Kavyen Temperley - Biography

Biography

Temperley grew up in Fremantle and as a seven year old changed his name to Satyam Kavyen Temperley, Temperley being his mother, Yatri,'s maiden name and the rest meaning "Poet of Truth". Temperley family were part of the Orange People (Sanyassin) movement, making various trips to Oregon and India throughout the early 1980s. Between the ages of seven and 12 Temperley attended the Lance Holt School, a Fremantle community school. At the age of thirteen his mother took him to India where they stayed at the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune. It was there he learnt about an international alternative boarding school, Ko Hsuan, based on the teachings of controversial Indian mystic, Osho, in Devon. He was accepted as a boarder and stayed there for a year.

That was an amazing place, musically. They had a really good music room. If we had two periods of math, in between we'd run off and jam for 10 minutes. We'd come back and be totally chilled because we'd gotten all that nervous energy out of our systems. —Kavyen Temperley

It was, said Kav, his "saving grace" and it was there he discovered a passion for music, before homesickness drove him back to Fremantle and John Curtin High School.

Then I thought I was going to become an actor until I started wagging school and writing songs. —Kavyen Temperley

He always had a love for writing music and recording it and through this met up with band member Joel Quartermain. Temperley has been best friends with Stuart MacLeod since they were seven and lived next door to each other.

At the age of eighteen Temperley returned to England in an attempt to re-kindle the friendship with his former classmates at Ko Hsuan. Following which he returned to India, where he again stayed at Pune. It was in India that he decided that it was time to get serious about his music. In a letter to McLeod he states

When I get back, I really think we should turn this into something serious, because we've got some good stuff going on. —Kavyen Temperley

Upon his return to Fremantle he told Quatermain of his decision. Quatermain was playing in funk metal band, Freud's Pillow, at the time. Temperley, McLeod and Quatermain forming the band, Eskimo Joe, during University for a Battle of the Bands competition. Initially he had written a number of folksy songs and one or two power pop songs, thinking

If we write four more of them we can win the campus band competition! So that's exactly what we did, and for a while thanks to radio play of a song called "Sweater", we wallowed in the world of power pop. Funnily enough, it wasn't until Girl, our debut album, that we returned to the sort of songs we had intended to do a the beginning, the sort of songs that had inspired that letter to Stu. Once we found that sound though, we never looked back. —Kavyen Temperley

Together with his wife, Abeni Dara, he has one child, a son, Hunter, born in 2008.

Temperley sang a reinterpreted version with INXS of the song, "To Look At You", on Original Sin.