Award-winning West Australian singer/songwriter Rose Parker today releases a breath-taking new song that captures the spirit of human generosity through the gift of life. Her new single, ‘Because Of You’ is an emotional anthem that acknowledges both the grief of the donor family, and the joy of new life gifted to recipients and their loved ones.
The song will be released in conjunction with Transplant Australia in time for DonateLife Thank You Day, this Sunday, November 17. Thank You Day is a national day to reflect and say thanks to those generous Australians and their families who make organ and tissue donation possible.
Sean Bennett caught up with Rose in a café in South Fremantle to talk about the single, coping with grief after the loss of her brother Tim, and the healing that followed knowing that being an organ donor saved the lives of two people. We also discuss her musical journey and song writing processes & influences plus much more.
Sean: Thank you so much for your time Rose. I know it is such a busy week for you with the release of your new single ‘Because of You’ this Friday.
Rose: Thank you so much for including me and sharing the news of the single. It means so much and I really appreciate it.
Sean: When it landed in my inbox it immediately hit me so I just had to get some time with you to talk about it.
Rose: Thank you so much Sean. It’s a big anthemic track but it was written for a specific event, so it was amazing playing it at the World Transplant Games.
Sean: Well the release ties in perfectly with Thank You Day which is this Sunday, 17th November and is a national day to reflect and say thanks to those generous Australians and their families who make donation possible. As gorgeous as the song is, it’s the video which really hits home and shows so much togetherness. It is so powerful.
Rose: It’s almost like a mini-doco, isn’t it. Its a mixture of the studio footage and footage given generously by Transplant Australia from the World Transplant Games. I just wanted it to tell a story of the song. The verses tell the story of us, as a donor family and what it is like to be a donor family and to be that family to get the phone call with some really bad news, and then walking that journey. Because my brother was an organ donor, his journey doesn’t stop with his tragic death and that is what I really wanted to weave into this song as well and with the verses I wanted it to be a celebration of the joy that the recipients get and they really are the most joyous bunch of people.
Sean: And that’s one of the things that struck me in the video. But it was also the sheer amount of people, which makes you realise that there are so many that get a second chance of life. And it really is an incredible story; the heartbreak of losing your brother Tim but the joy & celebration knowing he is still helping others and in some respect living on in someone else’s life.
Rose: There is definitively two sides to the story.
Sean: How do you even begin to perceive to write a song like this? You would have been enduring overwhelming grief but then to be able to put that into words and music to create such an anthemic song must have been challenging.
Rose: There were a couple of key things that occurred to help me get inspired to write it. I love song writing – I’ve been doing it for over twenty five years now and I’ve released about seven albums like with The Velvet Janes in the late 90s/early 00’s, I then took a decade-long hiatus while I was busy raising my son, but still writing, playing and building a solo career after the Janes. So I love song writing and helping other people put a song together. My last conversation with my brother, and I remember it vividly, we brought mum for a cup of tea and he leaned on the roof of his beloved commadore and looked across to me and said, “Rose, you know you’ve written a song for your sisters?” It’s on my last album called ‘Sista Sista’, “I know you haven’t written one for your brothers yet, but I think you should write one for mum.” He jumped in his car and he was gone, and that was the last time I saw him. So Tim actually commissioned me to write a song and in the months after his passing I did try to do that but it was just too sad. I’ve played music at wakes and at funerals in the past and music is very important to people. Music is a medium we use for all the big stuff in life Sean; the comings and the goings, marriages, births, deaths, we reach for music and art and poetry because it helps to express how we feel and that is really important but with the grief we were going through it just wasn’t coming through. Then came Bonnie Raitt – thank you Bonnie – Bonnie last year wrote a song about organ donation and it won a frickin Grammy award. She beat out the likes of Beyonce with this simply crafted song. It was a story about a woman who’s son had passed and she had become kind of house-bound. She was so heartbroken that her son had died in an accident and then one day she gets to meet the recipient of her son’s heart. And Bonnie was listening to this story and was so overcome at the moment where this woman places her head to the young man’s chest to hear her own son’s heart beating. Bonnie was so moved she wrote a song called ‘Just Like That’. Its beautiful and when I heard that, and we actually included that to sing at the Transplant Games and that’s when I thought to myself, “If Bonnie Raitt can write about organ donation, then Rose Parker can too.” It kind of gave me permission to thing about it because of course I had this lived experience and my family did too.
By day I’m an occupational therapist, so when the moon is high I like to write songs and sing like a siren and when the sun is up I like to be in a healing space with people and they both tie together beautifully. But it was there I met a heart transplant recipient come to me for therapy and in her journey, which was amazing to have someone living and breathing in front of me, this was the second half of the story because she immediately spoke about the gratitude she lives with everyday for the people that donated their loved ones organs which allowed her to receive another heart. Then she said, “I’m going to sign up for the World Transplant Games and do a marathon.” She said she would start small and walk just three kilometres at a time but she had never done an event in her life and she was seventy years old and here she was doing her first ever event, so I was really surrounded by the other side of the story. So, that all got put in together into the song writing cauldron, I stirred it up and with sixteen days to go before the event I finished the song. I actually started writing on a plane going home to New Zealand with my husband so I was 30,000 feet up in the sky when I got that joyful chorus and then I crafted the verses by telling the story of us as a doner family, which included that conversation with my brother about him wanted to be an organ donor and then that tragic day we got the phone call from the police and then getting letters in the mail from the recipients. One of my sisters said to me, “We are sitting here filled with tears of sadness but someone somewhere will be getting a phone call and that call will bring them tears of joy.” And all of that is in that song Sean.
