With a creative wanderlust, it’s a given to expect the unexpected from the Flaming Lips. Despite using a standard rock ‘n’ roll format – a frontman in Wayne Coyne who sings, the use of guitar, bass, drums and keyboards and songs that include verses and choruses — the psych rock veterans normally stray into a realm that is identifiably and truly their own.
Despite brief moments when the band crossed over into the mainstream – “She Don’t Use Jelly,” “90120” appearance, “Do You Realize?” covered in the Transformers: The Last Knight trailer – those are supplanted by wildly inventive endeavors such as the Zaireeka performance, giving concertgoers headphones to listen to a live concert or breaking the Guinness World Record for most live shows performed in different cities in 24 hours (eight shows across stops along the Mississippi Delta).
On record the Lips’ songs run the spectrum from lysergic workouts to beatific pop tunes. Each sonic twist and turn would make early psych practitioners such as Syd Barrett proud.
After a couple of intense endeavors – Embryonic and The Terror – and a number of interpretive projects based on material by the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Yes, the Flaming Lips, once again, follow a path of their own design on their 14th studio effort, the hallucinatory and luminous Oczy Mlody.
In my conversation with Coyne he described the musical ideas behind the new album. “I was always searching for a record that I could put on as I was going to sleep and it would be mellow enough that I could drift off to sleep and not be jarred.”
The album title and tales that encompass its 12 tracks are a figment of Coyne’s fantastical imagination based on a Polish translation of the novel Close To Home Erskine Caldwell. Unknowing to the words and their English translation, he highlighted passages that caught his fancy and through them came up with the lyrics and concepts that ended up on such songs as “The Castle,” “There Should Be Unicorns” and “Nigdy Nie (Never No).”
We discuss the new album compared to the band’s last two full-length efforts, his working life as an artist creating music and visual presentations on stages and in museums, finding a “way through the sadness,” working with producer David Fridmann and more.
JPG: There’s that saying that if you choose a job that you love you never work a day of your life. So, does it ever feel like work for you because it always seems as if you’re having a good time and excited about moving from one project to another?
WC: Well, yeah. That’s part of the job is to make it look like you’re having fun. (laughs) Well…doing…I call it art and I’m not proud of that but it is just that in a way. It’s because there is no real limit to how long something should take and how much effort and all that you’re going to put in to it. So, it’s definitely a lot of work, especially when it’s not going well and you still have to make it work with the same amount of money and time you started out with. Every deadline is like you need it right now, always right now. It’s never casual. It’s always go go go.
But I think that’s suits me. My intensity. I’m glad to always be confronting the next creation — “Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go” — but I wouldn’t say work compared to what I did before just being in the Flaming Lips all the time. It’s not the same. I’m always aware that the Flaming Lips someday could end. Then, I think, “What would I do?” (slight laugh) I’ve no other skills other than just being me and doing my thing. I’ve become more aware of that when I think, “Gee, this is tough.” Then, i think, “Yeah, but it’d be a lot tougher if you were….”
I definitely worked hard jobs. Even after we got signed to Warner Brothers there were two summers or so that I worked with a friend of my younger brother’s and all summer we installed sprinkler systems in lawns. That meant digging deep, deep trenches in the middle of the summer, all day, starting at six o’clock in the morning and go until the sun went down at seven o’clock at night. Man, I would say I loved it as it went because I was in very good shape but I was very glad not having to do it. I didn’t like getting up early, just tough, tough thing to do.
JPG: I had a summer job like that, doing construction. A job like that reminds you how badly you want to do what you want to do in life.
WC: Yeah, and it doesn’t mean that those jobs suck. Most of the guys that I worked with, they were great at it and they had the mind for it and the foresight and experience. I was simply doing the job because I needed the money. That always doesn’t work. You end up grinding away. It’s not the job’s fault but definitely more my fault.
Even doing this today, I was working on stuff down at the warehouse, working on a t-shirt designs and a couple of things, and now I’m doing interviews; even doing interviews I’m just talking. It’s the easiest job in the world.
JPG: Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to see you play recently. Are you still putting your equipment together before you perform that night?
WC: Well, in a sense. Most of the really bad stuff has been put together earlier in the day to make sure it’s going to work. There’s a little bit of an element. We got out there. We all take our stations and do a little bit of last-minute checking. There’s always a lot of things that can go wrong, especially when you’re using a lot of samplers and computers and things like that.
I don’t know if you would be that aware of it. If you’re in a band or something like that and you’ve done some set up, you might be aware of what we’re doing but a lot of times I don’t think the audience quite knows what we’re doing. Sometimes, I explain it to them what we’re doing (slight laugh). They’re used to people walking out there and da-da-da-daaaa. We kinda walk out there and…but that’s kind of our punk rock leftover thing. It’s our show. It’s our stuff. It’s our duty. It’s our responsibility.
JPG: The reason I bring it up is because I think how great it is that after all these years you’re still grounded and still have that attitude and that approach. You’re still doing things DIY; even looking at your equipment, which is held together by lots and lots of duct tape.
