Australian musician and composer Warren Ellis Photo: Charlie Gray
Before forming the instrumental rock trio Dirty Three in the early '90s, Australian musician Warren Ellis was feeling lost and in the dark.
Then the former teacher, street busker and addict started playing his violin with Mick Turner and Jim White - "pretty single-minded musicians" who, like him, valued their freedom.
"When we came together it was so incredibly exciting and so good for the soul… I found some peace which I hadn't found I hadn't felt before. I guess my heart was opened up to something that I never thought I would experience."
Warren Ellis talks to Maggie Tweedie about his spiritual connection to music and Dirty Three's expansive new record Love Changes Everything.
Ellis says when he went to church as a kid, he always hoped God would appear.
"I wanted to see something, you know, I wanted to believe and that didn't happen … Music presented itself as some sort of spiritual voice for me and helped me navigate the world. I could find peace and I could find violence and I could find sadness, I could find what I needed.
When Ellis gave up alcohol and heroin, he found it hard to accept a higher power but he could accept music and even use it to find the strength to stop drinking.
"Music for me was the thing that allowed me to feel like I was tapping into something greater than the physical world."
Dirty Three band members Jim White, Mick Turner and Warren Ellis. Photo: Daniel Boud
As a young man, he says it wasn't always clear music was his path.
He trained and worked as a teacher briefly, busked around Europe, and often found himself wondering 'What am I going to do with my life?'
"When I started playing music in a band, I didn't ask that question anymore. That was a great relief to not be wondering what I was doing."
In the late '80s, as a violinist "making a loud noise" Ellis attracted attention from fellow musicians who wanted to play with him.
Very quickly he found myself in five or six bands including, early on, Dirty Three.
Playing with Turner and White was "just so exciting" because all three band members did literally whatever they wanted to do, Ellis says.
This spirit continues now, as the bandmates understand each other's need step out and do other things.
For Ellis that's playing with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and composing film scores, for White it's playing with different bands and for Turner that's painting.
None of Dirty Three live in the same country, Ellis says, so It has became harder to get together, but they always find a way to get together and do what they do.
"It's a bit like leaving home or something. You know, it's nice to know you can come back."
