Burning Brighter Than Ever

02/28/2003 2:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

The Barenaked Ladies once sang, "It's all been done before," and maybe in their case, since they tend to mine the same frat-boy gags and class-clown clichés over and over, that saying is appropriate. But ask Wayne Coyne, leader of BNL's far more adventurous Warner Bros. labelmates the Flaming Lips, if everything's already been done, and you'll get a drastically different--and much more encouraging--perspective on the future of pop music.

"I think that term gets thrown around so much, that everything's been done. I just never say that," Wayne insists emphatically in his commanding Oklahoma drawl. "Listen: You have to come up with the ideas. Just because you can't think of it doesn't mean it's not out there. If you can't think of any ideas, too bad. Someone will. Music will evolve. And it may evolve into something you don't like, but stick around, it will change again. If you have ideas, you should implement them as quickly as you can, because truth is, you can. Don't think, 'Oh, wouldn't it be great to do this?' and then five years later finally do it. Do it immediately. That's how music evolves. If you're thinking out of the realm of the music industry, and you have cancer and you hope someone comes up with a cure and somebody says, 'Oh, sorry, everything's been done," what will you say? 'Oh, OK, I'll just go home and die'? I say, f--kin' A: If you can't come up with new ideas, then you deserve to die. In the realm of art, that's fair. I don't mean that I want people to be hurt, or their families to be hungry...but in the realm of art, you better come up with ideas. People are buying your old ones; come up with some new ones. That's what it's all about."

Coming up with new ideas is what Wayne and his fellow Lips have been all about since they unveiled their first album of apocalyptic audities in 1987, but Wayne's forward-thinking philosophy particularly pertains to the last decade or so of his band's truly unorthodox career. Ever since the brief brush with moderate mainstream success that accompanied the release of their 1993 breakthrough album Transmissions From The Satellite Heart--which earned them a bona fide radio hit ("She Don't Use Jelly"), high praise from tastemakers Beavis & Butt-head, and the ultimate honor of a cameo on Beverly Hills 90210--the Lips have eagerly ventured off into murky territory where bands with less vision or talent have feared to tread. A bold new direction for the Lips was established in 1997 with their Parking Lot Experiments, in which a megaphone-wielding Wayne would gather willing commuters in cavernous multi-tiered parking garages and have them simultaneously crank cassettes of various sound effects and esoteric musical bits on their car stereos, thus creating a bizarre, echo-laden cacophony--a symphony of pure noise--that reverberated magnificently off the parking structures' cold concrete walls. Out of these sonic explorations sprang the similar Boombox Experiments, and, eventually, Zaireeka--an astoundingly ambitious, limited-edition, quadruple-CD set requiring that all four discs be played, rather inconveniently, at the same time on four separate CD players for full quadraphonic stereo sound. Obviously, the Lips' earlier incarnation as what Wayne dubs a "weird little rock band" had evolved into something else entirely--something even weirder.

"I think one thing you could say is that definitely by the time we went to make these last two records, our existence as the noisy guitar band had come to an end," asserts the Lips' formidable drummer/multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, who along with Wayne and bassist Michael Ivins makes up the group's core. Wayne is quick to agree: "When the world is filled up with noisy guitar bands who do funny little pop songs, it doesn't seem like we should be doing it," he muses. "Because you can take those elements out and notice how bad you suck when you take all the feedback and distortion out of your mixes."

So what happens, exactly, when the Flaming Lips choose to extract the feedback and distortion from their music? Well, it's safe to say it definitely does not suck. Their stunning, phenomenal latest album, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, was one of the best releases of 2002, picking up where their 1999 landmark, The Soft Bulletin (one of the best albums of the entire '90s), left off. Elements of both Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin are clearly audible in the new album's cosmic complexities and seemingly infinite layers upon layers of lush, rapturous, gorgeous sound, though the quirky, playfully skewered pop of "Jelly"-era Lips is still distinguishable in upbeat cuts like "Fight Test," "Do You Realize?" (which was recently featured in a memorable Intel commercial), and the title track. But Yoshimi's most mind-blowing tunes--while still splendidly, unforgettably melodic--are the ones that veer far from anything remotely resembling conventional alterna-pop, like the trance-inducing finale "Approaching Povonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)," which won a 2003 Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. As a whole, Steven fittingly describes the new album this way: "It's pretty bizarre. If you haven't heard us in four or five years, you'd think, 'What the hell?'"