WC: Yeah. Plus, it helps us not be as nervous and all that. You’re getting ready to do something. To not be involved would just drive you crazy. So, we like to be onstage and we know what it’s going to sound like. We know where to stand and things like that.
It may be different for groups that are on a giant stadium tour where every place that you play regardless of where it is your staging and everything is exactly the same. But for us, it’s not like that. A lot of it is we try to set it up the same but every day is like, “How are we going to do this? How are we going to do that?” I think it’s good. I like that it’s — up to the very last second — you’re trying to make this particular show work the best you can and suddenly you turn around and it’s like, “Oh! Everybody’s here! So, now we’ll do that part of the show.” Definitely for me, it would drive me crazy not to be involved.
JPG: How do you relate Oczy Mlody to the musical side of art versus the performance or is it one thing under the Flaming Lips umbrella?
WC: Well…in the beginning you think of these things as they’re all in the same flow but, luckily, you do compartmentalize…all the time. I could be working on a music video and then later in the day be working on brand new music and later in the day working on an album cover that’s absolutely just visual.
For me even when I was a teenager, in my mind I just put all that together and said, “It’s all the same thing. Making a song. Making a painting. A song title…” To me it would all be the same. I would approach it as if it was all the same.
But I’m lucky that as much I’m in it all I do have a lot of people that are really badass and good at what they’re doing and helping. I am in no way skilled at any of it in particular. There’s a lot of people helping me do it that are absolutely good at what they’re doing and I wouldn’t be able to do it without them.
That’s part of my luck. I’ve attracted those type of people that want to be involved and contribute their ideas and skill. That lets it all evolve into feeling like it’s all connected and I want that. It would be very boring for me if it was just me all the time. So, I’m glad that there’s always either something really magnificent that I get to play with or something that’s strange and I don’t know what to do with it. I like all those sorts of things.
JPG: There’s the idea about how art should elicit an emotional response. And that brings me to watching the “Backspin” on Yahoo clips, and while discussing The Terror you mentioned that “We always find a way through the sadness.” That could be said about other songs by you with “Do You Realize?” being an obvious example, as well as through your live performance. Is it a desire to take your audience beyond the sadness of everyday life?
WC: Well, I don’t think you can pick and choose. Most of the really powerful connections between melody and lyrics and emotion and all that, they just kind of happen. A lot of times Steven and I, part of us will feel like it’s cool that we did that. Part of us knows that just happened, and we were there while it was happening and we allowed it to go and flow and start using it as our creation.
So, I think it’s things that we know affect us. But you can’t always know that it’s going to affect the audience the same way it’s affecting you but you can’t do anything about that. I always tell younger musicians, “You just have to do what you like and not worry about what’s cool and what’s gonna work because there’d be no way you can ever know.” You could do a thousand studies every day and it would all still come up with, (speaks big dumb guy voice) “I don’t know. I like this one. I don’t like that one.” It would just be that simple. There’s nothing to it. That you love it and that you’re in love with it and it’s compelling to you is all you can do.
If you’re lucky, some bit of what you’re doing is appealing to an audience. If you go along with lots and lots of stuff the way we have, sometimes you can pick and choose. You can say, “This could go that way, which would love or it could go that way, which we would love.” Sometimes, we’re picking between two things that we really love and it’s not that big of a struggle. It’s not that hard to go with the thing that might work better than the thing that won’t work. Most of it is based on anything other than you’re just following this subtle urge to do this and not do that.
JPG: Listening to Oczy Mlody compared to The Terror and Embyronic those seemed psychedelic but in more of muscular forceful manner…
WC: …Yeah. Totally. I would say aggressive. Noisier and aggressive.
JPG: This new one is more hallucinatory like headphone music.
WC: Oh, yeah. For sure. Not all the time, but I was searching for a record that, not that we would make one, but I was always searching for a record that I could put on as I was going to sleep and it would be mellow enough that I could drift off to sleep and not be jarred. That kept coming up again and again.
This desire to be mellow, Steven and I, if you watched us from outer space we would do that over and over and over without any complaint. We do, sometimes, like that we have to get out of this, we have to do something different. Records like Embryonic and even The Terror are us making a slightly painful decision to not do the thing that we like to do that’s soothing and easy. Not that a record like Oczy Mlody is easy. It’s just that that type of song that’s mid-tempo and is building on emotions and melody and not just jarring sounds and brashness…I know that we always get a little restless. If we make a record like this, it’s almost like, in reaction, we’ll make something else, but maybe we don’t have to be so reactionary now. I don’t know. (laughs)
JPG: As far as the songs, construction-wise, I’m thinking of the record company line about, “Where’s the single?” “The Castle” works a little bit like that but there’s not a “Yoshimi” or “Do You Realize?” or even “The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat)” where the Flaming Lips could play it unplugged. It sounds like sound construction. I’ll admit that it took a few times listening to Oczy Mlody to get into it and now I really love it whereas Embryonic I immediately was drawn into it. “Yeah! Play that LOUD!”
