Photo by Venla Shalin/Redferns
Although Tame Impala tours as a full band, the Australian psych rock outfit features frontman Kevin Parker writing, performing, and producing all of the project’s music in the recording studio. Early on in his career, however, Parker was reluctant to admit that he was its sole mastermind. On a recent episode of Rick Rubin’s Broken Record podcast, the musician admitted that he “outright lied” about Tame Impala being a band while signing his record deal.
“In fact, the record label when they signed us didn’t even know it was me that was playing drums and guitars and bass and multi-tracking,” said Parker, after being asked whether he released music under Tame Impala to make it seem like a band. “I outright lied to them when we met up. The contract we signed was for the three of us.”
Parker continued by explaining shyness was one of the reasons why he initially didn’t want to own up to the truth. More importantly, he felt guilty about being a solo act emerging from his close-knit local music scene:
Number one, I was kind of shy. It’s really weird because looking back it’s like, ‘Why didn’t you just own it?’ But also the kind of music scene I was in was a very communal scene. We lived to jam and lived to play gigs, so for the thing that finally came out of that scene to be just a solo project, I think it felt kind of wrong. It would be this scene that we kind of had going in Perth where it’s kind of a bunch of us. There weren’t that many people, but we made tons of bands out of it. There’d be like 10 people, and there’d be like six bands with different combinations of those people.
Earlier in the conversation, Parker mentioned that he finally decided to reveal the truth because of the perceived freedom of solo artists to change their sound compared to groups.
“It was eating away at me that it wasn’t the truth,” he said. “Also, I wanted people to know that it was kind of more of a solo recording project because I realized that solo artists get away with completely changing their sound a lot more than bands do. Someone like Beck, Beck can take a complete left turn with one album, and everyone will be like, ‘That’s Beck, that’s what he does.’ With a band, it’s kind of like a few things have to happen. Everyone in the group has to decide on it together, which is more difficult.”
Jay Watson (drums) and Dominic Simper (bass and keyboard) have toured with Tame Impala since the project’s inception. Over the past decade, Parker has shuffled other musicians in and out of its touring lineup.
Tame Impala signed to its current label Australia’s Modular Recordings in July 2008, releasing a self-titled EP a few months later. Its debut studio album, Innerspeaker, arrived in 2010.
Listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts and read all the lyrics to Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush on Genius now.
