Photograph: Darren O'Beirne
Photograph: Darren O'Beirne
Would you buy a used car from this man? Hmm, maybe? Actually would you buy a car from an unheard of small independent car company, untried, untested, indeed not yet in production, based simply on a hunch? Well that's essentially what hundreds of Nick Kelly fans did prior to the release of his debut solo album "Between Trapezes".
Before releasing the album, Nick Kelly wrote to the hundreds of addresses he had accumulated at gigs, asking whether they would be interested in parting with their cash up-front, in exchange for a name-check on the album sleeve. The enthusiastic response startled him: "If ordinary people, who are fans, actually buy your record, there's a kind of a gesture, a real and honest gesture, that I'm going to spend £15 and buy your album. I find that enormously confidence inducing." Perhaps the intrigue surrounding Nick Kelly stems as much from interest in his novel and uniquely philosophical approach to the music industry, as it does from the music itself.
Nick Kelly graduated from Law in UCD back in 1983. He then studied as a solicitor in Blackhall Place, before finally graduating from there in 1986. That very same day he decided to quit law in favour of life as a musician and soon after headed off to London with three relative strangers, convinced that he could never be accepted as a "cool" person in Dublin. "The Fat Lady Sings" released two albums and had a string of hits, such as "Deborah", "Arclight" and "Drunkard Logic". Everything appeared to be going very well for "The Fat Lady Sings" when Nick Kelly suddenly decided to call it a day and quit the music scene entirely. They still had the enthusiastic support of a major record company behind them, so what made Nick appear to go into hibernation? "Hibernation suggests that you're doing something weird and cookie, when in fact what I had been for the past eight years had been weird and cookie". Looking back now, Nick sees his decision to quit as a gradual, rather than a sudden one: "It was one of those gradual decisions that hit me very suddenly". "Subconsciously you're making decisions way before you're consciously making them, and I'm sure that's true for relationships…you're kinda going on and subconsciously you're leaving the relationship. So if somebody said how are you getting on with so and so, you'd say fine, but actually…".
Nick does recall one of his final experiences with the band where he felt he really wasn't in control of his own future. The Fat Lady Sings were sharing the bill with three other bands at a gig in Baltimore…"The only people in the audience were the members of the other three bands, who were waiting for us to finish, so that they could play their set to us". And so out of the darkness of that American club Nick Kelly saw clearly for the first time, "Why am I here? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to spend nine months a year in a bus and I don't want to have to sit all my life in meetings, talking about whether I can write songs". In January '94 the ball game ended and the fat lady had sung. "For the next year I didn't go to a gig, I didn't have a guitar."
The story really had appeared to finish there, until, following a number of low-key gigs a few years on, Nick quietly released his solo album. Saviour like, on the third album he rose again, but this time he was operating strictly on his own terms. Initially upon release the album was only available directly from Nick himself, yet it still managed to attract a lot of positive attention from the media. Nick Kelly proved to the critics, and himself, that he could succeed as an artist without the backing of a major record deal. "I don't have anything against the music industry and against hit records, but I think that its phenomenally difficult to have long term success on the industry's terms that doesn't make you go mad". Indeed Nick strongly and wisely believes that his current situation will be the most fruitful and of greatest benefit to both himself and his fans in the long term. "I'm working my way towards a situation where any time I feel that I want to make a record, I know how to make one. I'm giving my work longevity. I really like the idea that when I'm sixty I might write a song that I couldn't have written when I was fifty nine, and that might be the best thing I'll ever do."
As a solo artist, on his own independent mini-label, with his own independent postal retail mini-business Nick Kelly is no longer surrounded by hacks, liggers and other superfluous individuals. This, he believes, allows him to simply get on with his art and satisfy his fans. "You start off when you get into this business and you think, oh well, you know, we'll sell 200,000 units of the first album and we'll tour and play 800 to 1,200 seaters. I took all that for granted and now I find it amazing every time somebody sends me a cheque in the post. I feel like I've started a little cornershop." Nick much prefers his little cornershop approach to that of a more supermarket like one, "I think the relationship you have with your customer is kind of like at the grocer level".
This may all sound like an ambitious and idealistic approach to the business, but does it pay the rent? Actually Nick does hold down a day job in advertising, but doesn't do badly at all from his art either. The Fat Lady Sings, in spite of selling around 40,000 copies of each of their albums, still managed to total debts of £600,000 before splitting. So far, although only on limited release, "Between Trapezes" has sold around 5,000 copies, with no middle men looking for their share of the profits. Nick smiles contentedly, "No major label could make a profit on that, but I make a good profit". Nick puts his commercial success down to the fact that he doesn't wastefully promote himself by feeding his ego with the standard industry friendly trappings…"If I'd released a single off Between Trapezes, I'd have lost money on the album, if I'd made a video for that single I'd have definitely lost money on the album and if I'd brought a band on tour to recreate the album, I'd be bankrupt".
Nick Kelly sees himself as an artist and accepts, and is perhaps relieved, that he will never become a pop star. "A lot of people get very confused about whether what they do is art, or whether they want to become an icon. A lot of people who think they are artists, if nobody signed them, they wouldn't make a record. If you're a painter you're not waiting for somebody to buy you canvass". Nick appears to have discovered that his art can now breath comfortably in the absence of record industry types continually smothering him with notions of what popular music should be. In any case Nick believes that "song writing and pop music are diverging". He compares current pop acts and their songs to mass marketing campaigns, with bands "having to shout louder and louder to a smaller and smaller group of people who are listening in competition with more and more voices competing for attention". He believes that the current industry attitude will never allow for another Beatles or another U2…"You've got to be born fully fledged. Nobody gets to make two thoughtful albums before they have one huge one".
Nick has recently gained greater prominence due to his successes in both the Hot Press Awards and readers' poll. Among his nominations were Best Album, Best Male Vocalist and Best Songwriter. So what does it take to become Ireland's best song writer? "It takes me two hours to write a tune, it takes me a year to write a lyric. I always have thirty songs on the go, I've got an album's worth of extraordinary music at the moment, but I don't anticipate any words for a long time. You have the tune, you probably have a phrase, you have some idea of what it's about and very gradually words grow into the tune. The tune is like a piece of scaffolding and the words fill in the mortar." Nick is very cautious of altering his writing technique and believes it in some way sacred…"It works for me. I'm not sure there's not a huge amount of laziness in it, but I'm very superstitious about it, I don't want to change anything".
Nick Kelly is adamant about not allowing life to pass him by while he's busily making alternative arrangements. "Everybody in the most profound way is absolutely responsible for their own success and I don't think people take that responsibility seriously enough. You define your own success" He certainly does appear to have succeeded, both in his own mind, and in the eyes of the media and fans. But has his born again success finally brought him contentment? "This has been the most fulfilling twelve months for me". Astoundingly, things look to be getting better every day, with "Between Trapezes" currently being licensed to other countries and an American tour scheduled. It certainly appears as though Nick is continuing to triumph by adopting a uniquely personal approach to the business.
Nick Kelly's album is available in HMV or by contacting him through his new website: www.iol.ie/~nkelly
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