How To Make Gravy: the tender story behind this Aussie hit

The likes of Farnham, Olivia Newton-John, Jimmy Barnes, James Reyne and Marina Prior had contributed songs over the years. Paul Kelly was approached to take part in the 1996 release, the fourth in the series, for which the proceeds would go to the Starlight Foundation.

His first choice was a cover of The Band's Christmas Must Be Tonight, but Blundell had recorded that two years earlier. Kelly told Fields he'd have a crack at writing his own Christmas song; after all, he went all right at this songwriting caper. He'd had the bones of a tune the band had been kicking around at soundcheck for a while, but no words had appeared to join it. An avowed fan of Christmas songs, Kelly gave the record A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector a spin on the morning of December 25 every year. The first song on that album is a version of Irving Berlin's White Christmas sung by Darlene Love. While everyone knows the song, it includes a spoken section that is often left out of other versions. In it, the singer tells us that while it's a gloriously sunny day in LA, it's Christmas Eve, so they are longing for the cold north.

Even a search for the lyrics on Google will throw up plenty of instances where this verse is left out. Love put this verse in the middle of the song but Berlin originally had it at the start, which was inspired by a Broadway tradition. "Berlin was hewing to the Tin Pan Alley convention of preceding 32-bar choruses with six measures of mood-setting introduction," Jody Rosen wrote in her book on the song. "On the Broadway stage, these verses served a similar function to the recitative that precedes an operatic aria; they were often performed conversationally - a casual way of establishing the tempo and dynamics of a song and easing into its refrain." Berlin seemed conflicted about this verse: when it was released in 1942 he ordered it expunged from the sheet music, but in 1989 he wrote to singer Rosemary Clooney to thank her for including it in a live performance.

When that introduction is taken into account, it changes the nature of the song. Without it, White Christmas seems happy, the thoughts of someone fondly remembering past festive seasons. With it, the song becomes one with a tinge of sadness, the narrator singing about all the things they're missing - and that's where Kelly drew his inspiration. Maybe the focus of his Christmas song should be about not being where you want to be. "I was thinking that if you're away from something, you imagine it more intensely," he said.

The idea of protagonist Joe being in jail rather than, say, at work or overseas didn't seem to be a conscious decision. "It was a way to write the song," Kelly said. "One minute I was thinking 'This guy's got to be away', next thing I knew he was in prison. I was trying to write about Christmas. I wasn't trying to write about being in prison, but I guess it ended up being a bit of both."

Kelly later looked back at the song and wondered if this was the first time Joe turned up in one of his songs. "To Her Door, then Love Never Runs On Time and How To Make Gravy: I've got a feeling it's the same guy. He keeps coming back. He's a bit of a f--k-up, that guy."

When he finished writing the song, Kelly called Fields and said: "I have a Christmas song, but it doesn't have a chorus and it's set in prison." Fields figured he'd better go over to Kelly's place and have a listen. The next day Fields sat in Kelly's back shed with the songwriter looking down at his notebook containing the freshly scratched lyrics. Looking down meant Kelly didn't have to deal with the nerves of seeing Fields' reaction until he'd finished the song.

When he looked up, Fields had tears in his eyes, which confused Kelly a bit. "It's supposed to be a comedy," he said to Fields. Kelly can have a different view on his own tunes sometimes: "When I First Met Your Ma is a song about him describing to his son the courtship of his mother and eventual separation. When the band first heard it, they thought it was the saddest song ever, but Kelly told them he thought it was funny. Fields liked How To Make Gravy but still had to get the song over the line with the Myer board, given it was quite different from the usual fare such as Little Drummer Boy. The board gave it the tick and it ended up as track five on the CD, alongside Farnham, Reyne, Judith Durham and the one-minute wonder that was CDB. That Christmas, Kelly also released it as a four-track EP, and it appeared on his greatest hits collection, Songs From The South, released mid-1997. It was nominated for Song of the Year at the 1997 ARIAs, losing to Savage Garden's To The Moon And Back. In 1998 it was nominated in the same category at the Australasian Performing Right Association awards, where it again lost - this time to Leonardo's Bride's Even When I'm Sleeping.

Born in Adelaide, Kelly's music career didn't really begin until a move to Melbourne. There he found himself fronting an act called The High Rise Bombers, developing both his songwriting chops and his skills as a frontman. In time, his ambition came to the fore: he tried to change the band's name to Paul Kelly and the High Rise Bombers, complete with a poster in which he stood on his own in the centre with the rest of the band shunted to tiny headshots across the top, and insisting they would only play his songs. The second stipulation was a bold move given another High Rise Bomber was Martin Armiger, who became the songwriter for The Sports and spent decades as a composer for film and TV.

After The High Rise Bombers, Kelly joined The Dots. History repeated itself there: they became Paul Kelly and the Dots and the focus was on his material. The Dots released two albums, both of which are collector's items due to the fact that in later years Mushroom Records owner Michael Gudinski gave Kelly the rights to some of his back catalogue. Kelly decided to not make those albums available because he found them embarrassing to listen to. It's hard not to feel sorry for the other Dots members, knowing that people can no longer hear the albums they played on.

