From playing with his father, to spiritual encounters with long-passed composers.

As a part of the 2019 Dark Mofo program, Double J's Zan Rowe and revered Australian musician Warren Ellis (Dirty Three, Bad Seeds, Grinderman) sat down in Hobart's stunning Town Hall for a live edition of Zan's weekly Take 5 segment.

The theme was Songs in the Key of Waz, allowing Ellis to pick any music that he felt had a profound impact on him as a musician and as a human.

He chose five extraordinary songs that show the breadth of Ellis musical inspirations, something that won't surprise any fan of his work over the past 25 years.

Read below Warren Ellis' thoughts on the five songs that had a huge impact on his life.

Listen to the full episode right here, and subscribe to the Take 5 podcast here.

John Ellis – 'Mis’ry is my Middle Name'

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My father is a country and western singer. When I was growing up he would always play his guitar and sing songs he had written.

I didn't realise at the time, but it was my first exposure to the creative process. Me and my brother would sit with my Dad and he would play the guitar. I remember feeling the sound of it in my body as he played. I didn't realise until I got older that he'd passed on this incredible gift to me.

In our home, music was really serious. We were encouraged to play whatever we wanted to play.

Johnny Cash - 'Orange Blossom Special'

I'm sitting in class one day and this guy came around and said, 'Who would like to learn violin?' I noticed all the girls had put their hand up, so I put my hand up. I got to the class and there were no girls… That's basically the story of my life.

I got this little Chinese violin. My parents went out and got it when it was probably a very difficult thing for them to do.

My Dad went and bought me a book of bluegrass tunes, I think he was looking for someone to play along with. He went straight to the back of the book and said, 'This is what you've gotta play, 'Orange Blossom Special''.

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I knew it from The Johnny Cash Show. I took it to my teacher, who embraced it, which is very unusual in the classical world. He taught me how to play it.

Around the end of primary school, I was deciding what to do. My violin teacher suggested I try for a music scholarship. So, we got together a couple of pieces - one was Mendelsohn's Spring Song and the other one was 'Orange Blossom Special'.

It has this technique called double stopping. Quite a complicated thing to do.

The guy came up to me afterwards, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Do you have any idea what you're doing?' And I said, 'No'. He said, 'Why did you pick this piece?' and I said, 'Cos Johnny Cash plays it and my Dad likes it'. He goes 'Do you understand what double-stopping is?' And I said, 'No'.

They called the next day and I won the scholarship, which enabled me to go to a school I wouldn't be able to go to and have lessons on the violin.

That was a song that probably changed my destiny. I don't know if I would have continued playing music...

Beethoven – 'Symphony No. 7 (second movement)'

I got into Melbourne State College, but nobody wanted to take me on as a student. I can't play in tune, I can't play in time and I can't really play the sort of music that was made for the instrument. Doors were closing on me.

Then this wonderful violin teacher heard me play for him. He put his head on my back and his hand on my shoulder. I was kinda terrified. He just said, 'You have a big voice and you need to be heard. You need to find the music that suits you'.

This guy took an interest in the way that I played and tried to find the music that suited me. And he conducted the orchestra.

I remember he brought in Beethoven's 'Symphony No. 7'. Every time we rehearsed the second movement, it almost sent me catatonic.

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We performed it in this hall, and this presence became apparent in the back of the room. As we were playing this piece, this presence was behind the audience, a big form, and it was, for me, it was the spirit of Beethoven. I felt his presence in the hall.

A couple of years later my life had gone even further down a wormhole. I was lying in bed, really not doing much, listening to the classical radio station.

This presence appeared again at the end of the bed, the same one, and I couldn't breathe and I couldn't get up. I couldn't move. I was absolutely terrifying. This music was playing and there was just this figure at the end of the bed. There was no face, just this figure and this presence that I'd felt when we were playing this symphony. It lasted for a long time.

I took that as a sign that I needed to get out of this wormhole I was in and get on with something.

It haunted me so much that two years ago when we were in Vienna with The Bad Seeds, I went to the cemetery to visit Beethoven's grave. It was kind of awesome, there were candles everywhere. I went down there with a bunch of flowers, I don't know what for, I just wanted to do it.

I got there, and this woman was walking up. I said, 'I'm looking for Beethoven's grave' and she said, 'I'm going there too. Do you want to come with me?' This poor woman had no idea what she was in for.

I got to the grave and all I could do was fall on my knees. She looked at me and put my hand on my shoulder, all I could do was just weep.

In many ways this tune became, unknowingly, a bit of a blueprint for Dirty Three. Not that we're on the same level as Beethoven. But, it's like Nirvana, the way it has that dynamic of going from really quiet to really loud, repeating the same thing and then breaking out into something.

Arleta – 'Mia Fora Thymamai (I Remember a Time)'

The story behind this selection commences with a heartbroken, early-20s Warren Ellis busking his way around Europe.

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I had this cassette that I took with me everywhere. And I lost it. It had been sent to me by this person who had started this broken heart that turned into something else.

It was by this woman called Arleta. I didn't know what the song was about, but I thought it was the most beautiful song I'd heard, and it suited my mood. I lost the cassette, but I kept the cover.

A few years later, when I would meet [fellow Dirty Three members] Jim White and Mick Turner, we were sitting around my kitchen trying to work out a bunch of songs to fulfil a friend's need for music in a bar he'd just purchased in Richmond.

I said, 'I know this really cool song but I don't have a recording of it'. This is in the days when you couldn't just Spotify things, you had to keep them alive in your memory. I just said to Mick, 'The tune goes like this' and he worked out the chords.

That [became] the song 'I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me'. I didn't even know what the [Arleta] song was called before George Xylouris translated it.

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This moment where I realised I could play music that shifted the way people thought, folk music, it was really surprising.

I picked this song because it corresponded to this moment where things really shifted for me. And I realised that maybe I had the instruments that could move people.

I met Arleta and told her how much I loved her music and she gave me a marble ball from her abacus set. She's passed on, but I still carry it in my washbag to this day.

Alice Coltrane / John Coltrane – 'The Sun'

I remember hearing John Coltrane in an apartment. This guy put it on really loud and I could not believe it, I thought it was the wildest thing I'd ever heard in my life. I stopped listening to rock'n'roll at that point.

I was listening to Pharoah Sanders and I was listening to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and then I discovered Alice Coltrane.

If push came to shove [she] is probably the greatest inspiration on me ever. Her ability to channel this chaos into the most beautiful, perfect, crystalline statements is just mind-boggling. On every record there's a point where, in my head, I want to feel like it's gone to that place where she takes me.

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I could have picked anything [of hers]. But I wanted both of them to be represented; that incredible spiritual journey that some people can take with their music.

For me, Alice Coltrane continues to be someone I keep going back to. I will always go back to her.

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