Early Life
Paul Maurice Kelly was born on 13 January 1955 in Adelaide, South Australia, to John Erwin Kelly, a lawyer, and Josephine Kelly (née Filippini), as the sixth of nine children (including Josephine, who died young). 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". In the lyrics for his Comedy (1991) album track, "It's All Downhill from Here" Kelly wrote:
I was born in a crowded taxiDaddy scooped me right up off the floor
And he carried me up the path through the big swinging doors
Although Kelly was raised as a Roman Catholic, he later described himself as not believing in any god. He is the great great grandson of Jeremiah Kelly, who fled 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 died in 1968 at the age of 52, after being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease three years earlier. Kelly was 13 years old. 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". In his song, "Adelaide", from Post (1985), he wrote:
Dad's hands used to shake but I never knew he was dyingI was 13 I never dreamed he could fall
And all the great aunts were red in the eyes from crying
I rang the bells I never felt nothing at all
All the king's horses all the king's men
Cannot bring him back again
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. Kelly's oldest sister, Anne, became a nun and went on to write hymns, while younger sister, Mary-Jo, plays piano in Latin bands and teaches music. Kelly's older brother, Martin, works for the Christian Brothers' volunteer organisation Edmund Rice International, with another brother, Tony, a drug and alcohol counsellor, who ran as an Australian Greens candidate in the 2001 and 2004 federal elections. Kelly's mother moved to Brisbane, where she died in 2000, aged 76.
Kelly attended Rostrevor College, a Christian Brothers school, where he played trumpet and studied piano. He was a cricket captain, and became dux of his senior year. Kelly 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.
Read more about this topic: Paul Kelly (musician)
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