How to Make Gravy
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
This extraordinary book has its genesis in a series of concerts first staged in 2004. Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs from the previous three decades. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those little tales grew How to Make Gravy, a memoir like no other. Each of its hundred chapters, also in alphabetical order by song title, consists of lyrics followed by a story, the nature of the latter taking its cue from the former. Some pieces are confessional, some tell Kelly's personal and family history, some take you on a road tour with the band, some form an idiosyncratic history of popular music, some are like small essays, some stand as a kind of how-to of the songwriter's art - from the point of inspiration to writing, honing, collaborating, performing, recording and reworking.
Read more
Paul Kelly is a born storyteller. Give him two verses with a chorus or 550 pages, but he won't waste a word. How to Make Gravy is a long volume that's as tight as a three-piece band. There isn't a topic this man can't turn his pen to - contemporary music and the people who play it, football, cricket, literature, opera, social issues, love, loss, poetry, the land and the history of Australia ... there are even quizzes. The writing is insightful, funny, honest, compassionate, intelligent, playful, erudite, warm, thought-provoking. Paul Kelly is a star with zero pretensions, an everyman who is also a renaissance man. He thinks and loves and travels and reads widely, and his musical memoir is destined to become a classic - it doesn't have a bum note on it.
Liked How to Make Gravy? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked How to Make Gravy. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens Shares music, biography, Australia
-
Piano Lessons: A Memoir Shares music, memoir, australian -
Love You to Bits and Pieces: Life with David Helfgott Shares music, biography, nonfiction -
The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Hero of the Great Age of Polar Exploration Shares biography, nonfiction, Australia
“People who read How to Make Gravy tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (biography about music), start with these.”
“If it was the music that hooked you, try one of these.”
“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”
-
Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story Behind the Song: The Exclusive Personal Stories Behind Your Favorite Songs
-
Boys in the Trees: A Memoir
-
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music: The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs
- Liner Notes: On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay & a Few of My Other Favorite Things