One big factor in the band's evolution from guitar noise to orchestral splendor is no doubt the absence of guitarist Ronald Jones, who left the Lips after the recording of their 1995 album, Clouds Taste Metallic. The Lips obviously turned his departure, which could have been a major setback for a less enterprising band, into an impetus for the radical musical transformation showcased on The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi. "We look at it as an opportunity to do new stuff, and instead of looking at it as, 'Here's a whole bunch of stuff we can't do now,'" says Wayne of Ronald's exit, elaborating, "I think we have an agenda to not fall into the same old tricks. I'm like everybody else: I have my favorite things that I like and fall into--my routine of what I like--and I think that's fine if you like your coffee the same way every time, read the same paper every day. But when it comes to art, you have to realize you can't do that and still be stimulating. You have to say, 'Gee, I love this, but I've done that a million times. I must do something else, even if I'm not sure if it's any good.' So we do that and that's why it becomes sort of an agenda. We'll play something and say, 'That's beautiful--too bad we already have 10 songs just like that.' We have to force ourselves not to do the same record again."

One aspect of the Lips' music that hasn't changed much over the years is its hallucinogenic, almost deliriously druggy quality, which gives the impression that the band members are a bunch of raving-mad drug-fiends. Wayne admits this misperception is the band's own fault to some extent--and not just because of past song titles like "Jesus Shootin' Heroin," "Drug Machine In Heaven," and "Placebo Headwound." "We caused a lot of that. Early on, people would ask us, 'How do you come up with your songs?' and just out of blatant insecurity we'd say, 'Oh, we take a lot of drugs and do our music,' and sort of leave it at that," Wayne chuckles. "I think that's why a lot of people were drawn to us. They'd take 20 hits of LSD and listen to our music. Without having to explain that we have no idea what we're doing, we'd say, 'We take a lot of drugs and it just comes out that way.' But now, I try to say exactly the truth as opposed to some agenda for an image we're trying to portray. It's more interesting what we really do than what we'd have you believe we do.

"Most people I know who do drugs just take drugs and pass out. No records are being made," Wayne continues, dispelling the myth that ingesting a whole mess o' narcotics is a guaranteed method of finding artistic inspiration. "With Keith Richards, the Beatles, people think, 'Oh, you're in the studio, you take a bunch of drugs and suddenly everybody's sitting around..."

"And it's so magical..." Steven sarcastically interjects.

"'Picture yourself in a boat on the river...'" Wayne begins to warble in his best drugged-out hippie voice.

"Well, it couldn't be further from the truth," Steven insists.

"Even when I once talked to Brian Wilson, I hinted around, 'Do you think you're drug-damaged? Do you think you're crazy?'" recalls Wayne. "I think even himself, he would rather people realize that he works hard to come up with the ideas that he has. He doesn't just take some drugs and these ideas come into his head. It is a lot of work. To just dismiss it as saying, 'Oh, he's crazy and takes a lot of drugs'--that downplays just how hard it is."

Speaking of Brian Wilson, another misconception surrounding the Flaming Lips--or Wayne in particular--is that he, like Wilson, is a mentally unbalanced genius. Well, yes, it's not too far-fetched to say Wayne is a genius, but he is actually perfectly sane, maybe even saner than most people. Still, he knows the mythical image of the deranged artiste is a popular one. "People love that. Most people know more about Roky Erikson's drugs and mental illness than his music. Most people know more about Brian Wilson's eccentric sandbox stuff than his music. But I don't want that sort of thing. I think it would be easy to portray the loony things we do, like, 'I take drugs and do these cliché things,' but I'd rather people not think of me as mad or eccentric. If they don't like me, they can just say, 'Oh, he's stupid.' That's fine. I'd rather be wrong and stupid than looked at as this crazy guy who can't wipe his own ass."

