A Month of Tuesdays >> Irish Times Interview, Sept 08
On a Creative Merry-go-round
"Working as a full-time musician is like warfare: it's 90 per cent
boredom and 10 per cent terror."
Nick Kelly, singer-songwriter, award-winning short-story writer and film-maker
and, intermittently, advertising copywriter, knows a thing or two about
the swings and roundabouts of the music business. "So much of your life
is about travelling to the gig, waiting to get into the studio. It's very
discombobulating in all sorts of ways. Yet making records and performing
live are amazing: an incredible mix of feeling your way to realising a song
or a piece of music, alongside the exuberance of the live performance. I
don't think any other art form can give you both of these experiences with
such force."
Kelly's eight-year tenure (1986-1994) as lead singer and songwriter with
The Fat Lady Sings was enough to temporarily quench his thirst for musical
expression. After a year-long hiatus in London, where he sampled a host
of disparate creative activities, from acting to short-story writing, Kelly
found himself, through a combination of happenstance and impeccable timing,
in the middle of the world of advertising, where he's since forged a formidable
reputation as a copywriter. It was Kelly who dreamt up the iconic Tom Crean
ad and The Frames-soundtracked "Atlantic swimmer" ad, both for Guinness.
Hardly the work of some rock'n'roll has-been, crying into his beer. "Advertising's
great if you've got a very short attention span and loads of useless information
in your head," Kelly offers, with a wide, cinemascope smile. "It was a career
that I was never really meant to have, but it went really well, much to
my own surprise, to be honest."
Kelly released his first solo album, Between Trapezes in 1997 on the back
of his own cheekily inventive entrepreneurial initiative, whereby his fans
pre-paid for the CD to finance the recording process. He named his newly
minted label Self Possessed Records. In 2005, he released his second solo
collection, Running Dog , again on a shoestring.
This lateral-thinking approach has led him down all kinds of intriguing
pathways, from poetry to short-story writing to, most recently, film-making.
Kelly's short film Why the Irish Dance that Way was screened at New York's
Museum of Modern Art in June, in the venerable institution's Shortfest,
which featured outstanding films from international festivals. Kelly relishes
these varied modes of creative expression, although he insists that each
of his albums, in particular, offers a musical snapshot in time - nothing
more and nothing less.
"Who you are when you make a record is what that record is," Nick says with
the certitude of one who's pondered this question of the link between artistic
output and personal identity for longer than your average You're a Star
wannabe. "I've changed, of course, and that vestigial pop-star yearning
in me is affronted that I wouldn't be taken seriously as an artist in my
40s, but I do feel that I'm doing better work now, in terms of writing,
than I ever did with The Fat Lady Sings."
Ultimately, as Kelly sees it, art is all about the constant pursuit of the
unknown, that original observation or quirky insight that illuminates unexpectedly.
"Fundamentally, I don't believe in perfection," he says. "I think that craftspeople
make perfect things, which when they're polished and perfect, they're dead,
in the sense that their potential has been realised. It's like putting a
full stop on something. Art is about accepting that when you're perfect,
you're the same as everyone else, but the way you screw up is the most interesting
thing about you. I think the confidence you need as an artist is the knowledge
to leave something in, even though you're not sure why. As a songwriter,
I've had people come up to me and say 'Oh, that song is about X', and, even
though I would never had thought that it was, when I think about it I realise
that they could be right. When you write songs, you're talking in a language
that you don't necessarily understand. I think that all creativity is much
more gut feeling and much less intellectual than people give it credit for."
Kelly's pondered the vicissitudes of the music business over the past two
decades, and has developed an intriguing theory on what constitutes the
markers for (creative) success. The trick, he suggests, lies in a coalition
of talents that stretch far beyond the confines of musicianship.
"I've figured out that you need eight talents and I think I probably have
three and two halves," Kelly laughs, only half in jest. "If you look at
the people who are very successful over a long period of time, you need
to be able to sing - not necessarily beautifully, but distinctively; you
need to be able to play and produce something, although of course some of
these things can be outsourced; you need to be able to write or find good
writers; you need to be quite iconic-looking and very visually aware; I
think you need to be, if not young, then 'on zeitgeist', which is something
Madonna and U2 do so well; you need to be very good at business; and you
need to desperately, desperately want to be a pop star, and have that appetite
to keep doing it, dragging yourself out around the world at two years at
a time, which you can see even in someone like Elton John."
Basking in the renewed acquaintance he's made with live performance, through
his five-week Tuesday-night residency in Whelan's, Kelly gets to play everything
from The Fat Lady Sings' back catalogue (both singles and rarities) to a
knapsack full of new songs. The latter is a scintillating mix of cool observation
( Kingfisher Blue, Untidy ) and sweaty physicality ( Unreasonable Sex ).
In fact, Unreasonable Sex purveys one of the earthiest opening couplets
to be found lurking anywhere outside of a Nick Cave album: "I wanna work
my way through an acre of latex." When he performed this live at his first
gig in Whelan's recently, he was almost apologetic about the sheer viscerality
of the song's topic, yet Kelly says that for him, the essence of a good
song is one that puts its finger on precisely those collective squirm-inducing
moments.
"I did a screenwriting course recently, and someone there said that what
you've got to find is the truth that makes everybody uncomfortable," Kelly
says. "If you hit upon a theme in your society, then that's fertile ground.
I think that's what I feel about that song Unreasonable Sex , because it
tries to talk openly about what it's like to be a man, and some of these
things are uncomfortable. Obviously there are many facets to all men, but
this is one of them that you can't deny."
Finding himself in the midst of a recession, Kelly has some interesting
insights into what he suggests might be the stuntedness of the Irish psyche.
"I wrote a song called Cast Adrift (under his alter ego, Alien Envoy), which
is a snapshot of an idea about the country being a bit 'home alone'. I feel
we've been acting like this adolescent country whereby mummy and daddy have
left us alone and we've just gorged ourselves and raided the drinks cabinet.
I think we're just looking for somebody to give us an idea about ourselves
- and we'd accept anybody's, I think. Unfortunately, for Fianna Fšil, what
they've been brilliant at all along is giving the people what they want,
and what they're terrible at is leadership - 'I know what you could be'
- and I think as a people and as a country, what we want is for somebody
to have a big idea about us. I think we'd jump all over that."
Kelly's never been easy to pigeon-hole, yet music continues to occupy a
central place in his life. Having immersed himself for so long in the world
of rock'n'roll, a world he insists "was the most over-subsidised art form
in the world", he's content to inhabit this vibrant place where music of
the highest quality, sonically, lyrically and musically, can come into existence
in a bedroom studio. Suddenly the garret can be the fulcrum of artistic
activity, and no longer the black hole where artists starve rather than
thrive.
"I think you should continue doing whatever it is that you do, whether that's
singing or film-making or whatever, as long as it doesn't make you either
mad or bankrupt. I firmly believe that nobody knows when they've done their
best work. What I love about songwriting is that as soon as the songs are
standing up and walking across a room, you've got to let them go and see
what happens. Of course, there's something mysterious about that but that's
probably the most exciting thing about it too."