In 1984 The Dots were done and Kelly moved from St Kilda to Kings Cross (yes, by bus; the song of that name is true). In Sydney he recorded what became Post, his first solo album. With Mushroom not excited about it, he started shopping it around, but then trusted Gudinski employee Michelle Higgins stepped in. She wanted Kelly to stay on the label and told Gudinski she had checked into a fancy hotel on Mushroom's dime and would stay there until Kelly was re-signed. Gudinski buckled and Kelly stayed. For the Post follow-up, Kelly wanted to record a double album, an audacious move given the first album didn't sell or get much radio play. Gudinski initially baulked, but later reluctantly consented. That double album was 1986's Gossip, the record that saw Kelly and his band the Coloured Girls break through courtesy of songs such as Before Too Long and Darling It Hurts. The Coloured Girls band released three more studio albums, the last after they changed their name to The Messengers due to racial undertones, before Kelly decided their time was up. From then on Kelly recorded solo albums while also working on side projects with Professor Ratbaggy, The Stormwater Boys, Stardust Five and Charlie Owen.

Before the first of the side projects came along, Kelly recorded How To Make Gravy in 1996. Despite the ARIA and APRA nominations, the song itself wasn't an instant smash: it was a slow burner, though by 2010 it was well known enough for Kelly to use it as the title of his "mongrel memoir". In 2017 he launched what has become a December tradition, the How To Make Gravy tour, where he brings along younger acts such as Meg Mac, Amyl and the Sniffers, Gang of Youths and Alex the Astronaut. It has also spawned its own day: December 21 is Gravy Day, when social media goes crazy with the #gravyday hashtag. During the COVID-19 pandemic the song made stronger connections with people as lockdowns and travel restrictions meant they couldn't be with their family for Christmas. In 2021, after a year or more of lockdowns, Kelly released a new version of the song as part of his Christmas Train double album. "The original How To Make Gravy came out 25 years ago and I must have played it now thousands and thousands of times," Kelly said of this version. "It's a staple in our set. The band and I thought it would be worthwhile putting our current version to tape. The way we play the song has evolved over the years, but not that much ... Playing this song is like going on a ride. Once you're on it, it just takes off!"

Accompanying it was a video made by his partner, Siân Darling, that still tugs at the heartstrings. Made up of a string of self-filmed clips of people holding up messages to tell loved ones they miss them or singing along to the song, there are quite a few tears both from those in the video and those watching.

Part of the lasting appeal of the song is that there are very few Australian Christmas tunes that aren't a bit naff. What How To Make Gravy does is focus on the celebration around the day: the siblings driving or flying to the family home, the brothers- and sisters-in-law turning up along with other relatives, the food and the post-lunch dancing (though after a big meal most people would rather doze than dance). It's an image that is familiar to most Australians as it reflects the reality of what most of us do every Christmas. "Christmas was a big part of my childhood," Kelly said. "I had a big Catholic family so Christmas has always been about family getting together and we sang carols over the years. That was part of the tradition for us to get together on Christmas Eve and sing carols and Christmas songs like Jingle Bell Rock [and] Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."

With most Christmas tunes, you listen to them in December but then shelve them for the rest of the year. As Christmas songs go, How To Make Gravy is very understated: in five minutes and 10 seconds it only mentions the word Christmas three times. It's not an overt Christmas song so it doesn't feel odd to listen to it at other times of the year. Who listens to Jingle Bell Rock in March?

One mystery of the song is just how Joe is communicating with Dan. It's often thought to be a phone call, and there are instances that suggest that. The signs of that include the opener "Hey, Dan, it's Joe", which is very much the way a phone call begins. There's also the moment when he mentions his concerns about Dan making a move on Rita, phrasing that certainly seems like words coming out of Joe's mouth before he realises and has to quickly blurt out an apology.

The reference to ringing the last bells in the second line calls the possibility of a phone call into question. Presumably the last bells are a sign the cells are about to be locked, and it's hard to imagine Joe being able to make a phone call that late. Also, Joe goes for five minutes from that point and it's unlikely the prison guards would be standing near the phones patiently waiting for him to finish.

Overall, the feel of the song is more suggestive of a letter being written, especially because the conversation is entirely one way. Dan's voice never appears, not even to comfort his brother that they'll work out the gravy situation. The problem with the letter hypothesis is that he's writing it on the night of December 21. The earliest it could be posted is December 22, assuming Joe finished the letter the night before. That only allows two days for the letter to get from prison to Dan's house so he can get the message to kiss Joe's kids on Christmas Day. That short turnaround seems rather unlikely.

Perhaps that's the point: How To Make Gravy is about not being somewhere, about missing out. Joe's letter finally arriving days after Christmas fits in with that theme of him missing out, and his family would have missed out on the gravy he felt was so important. Incidentally, the recipe mentioned in the song? That's real: it comes from Kelly's first father-in-law.