The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Paul Kelly has the recipe for gravy … and lasting music success

Paul Kelly is currently enjoying another career renaissance with the film adaptation of his 1996 Christmas classic, How to Make Gravy, and is latest nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year.

Singer-songwriter Paul Kelly released his 29th album in November. Picture: Joe Brennan

Paul Kelly has been an Australian icon for more than three decades and the singer-songwriter is enjoying another career renaissance with the film adaptation of his 1996 Christmas classic, How to Make Gravy.

The song tells the story of a newly imprisoned man writing a letter to his brother, lamenting that he will be missing the family Christmas celebrations. And yes, the gravy recipe is genuine – Kelly learnt it from his first father-in-law.

No one was more surprised by the film adaptation than the songwriter himself. “The more you think about it, the weirder it gets,” Kelly told The Weekend Australian in November.

“But I came up in folk music, and that is really how folk music works, too: you write something, and it gets picked up by someone else, and it changes, mutates along the way.

“It can lead to completely new songs, or quite wild variants of the original song.

“I’m really comfortable with that; I like the way that works.”

Kelly, the latest nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, grew up in Adelaide but it wasn’t until he travelled Australia and settled in Melbourne that he became involved in the rock scene. Ten years later he moved to Sydney and formed the group Paul Kelly and the Messengers, responsible for some of his most popular hits, such as To Her Door, Dumb Things and From Little Things Big Things Grow.

Kelly in 2021. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Kelly is staging a two-month national tour from August in some major venues across the capital cities, and his first show, at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, has already sold out.

On the film adaptation of How to Make Gravy, Kelly heaped praise on the filmmakers, insisting they deserve all the credit.

“My feeling, right from the start, was it’s their film, it’s their piece of art, not mine, but it jumps off from the song. It’s a different piece of work,” he said.

“But on the other hand, they also honour the song a lot, with a lot of the details, they’re all there. The gravy recipe’s in there; I guess that’s the most important thing. They kept that.”

Kelly released his 29th studio album in November; its title, Fever Longing Still, was lifted from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147. The album has so far peaked at three on the Australian charts, and been hailed by critics as a return to classic Kelly.

Kelly is this week celebrating his 70th birthday with his family.