Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Kevin Parker - Page 2

For me, the value of music is the value you extract from it.

In the end, I'm lucky enough to travel the world and make albums and not have to worry about not having a job.

I like a messy hotel room. It's a little slice of home.

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.

Tame Impala is kind of psych-pop.

I have almost no memory of my parents ever speaking to each other. They split up on bad terms. I assumed that's what family life was like. Just essentially a soap opera.

It's funny how concert dreams are such a recurring thing among musicians. It's like how everyone has that dream of their teeth falling out? Except musicians have this dream of just standing onstage and there being all these people out there, and for some reason, the song isn't starting.

The more confidence I get with making music, the more I feel like I can just rely on myself to fulfill me.

I just record whenever I can, whenever I'm home, whenever I have access to something that can make music.

I used to think interacting with people in the audience, touching people in the crowd, was a total ego-based thing. I never realized how fulfilling it would be. It's more about being on the receiving end - it's people giving. That's a powerful realization.

Bands can become absolutely huge and actually be pretty terrible musicians, and bands can be the most amazing songwriters and musicians in the world and never play for more than 10 people. With that in mind, getting successful doesn't mean anything.

The way I do it is there's never recording 'sessions.' One finishes, the next one starts. It's just continuous.

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.

I write songs every day, but I don't necessarily get to record them.

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.

My personal life, my musical life, my life as an artist - almost everything has pointed all these little arrows that make up which way I go as a person and what I feel comfortable as my identity.

Sometimes you really rely on the audience to have a good time playing live, and sometimes you could have zero people or a thousand, and you'd feel exactly the same.

I've always had these morals I've sort of put on myself: that excess is bad. I used to be into Buddhism and stuff. I was vegetarian. I was all about shutting things out.

For me, I'm just too bad at remembering the details of lengths of parts of songs, so if we had backing tracks, it would be a recipe for disaster.

I never know when a record is finished until it's almost finished.

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.

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'd say most of the rest of the world are bigger Beatles fans than me. They'd know more of the songs and more of the lyrics - I don't really know that stuff. I just respect them.

I write songs every day, but only a few of them get finished.

I don't think you can reach the same highs working in a band as you can on your own.

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.

Even if people say you look cool and you did well, it's extremely cringey to watch yourself rocking out. It's like listening to your own voice on an answering machine times a hundred, because you're hearing your voice through a microphone outside of a PA at a hundred decibels.

To me, rock and roll is like an ethos or a state of mind.

Michael Jackson's one of my favorite artists of my whole life. In fact, I think he is my favorite. It's one of the first things I fell in love with before I learned about genres and before I knew what was cool to like.

Trying new things and experimenting is something I push myself to do. It's one thing to have love for all different kinds of music; it's another thing to bring them together seamlessly and make them coherent.

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.

'Lonerism' is such an insular, detached album.

I had this weird fetish for making the guitar sound like it wasn't a guitar to try and trick people into actually thinking it was a keyboard. I don't know why that was such an obsession, why I didn't just get a keyboard. I guess it was because I had no money.

I feel like music will be free sooner or later, and I think I'm all for it.

If I'm recording a song, and it's kind of fuzzed out, but I've got this super candy melody, I feel nothing but freedom that I can just sing over the top, and it will be appreciated. It won't be like, 'What is he doing?'

I don't think I've ever listened to 'Sgt. Pepper's' the whole way through.

The more I question myself about why I think pop is taboo, the more I realize it's not.

Once I've got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it'll turn into something. I'll start thinking about the drums - what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it'll turn into a song.

I'll write songs wherever I am.

I love the Beatles, but I don't listen to them at all regularly. Most of my friends are bigger Beatles fans than I am. I respect them, and I love them - 'Abbey Road' is probably one of my favorite albums, but I don't think I've ever listened to the 'White Album' the whole way through.