WC: When you say that you put on Embryonic and you were like, “YEAH!” I get that. I get that. I get people who walk up to me and say they’re favorite record is Zaireeka, and I’m like, “Alright!” I’m on your side, for sure.
JPG: I remember I was scared of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. I had it but I didn’t listen to it for years. Then, when I finally did I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of nice.”
WC: But, that’s a cool thing that can happen to you. Suddenly, there’s a little part of your mind that is open to it or is more curious about it. I remember trying to listen to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew back in the ‘70s. My brother’s friends would have it and I would just be like, “What is this clunky weird shit?” It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that, suddenly, I was like, “Oh! Fuck! Now I totally get it.” And I couldn’t even conceive of why I didn’t get it. Most of my life I couldn’t get it at all and suddenly it’s…perfect. I think that happens to people all the time, especially when you keep listening to music and keep discovering things.
Most people stop listening to music when they’re in their early 20s, and that’s it. Then, they just listen to that music for the rest of their lives. If you’re always looking for stuff, your mind’s always being attacked and being subverted without you knowing it.
JPG: Going back to what you were talking about different directions of a song and you and Steven decide what to do with it…First off, I checked and you have worked with producer Dave Fridmann on more albums than George Martin did with The Beatles.
WC: (laughs) Well, we made a lot more records than The Beatles did. That’s for sure.
JPG: Just thought I’d bring that up as an interesting statistic. But seriously, you’ve worked with Dave for a long time. What does he bring to the proceedings? When you have different approaches to a song is he the one you turn to influence it going one way or another?
WC: He does have a completely objective point of view. He doesn’t care what the songs are about. He doesn’t care how they were made. A lot of times he’s not there when we’re doing the beginning bits of it and what was involved and what we threw away and what we liked and what we didn’t like. The way we work now, especially, he’s hearing it saying, “Does this work? Do I like it? What is this? Is it boring?”
As hard as that is, sometimes, to accept that’s why we like him. He’s definitely outside of what we’re about and he’s gonna bring something to it that we wouldn’t bring to it. And he has an insanely good way to really make shit sound insane, which gets better and better and better. Steven and I working with the engineer here in our studio, we get it to a certain level. Then, we’re like, “This is beyond us.” Dave will get ahold of it and he can really make this “thick” and “bright” and all these things that we want, and dynamic.
So, more and more that’s become part of his power. He’s just got a great ear. He works fast and he’s intense. He doesn’t really say he likes something if he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t beat around the bush. He’ll just tell you immediately, “That fucking song is too slow. Let’s speed it up.”
What we say about Dave is he helps you make the record you want to make as opposed to…he’s like, “I’m not gonna get you guys in shape. I’m not gonna put you in time. I don’t care if you’re in tune. If you want to be in tune I’ll make sure you are. If you want to be in time…”
When we went in to make the Zaireeka record, the four CDs playing at the same time, he was like, “Let’s do it motherfuckers!” What he would not tolerate is getting into it and then us going, “Oh, well, it’s too hard. Now we don’t want to do it.” He wouldn’t tolerate that. He’d be like, “Get the fuck outta here.” Even when going in to make The Soft Bulletin to be stupidly ambitious like we sometimes are, he’s helping you instead of saying, “That’s silly. We can never do that. Let’s make a lesser version of that.” He’s always like, “Let’s go all the way and hope that we get there.” He’s capable too, different than I am. I’m capable of always getting everybody to do it but I don’t know how to do it. Between working with him and having a musician like Steven and all this stuff around me, it’s always being pushed to the next level. David, definitely, he is the Man. When he gets done working with us he’s already done a Spoon record, he’s already done a MGMT record since he’s done our record. He’s always pushing stuff.
*JPG: The other day I heard someone singing “Do You Realize?” during the Transformers: The Last Knight trailer. That kind of blew my mind…
WC: You did. I forget what the DJ’s name was. (note: It’s British film director Frederick Lloyd composing under the moniker of Ursine Vulpine) I loved it. It wasn’t us. I wish we had done that to it as well.
It seems like a thing that happens with big budget sci-fi movies. You take a heartfelt slightly hippie song and make it kind of a doomsday electronic song. I thought it was great.
JPG: Your interactive art exhibit, “The King’s Mouth,” are you doing more installations of it because I think it’s great to encourage the inner child in adults?
WC: I hope so. We’ve done it at a second museum and, each place that we’ve done it at, it’s been quite a success. But, we don’t know if there will be 50 more museums around the world that would want it or if we’ll have a few. The next one is going to be in Portland, Oregon (opening on November 1 at the 511 Gallery in the Pacific Northwest College of Art). So, that’ll be pretty great.
I think this is what museums want. I think this is what museums need. I would definitely go to more art museums if they had things like “The King’s Mouth” in there.