"It seems like it's often the opposite of what you'd think it'd be. Seems like there might be a guy who comes up with wacky, crazy music and he's the most normal, down-to-earth guy. And the people who are insane and can't manage their lives make the most boring music sometimes," Steven rationalizes.

"I'm under the impression that the people who can't organize their lives have a hard time organizing any kind of ideas," Wayne adds. "Like with Edgar Allan Poe, people think, 'Oh, he's crazy, he's a drug addict!' It isn't true. That image is used to death. Everyone's some mad genius. Come on, that can't be so. I'd rather there were more sane people. If people would just stop trying to prove how crazy they are to everybody...My generation of people, hipsters or whatever, have gone to the greatest lengths of any generation before us to say, 'Look, we're crazy!' People will put piercings in their d--ks just to say, 'Ain't I f--kin' crazy?' That's what I mean. Call it stupid, that's fine by me. But to think it's eccentric and crazy and mirrors some deeper behavior? Give me a break."

The subject of genital piercing is one of much bemused interest to Wayne and Steven, surprisingly. It almost seems to hearken back to the "it's all been done before" topic debated earlier. "People have just seen it so much. Remember Lollapalooza, like seven years ago? That Mr. Lifto guy--lifting a car with his balls or whatever--you see that so much. Someone could be doing that in the next room," gasps Wayne.

"Now it's like a Ricki Lake topic: 'My husband won't stop doing it...'" quips Steven. "Instead of it being some radical new art, it's like, 'My husband pierced his penis and I want out.'"

"There's so much genital lifting going on ...there's hardly any music left!" Wayne declares dramatically. "It's a new format. 'Do you have a guy in your band who can lift stuff with his penis?' 'No, but we're getting a guy...' 'Oh, cool...'"

Actually, when the Flaming Lips play live, they don't bring any Mr. Lifto along, but they're accompanied by plenty of multimedia bells 'n' whistles, such as prerecorded samples and loops, a giant video screen, vats of fake blood and glitter confetti, jumbo balloons, various friends and crew members dressed in animal costumes (which featured prominently in the Lips' bizarre yet poignant "Do You Realize?" video), and, perhaps most notably, hand puppets. As with the 90210 appearance, if any other band did it, it would be totally uncool, but the Lips make puppets and balloons and throwing fistfuls of pixie dust into the crowd seem like the hippest schtick in the world. (However, Wayne does admit, "Our audience would be more into it than, say, maybe the audience that just wants to come get drunk and beat each other up.")

Though all this sensory overload ought to thrill even the most jaded of concertgoers, there are some who will likely accuse the Lips of copping out by relying on samples and prerecorded effects. Wayne's aware of this, but his reasoning for not adding extra members to the live band lineup is, "With the new record, there are so many orchestra sounds and miscellaneous keyboards--we could hire five guys to go on the road but...like, I went to see Brian Wilson. He has about 20 people playing with him. They're fine musicians, but nobody cares. You would not applaud once until you see Brian Wilson. You paid your money to see that. If I go to see a band, like the Cure, who's in the Cure? Robert Smith. Who else? The other guy with black hair. As long as Robert Smith's there, who cares? We could get other guys, but honestly, if I went to see a band play that I'd seen for four or five years and they augmented their sound with four or five nameless musicians, I wouldn't care. As long as the main guys are good, the other guys could be robots."

Wayne then pauses thoughtfully and adds, "I think robots would be cool. Maybe in 20 years we'll have robots..." He punctuates this last statement with a hearty laugh, but coming from Wayne--a man currently working on an avant-garde holiday movie about Christmas on the planet Mars--you know he's probably serious.