Better, Older and Wiser: Interview with Eugene Kelly

by anna battista

There are cycles in many things. Seasons have cycles; nature, like animals, has got its cycles. Birth, life and death are the cycles of every human being's life, and it's between one cycle of our life and the other that we grow up, mature and age. For some of us this process is quite distressing and scary, but then, there are others who grow up gracefully, conscious that days and years have gone, yet they think the best thing to do is not to dwell on old times but move on and be positive. Eugene Kelly is one them.

His trademark jet black hair might be gone in favour of a more sober style, but talent and good inspirations haven't left him, as his new work Man Alive (Rev-Ola Records) proves. Kelly's fans have a new reason to rejoice since the album, previously available only as a Japanese import, is now out also in the UK. "I recorded the album almost three years ago and I just struggled to get people to release it in Great Britain," Eugene Kelly recounts. "I had been in Japan with Reindeer Section and I gave a copy to somebody who passed it to a record label over there, P-Vine Records, who got back to me and released it straightaway. When I came back from Japan, I sort of stopped chasing people out because I thought nobody was interested in putting the album out. Then, only a few months ago, I got in touch with Joe Foster at Rev-Ola Records. He had got a copy of the CD through a friend and he liked the record, so he decided to release it. I'm glad it's now available and people can hear it because it just seems it has been in the making for quite a long time. There was a point when I thought the album was also going to come out on a German label called Marina, but that didn't happen, then I wanted to send the album to Camp Fabulous, but they went bankrupt. It has taken quite a while to make things happen, so I'm just glad the album has finally come out."

The album marks a new era for the singer-songwriter: Man Alive features tracks about love, passion, tears, joy, nostalgia, and getting older. Themes like getting older and wiser come back in tracks such as the witty and ironic "I'm Done With Drugs", a sort of statement about stopping listening to noisy bands, giving up bad habits like smoking and drinking, mending one's own ways and finally coming of age ("I'm done with noise and all it brings, Sonic Youth, The Rites of Spring…"), a theme that comes back also in the nostalgic "Older Faster" ("Getting older faster now/Do you really need to know?/Life's flying past me now/Do you really need to know?/My dear friend have a wonderful life/And time may be good to you…"). "I think that if there is a theme through all the songs is that they are about somebody who's just realising that life is passing by and it's better to get things together," Kelly explains, "I wrote the songs for Man Alive after buying an acoustic guitar. At the time, I was approaching my mid-to-late thirties, so all the songs came from being a bit more laid-back. I think it was then that I started writing songs that are more honest about what I was feeling about that period of my life, about things like getting older and moving away from friends you've grown up with, turning forty and wondering what's going on and what's going to happen next. The music and the lyrics for this new album came up in different ways: in some cases I wrote the lyrics first, in others it was the music that came first, in others music and lyrics came together. Sometimes you just have an idea and pick the guitar, start strumming it and everything falls together, but it's always different. I tend to not write words and lyrics down till I have a good idea and then I try to rewrite and rewrite."

Kelly states there are no regrets about his previous musical career with The Vaselines (Eugene and Charles Kelly, Frances McKee and James Seenan), Captain America ( Raymond Boyle, Gordon Keen, Eugene Kelly, Roy Lawrence, Brendan O'Hare, James Seenan) or Eugenius (Andy Bollen, Raymond Boyle, Gordon Keen, Eugene Kelly, Roy Lawrence, Francis McDonald, Brendan O'Hare, James Seenan ), or about the occasional collaborations with other Scottish bands, such as Teenage Fanclub (a collaboration that produced the short-lived band Astro Chimp). If earlier on in his life he appreciated Nirvana covering The Vaselines, now he respects the new generations of artists such as The Paddingtons playing a cover of "Molly's Lips". "It's really flattering for anybody who's a songwriter to have somebody playing your music or asking to record it," he states, "besides, I always meet people who tell me the first song they ever learnt to play was "Molly's Lips", and that's fantastic since, as a songwriter, what you want is to have people listen to your songs and play them. Recently, I heard someone playing out of the back of my house The Vaselines along with The Beatles and Dido: I think it's great to make music that someone wants to play or use to learn how to play."

Though Kelly claims not many things have changed since he started making music, there is one thing that has evolved and it's the way he writes. "I take more time over the lyrics now and I've started to have a better idea of what I'm supposed to be thinking about," he explains, "musically, I still want to play the electric guitar and make a noise, but, at present, I'm just enjoying the fact that the words I'm writing are much better than any I have ever written. I think previously I didn't really try hard when writing and, if I did, I just didn't think the lyrics sounded really good to me. Whereas, once you start getting older, you start writing about things that aren't just part of your experiences and I feel my lyrics have improved a lot in this way and, right now, the lyrics are more important to me than the music." Kelly's lyrics have also become more direct: for example, in "Dear John" – a song that might become an anthem for the anti-globalisation movement - he invokes a natural plague on the Starbucks café that opened a while back in Glasgow's West End, replacing a quite famous independent bookshop-cum-record-shop, a well-known hang out for local bands and music lovers. "That song is just an example of how my lyrics have changed, of how much I want to reach the listener and I want people to understand," he states, "I wrote "Dear John" after looking down the street one day and seeing that a pipe had burst in Byres Road and the whole street was flooded. It looked like a river and I hoped it had come to wash away all the rubbish like Starbucks."

In August Kelly DJ-ed for the club night How Does It Feel To Be Loved? at The Phoenix in London, but, for the time being, he is not planning to do that again. "It was really nice, but I think DJ-ing is something I'm not cut out for," he says, "just standing and playing records and watching people who aren't dancing can be odd and quite awkward." At present, there are also no plans for any featuring with any Scottish band - though Kelly would love to collaborate with Mogwai and might see some unreleased material he recorded with Isobel Campbell coming out as Campbell has now got a new record deal – or for any proper tour. Yet Kelly would love playing live again, "The record company has got no money to give us to tour," he explains," so we'll just have to wait and see what happens with the record, maybe we will be able to afford that later. I would love to go on tour either with a band or solo, though right now I wish I could play with the band because I think we play really well and it would be good to represent the album."

If a tour is not among the most immediate projects for Kelly, there is already a new album in the works. "I've got at least five tracks finished for the next album and I've got ideas for about another ten, so I'll have to work on them this winter, record them in my spare time and, hopefully, release the record early next year," he announces, "the plan is also trying to get another record deal, trying to approach people and say 'can you give me some money to record this album?' I've recorded the whole of Man Alive with my own money and I think it was worth doing it, but I can't really afford to keep on recording albums that I'm not even sure will ever get out, so I will have to try and get some money from someone. I've been away for so long that people have forgotten about me, probably people who might give me money to record don't know who I am and they're not prepared to take a risk, as they think I'm past it, so I'll just have to wait and see how this record goes."

Better, older and wiser, Eugene Kelly is back: we can only hope he will find soon what he's looking for and that it won't take a long time to see his next album out. In the meantime, enjoy the excellent Man Alive.

{http://www.eugenekelly.co.uk, http://www.revola.co.uk }