Kevin Parker

Kevin Richard Parker was born on 20 January 1986 in Sydney, but has spent most of his life in Western Australia. Parker's father Jerry Parker was from Zimbabwe and his mother Rosalind Parker is from South Africa. His father worked as a chief financial officer for the mining firm Gold Fields, which meant the family lived in remote Kalgoorlie during Parker's early childhood. The family later moved to Perth, where Parker spent the rest of his youth. His parents separated when he was three years old, and upon moving to Perth, Parker lived primarily with his mother and later stepfather in Mount Lawley, whereas his father moved to Cottesloe. The splitting of his family led to a chaotic upbringing. Parker grew up with a passion for music from a young age. His father "played a lot of music as a hobby" and was a "big part of [Kevin's] musical upbringing". Parker also recalls "amusing [him]self by singing along to the vacuum cleaner when [his] mum was cleaning." At age 11, Parker took up the drums, just like his brother, and later was making "excessively melodic music from about the age of 12 to 15", which was "really weird and repetitive and almost genre-less", by recording his drumming and overdubbing guitar and other instruments in lo-fi experiments. Speaking about this Parker said: "I've always recorded music. When I was 12, I used to set up two tape machines and multi-track myself. First, I'd record a beat on the drums, then, I'd play that tape into another tape recorder while playing keyboard; then I'd take that tape and play bass guitar along with the drums and keyboard. I'd keep adding instruments. I did that for a long time until my dad bought me an 8-track, and then I continued recording music by myself, even if I was in other bands at the same time." This hobby turned into an obsession for Parker who was "just doing music all the time, I never did any homework, I'd just spend every night in the garage recording music." Parker got his first eight-track recorder at age 16. At age 13, Parker met fellow Tame Impala member Dominic Simper in their music class at John XXIII College, Perth, whom he found a musical connection with. Parker and Simper started off playing covers of Rage Against the Machine, Unwritten Law, Sunk Loto and Korn songs, along with Dan Debuf, who is now a presenter on 2Day FM. In his late-teens, Parker discovered the many 1960s and 1970s psychedelic rock artists that would have a huge influence on his music, saying: "I got into bands like Cream and Jefferson Airplane in a big way, and loved the sound of their recordings. My friends were listening to bands like Brainticket and Demon Fuzz who opened my eyes to different ways of constructing songs. The Beatles way of singing vocal lines often crept into the recordings because they are so unique, whereas the elements we take from those other bands are usually common among a few other bands we listen to." with his main form of inspiration being The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. Early career By the time he was 18, Parker was "playing in the pub scene" and at the time was writing "heavy 70's-style almost prog-rock songs, like Blue Cheer". Parker also felt that Tame Impala's 2012 album Lonerism "validates" a lot of the feelings he had as a teenager. He said: "It's got this weird hopefulness to it. Maybe that's the charm of it. Maybe that's why it's done so well." Parker's father always warned him about getting into the music industry. Parker said: "My dad always warned me not to choose music as a career. He got quite worried and said 'if you do music as your job, as the thing that puts food on the table, then it will instantly ruin its magic, it won't be mysterious and fun any more, it would just be like work'". Parker believed what his father had told him, and went on to university for a while, studying engineering. He said: "I wanted to please my dad in a way. I had no idea what I wanted to do, because I didn't enjoy anything other than music." Parker said, "I hated it, and one day I decided to change to astronomy. I knew that I would be poor and I just wanted to do whatever was fun." However, Parker did not abandon his original dream. He said: "I was at uni, and a couple of months before we got signed, I had submitted to the reality that I wasn't actually going to be a famous musician and I should just get on with my career. So that was when I started to knuckle down and actually do stuff at uni. But at the same time, I could never passionately give my attention to anything other than music. Like, it was a disease. I would not be able to listen to a word in lectures because I'd just be thinking about my new song." While Parker was recording his first album, his father died after a year-long struggle with cancer. Jerry's death had a "massive" effect on Parker, who said, "It was a weird time, extremely confusing, and I didn't really know what to make of it." ==Music career==