KEVIN PARKER

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.

Obviously, artists need to make money and stuff like that, but if you do something good or if you make good art or make good stuff, the wealth will find you in some way.

Grunge gave me a sense of identity, and I remember really associating with 'Silverchair,' who were these chilled-out Australian teenagers. The fact that they were teenagers was a big deal for me. It was like, 'Oh, man, you don't have to be a 30-year-old to do this.'

I'll write songs wherever I am.

Making music is so spiritual. I'm not a spiritual person, but music is sacred to me.

Tame Impala is kind of psych-pop.

I wanted to make something that, from the sound of it, could be down at the club. I just realised that I'd never heard Tame Impala played somewhere with a dance floor or where people were dancing.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My brain has a weird way of turning pressure into other things. I make a point to myself of shrugging it off - of going the other way and doing something for myself, wanting to do something better. For example, I know that I could have made 'Lonerism 2.0' in a day, but it wouldn't have satisfied me.

I didn't even know that small bands played in Las Vegas. I just thought it was, like, Celine Dion and stuff.

The inspiration to write a song comes to me when something has happened to me more than once. If it's happened to me more than once, it's probably happened to other people.

My brother Steve, who was a few years older than me, had 'Bad' on tape, and I remember listening to 'Smooth Criminal' and just thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I must have been five or six at the time, and I remember walking around school by myself thinking I was Michael Jackson. I wasn't dancing, exactly - more like walking musically.

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.

In the end, for me, music is such an internal thing that to let the outside world influence would be against my modus operandi.

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

If someone says, 'Hey man, I love your album, it really got me through a breakup, but I downloaded it for free,' I'll be like, 'Good! That's good!' Maybe he didn't have the money for the album, but if he still listened to it, and it's an important part of his life, that's all I can ask for. I don't want his twenty bucks.

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.

I'm actually in love with all of Scandinavia.

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