Kevin Richard Parker (born 20 January 1986) is an Australian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, musician, record producer, and DJ, best known for his musical project Tame Impala, for which he writes, performs, records, and produces the music. Parker has released four Tame Impala albums: Innerspeaker (2010), Lonerism (2012), Currents (2015), and The Slow Rush (2020). He has won 13 ARIA Music Awards, two APRA Awards, and a Brit Award, and has received four Grammy Award nominations.
In addition to his work for Tame Impala, Parker was the drummer of Pond from 2009 until 2011. He produced the band's studio albums Beard, Wives, Denim (2012), Hobo Rocket (2013), Man, It Feels Like Space Again (2015), The Weather (2017), and Tasmania (2019). As a producer, Parker has collaborated with artists such as Mark Ronson, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kanye West, Gorillaz, Travis Scott, Melody's Echo Chamber, and the Flaming Lips.
Early life and career beginnings
Parker was born in Sydney, but has spent most of his life in Perth, Western Australia. Parker's father, Jerry, was from Zimbabwe and his mother, Rosalind, is from South Africa. Parker's parents separated and divorced when he was three years old. From the age of 12 he lived in Cottesloe with his father, stepmother Rhonda and brother Stephen, while his older paternal half-brother, Stuart, resided in Brisbane, Queensland. He also has a younger maternal half-sister, Helen, from his mother's second marriage.
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". His first experience playing an instrument was accompanying his father on guitar. He said: "I learned guitar by playing rhythm guitar to his Shadows leads. He wanted to play Shadows lead riffs, because he loves Hank B. Marvin, and he got me to play the chords in the background." Parker's father also played music by The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Supertramp in a cover band, which Parker believes was where he "got [his] love of melody", which has been a significant part of Parker's music. Parker also recalls "amusing [him]self by singing along to the vacuum cleaner when [his] mum was cleaning." Parker's father later purchased his first guitar.
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."
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".