he was more pleased with Manila than Talk as "It has more unity ... with this one we didn't have people dropping into the studio to play." Years later Kelly disavowed both Dots albums: "I wish I could grab the other two and put 'em in a big hole". The 1982 film, Starstruck, was directed by Gillian Armstrong and starred Jo Kennedy. Paul Kelly and the Dots supplied "Rocking Institution" for its soundtrack and Kelly added to the score. Kennedy released "Body and Soul", a cover of Split Enz' "She Got Body, She Got Soul" as a shared single with "Rocking Institution". Acting in a minor role in Starstruck was Kaarin Fairfax, who later became Kelly's second wife. Kelly was without a recording contract after the Dots folded in 1982.
Paul Kelly Band was formed in 1983 with Michael Armiger (Martin Armiger's younger brother, bass guitar), Chris Coyne (saxophone), Maurice Frawley (guitar) and Greg Martin (drums). By 1984 Michael Barclay (ex-the Zimmermen) replaced Martin on drums and Graham Lee (guitar, pedal steel guitar) joined. Kelly's involvement in the Melbourne drug culture—he described his heroin addiction as "a long period of occasional use"—resulted in erratic performances. Problems with his marriage and drug use disrupted his career, and by 1984 the marriage had broken up. Hilary had moved to Sydney, initially leaving their young son with Kelly. He disbanded the group three months later and relocated to Sydney so he could share parenting responsibilities with Hilary while Declan grew up.
1985–1991: Coloured Girls to Messengers
Paul Kelly stayed with Don Walker (Cold Chisel) in Kings Cross – Walker had lived with Hilary's sister – and wrote new songs on Walker's piano. Kelly then moved into a flat with Paul Hewson (Dragon) in Elizabeth Bay. Both Walker and Hewson encouraged Kelly to continue with his song-writing. By January 1985, he recorded the self-funded album—at a cost of $3,500—Post. Session musicians included Michael Barclay (Weddings Parties Anything) on harmonies, guitarist Steve Connolly (the Zimmermen), and bass guitarist Ian Rilen (Rose Tattoo, X). They spent two weeks recording at Clive Shakespeare's studio. Shakespeare engineered the album and co-produced with Kelly. It was released in May 1985 on the independent label White Records, and licensed to Mushroom Records.