Sean: Such an incredible story Rose. It’s got me feeling quote emotional. And a real insight in to both sides of the organ donation process. We’ll certainly put a link at the end of the interview for any readers who want more information.
Rose: Thanks Sean.
Sean: With your song writing in general, is it something that springs up in your head or do you find you need to shut yourself away and really apply yourself?
Rose: The answer is all of the above. I have notes that I constantly update in my phone. I have lots of new song ideas in here (Rose shows me lists and lists of ideas on the screen) and I also record any bits of inspiration on voice memo too. So I always have stacks of new ideas. When I teach song writing we teach about inspiration and perspiration. So with inspiration it can be anywhere and my song writing antennas are always up; a conversation, a book, an image, a movie, something in the newspaper, hearing someone else’s story, a big emotion or feeling like what we have been through. Then I’ve learnt I get bits – it might be a melody or chorus lyrics, verse ideas then you have got to make time to sit secluded and work on your craft to finish the song. And that is the bit a lot of people get stuck on. That’s like exercising a muscle – it’s like going to song writing gym 101 [laughs]. There are people who think their song is not very good or its been done before but you have to finish it. Make sure you finish that song and then once it’s finished you can go back and edit or change things. Sometimes its something as simple as changing a word or two, or just giving it a slight tweak to make it flow better. I find I’m constantly writing.
Sean: Taking you right back to your childhood, what were the musical influences you found around you at the time?
Rose: I used to spend summer holidays at my Aunt & Uncle’s farm, it was a wheatbelt farm and I had older cousins. And I remember there was a radiogram with vinyl albums… there wasn’t a lot of music around me growing up but what there was I just played on repeat repeat repeat. It was things like The Beatles ‘Sgt Peppers’ Album, Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’, Olivia Newton John’s ‘Greatest Hits’ [laughs]. I remember there wasn’t a lot of rock n roll actually. I grew up in orphanages and foster care so I had a lot of different homes I grew up in – one of my foster parents were a gorgeous older couple who listened to those golden oldies like jazz and soul influences so there would have been some beautiful big voices in there as well. My biological mother, who bless her heart had severe mental illness, was a phenomenal musician. I actually know that I inherited my musical gift from her. She was an amazing piano player and saxophonist and she taught me to sing harmonies. So my harmony ears are from her and from her mother. So it comes through my family’s bloodline so its a really lovely way it connects me with my family even though I didn’t get raised by them. And I recorded a song about that and about thanking her for that gift she gave me.
People ask me how long I have been singing and I can remember being stood up to sing for my family as a five year old, so I’ve loved singing my whole life. My grandmother bought me my first guitar when I was twelve and then I bought my first guitar at seventeen, and it’s been a lifelong love affair ever since. Then I went to a great arts and high school – Applecross High School and a big shout out as there are lots of us from there and lots of us played guitar, so that’s where we just hit the ground running there. We were jamming and trading ideas and songs – that was the 70s so it was Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young, Bob Dylan so that real acoustic guitar-based folk and troubadour vibe and I really loved that heavier rock sound too. I mean I had brothers so bands like Status Quo, AC/DC, all that good Aussie pub rock too…
Sean: Status Quo’s ‘Twelve Gold Bars’ was my first leaning to rock. My mum & dad bought me the cassette one year for Christmas and it just blew me away until I eventually wore the tape out.
Rose: Yes great sounds. Status Quo, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, loved those heavy sounds of the late 60s and early 70s. And then when Grunge hit, I just loved that as well; Nirvana and Pearl Jam… I really love a vocal with gravel.
Sean: It’s an incredible plethora of music to reach into for your inspirations. That may explain why your last solo album ‘Under The Same Sun’ is very acoustic driven but your more recent singles have had a more rock edge to them, especially songs like ‘Blood on The Water’. It means we just don’t know what to expect from you next.
Rose: Well the next album is going to be called ‘Beauty & The Ashes’ so there will be a couple of singles getting released over the next six months and I’ll probably drop the album in the middle of the year, but it gave me permission to explore some darker themes and darker sounds – if I had had my time again I would have picked up an electric guitar twenty years ago [laughs] but I’ve picked it up now so grow where your planted. Its one of my favourite sayings. You can’t do everything, but you can start right now.
Sean: I know you have to shoot off for another interview shortly but I would love to wrap things up with some general questions if that’s ok.
Rose: Of course. Sure.
Sean: If you could invite three musicians, past or present, to join you for dinner, who would you have sat with you for the evening?
Rose: Wow. Who would I have sat with me? Australian or any?
Sean: Any musicians or singers.
Rose: It would have to be Stevie Nicks, Dave Grohl and Brandi Carlile. That is who I would have to have. I admire all of them so much.
Sean: What was the last album you listened to?
Rose: I heard Rebecca Barnard being interviewed on radio the other week. People may know her from Rebecca’s Empire who were a 90s indie band, and I heard her singing a song called ‘Black Coral’ and loved it so I immediately went to Spotify and put on the album and listened to the whole thing. I’m also really enjoying John Butler’s new album ‘Rivers Run’, which is ambient music and that has been very soothing, which is what he wanted it to be in these times.
Sean: I’ve saved the easiest one for last.
Rose: Uh-oh [laughs]
Sean: If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Rose: Crowded House – ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’, which even Stevie Nicks said was one of the most perfect songs ever written, and I know she included that in their set when Neil Finn was touring with them. So he got to perform that with Stevie Nicks doing harmony vocals and that whole band playing it. That song is just absolutely exquisite.
Sean: A great way to end our interview. Rose thank you so much for your time and telling me your story. We wish you all the best for release day and excited to see what 2025 brings with the new album.
Rose: Thanks Sean and thank you for your support.
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