A biography for Kevin Parkerhasn’t been written yet.
“For me, it's always been draining to be around people for too long because I'm naturally a pretty expressionless person. From an early age, I found being alone incredibly liberating.”
“Some of my most important musical experiences were from a burnt CD with songs my friend downloaded for me at a terrible digital quality.”
“I've always liked pop music. I love what it does to my brain, and I've shut it out for a long time.”
“Listening to my dad playing guitar along to 'Sleepwalk' by the Shadows was probably the first time I discovered emotion in music.”
“For 'Lonerism,' I really wanted make a non-psychedelic record. That's why the dominant instrument is the synthesiser, but maybe it didn't quite turn out that way.”
“For me, pop melodies are their own thing that have their own emotion, but they don't necessarily belong exclusively in a pop song.”
“I'm always working on new music.”
“I don't like the idea that I'm a one-trick pony, even if I am! No matter what else I do, I have to make sure that 'Elephant' isn't Tame Impala's biggest song anywhere.”
“I feel like music will be free sooner or later, and I think I'm all for it.”
“I actually think looking to the past for inspiration is pretty redundant.”
“When I try and extract what it is about my music that I do or love or try to create, I'm never aware of it at the time. I just make something.”
“When I was 14 or 15, I was dead-set on becoming a rock star - the same as anybody who picks up a guitar at that age.”
“Tame Impala has two lives. One is the album, which is like a producer, and the other life is like a band: more of a live incarnation where we're basically a covers band for the albums that I produce.”
“It's largely a misconception that Tame Impala is a band. We play as a band on stage, but it's really not how it is at all on the album. The album is just me.”
“I wouldn't say making psychedelic music is my focus. That's not the modus operandi for Tame Impala. It's about making music that moves people.”
“There's all this talk of music needing a monetary value, this ownership of music, even that it needs a physical form. But intrinsically... it's music. It should be better than that.”
“My mum was quite poor, and my dad was rich. She didn't dig that, so she left him.”
“I was always putting songs on the Internet, but I was never into pushing them on anyone.”
“I like a messy hotel room. It's a little slice of home.”
“I grew up in the grunge era. I've always resisted the idea of being part of a machine, wanting just to be an artist in my own right. But at some point, I just realized shutting things out took more energy than just letting it in.”