Waxin' And Waynin' With The Flaming Lips

04/11/2000 2:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

To describe the Flaming Lips as eccentric would be something of an understatement. In their impressive career, they've released a four-CD set, Zaireeka, meant to be played simultaneously on four separate stereo systems (a Circuit City salesperson's wet dream!); they've organized their notorious Parking Lot Experiment and Boombox Experiments, in which participants concurrently play cassette tapes of various sound effects and musical pieces to create one giant sonic symphony; and they've even passed out headphones and Walkmans at elaborate concerts that combined preprogrammed entertainment with live performance. And in 1999, they topped themselves yet again with their phenomenal album, The Soft Bulletin, one of the most critically acclaimed releases of 1999 (it was LAUNCH.com managing editrix Lyndsey Parker's top pick of the year, in fact).

Lyndsey Parker met two of the Lips, mastermind Wayne Coyne and multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, during the South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, where they cleared up the misconception that the Lips' inspiration is chemically-induced and bemoaned the fact that genital piercing has become so widespread that it's now just another Gen-X cliché.

Look for Wayne on HBO's music series, Reverb, on which he interviews the equally misunderstood genius Brian Wilson, to whom he is often compared.

LAUNCH:
I was reading your bio...How did the making of Zaireeka influence this record? I know the recording of the two overlapped.

WAYNE:
Oh, you read that thing I wrote. We sort of got into this mode of doing a lot of recording. On Zaireeka, it was such a technical thing; we'd take a song, and there would be so many different approaches to make it be this--to encompass all these different moods and sounds and stuff. Some of the songs, it just didn't work out. We're not one of those bands that just puts out everything that we do.

STEVEN:
Especially these days...

WAYNE:
We try not to do that. We try to be objective. Save the best stuff--that should be what the public gets. When we were making Zaireeka, the four-CD record, we'd have these songs that wouldn't really work like that, so all along we wound up with these rejected songs that were fine, but just didn't fit into that format. And so really, it's been a couple years in the making: this song would happen at the beginning, and then right at the end, there would be this song. So I don't know if it's cohesive...

STEVEN:
At the beginning, there was some confusion. The first time we went to the studio, we actually were recording normal songs. They could very well be on this record. After a month, we realized if the four-CD thing is coming out, we should work on that. The normal songs, which wound up on this record, sort of fell by the wayside...And then it all became mixed-up.

WAYNE:
Yeah, as we figured out technically how to do it: "Oh, these songs would be better like that." It all gets convoluted. We've done it so long and so much that it all just blurs into one big recording session.

LAUNCH:
How come certain songs didn't make it, how come they didn't work on the four-CD set? What was wrong with them?

WAYNE:
It seemed like we'd almost have to destroy what was good about them to make them work. One side of the song we'd be playing would have harmony melodies to another side that's playing harmony melodies. They don't sound so good on their own, but together would make up something that was better. And some songs just wouldn't work like that. You take them apart and it's unpleasant. We didn't feel like it was the song's fault, so much, we sort of felt like what we did to it, made it worse. So we try to take the doctor approach: "If you can't help, don't hurt. Don't do damage to yourself." Let's just come up with other songs. We didn't feel like, "These songs must work at any cost!" We'd just move on and hope the next one would work out. It's really unpredictable. It was only after doing four or five of them that we discovered a format that you could begin to see how things would work. We started out mapping stuff out, and that doesn't really work. It might work for one song, but then it would be totally obsolete for the next. All this is just technical crap that doesn't have anything to do with what the music really sounds like. It's just organizing stuff, which sometimes is just impossible.

LAUNCH:
I got the impression from your bio that it was stressful to record The Soft Bulletin--was it a frustrating experience for you?

WAYNE:
Anytime...well, compared to being in Vietnam, no.

STEVEN:
But there are times like, "Do we have any ideas left? Are they any good?"

WAYNE:
You want to take on all these big ideas that take a lot of time, money, and cooperation, and they strain people's relationships. It's hard to do. You have to do a lot of work that you're not sure is going to work out. And we're not experts. There's no guide as to how to express yourself. It's stressful only in those ways. But otherwise, we're fine.

LAUNCH:
Steven, it seemed like you were having some problems with your playing. What happened to your hand, when you were bitten by a poisonous spider?

STEVEN:
I was in the hospital for a few days. My hand got infected; it's all tore-up. It's still numb. But I didn't lose any major feeling in my hand. It's not a very interesting story...

WAYNE:
It's got good drama! You know, at first, it seems you could have died, but that quickly passed.

STEVEN:
Actually, I could have died.

WAYNE:
But only for a couple minutes.

STEVEN:
I could have died. By the time I got to the hospital, there was a red streak down my arm. And they say if you see that, then hey, you're on the way to death--the infection is traveling to your heart. But I got there in time, and $14,000 later, I walked out.

WAYNE:
I quickly thought, "Hey, he could die." Then he couldn't die. "Maybe they'll cut his arm off or something." I was looking for some drama. Maybe a finger. Maybe a big scar.

STEVEN:
Yeah, the scar is really nasty.

WAYNE:
But he's such an intricate musician that to lose his hand...I mean, I could lose actually everything, except my head.

STEVEN:
And we'd probably figure out some way to make that work. Put the head on a table.

WAYNE:
Just this head on a table bitching at you: "Goddamnit!!!"

STEVEN:
It hurt. It hurt a lot. It sucked. But you know, no big deal...

LAUNCH:
So there was no Def Leppard-type situation, where you almost became a one-armed drummer?

WAYNE:
Now, that's a great story.

STEVEN:
I guess part of it was that it was a weird series of mishaps that happened at the same time. Michael, the bass player, was stopped at a light and a tire that had blown off a car in motion came right towards him. It slammed into the car. He barely moved his head or it would have crushed him. Or something. A lot of weird things happened all at the same time.

WAYNE:
And even though they don't relate...

STEVEN:
He was trying to find something to put in the bio...

WAYNE:
You make stories up about them.

LAUNCH:
But these stories all wound up in your "Spiderbite" song on the new album.

WAYNE:
They sounded like good metaphors for the pain and agony of love.

LAUNCH:
The first verse is about Steven's spider bite. The second verse is about Michael's car accident. But the third verse is about someone who falls in love and gets his heart broken. So who was that third verse about?

WAYNE:
I was kind of building it on this self-destruction--or natural destruction, you know, then unnatural destruction and self-destruction. Some theme like that. There was one [fourth] verse that was supposed to be about a little bit of madness and how that's destructive.

STEVEN:
What, was it about a plane or something?

WAYNE:
Yeah, [about] being paranoid, but it didn't work.

STEVEN:
The fourth verse...too long. Just cut it out.

LAUNCH:
Speaking of madness, though, do you think that's a misconception about you--that you're crazy?

WAYNE:
People love that. Rick [the Flaming Lips' publicist] and I were talking about that. He was down here [in Austin] about 10 years ago, seeing Roky Erickson, and most people know more about [Roky's] drugs and mental illness than his music. A week ago I interviewed Brian Wilson, and most people know more about the eccentric sandbox stuff than his music. People like those stories because they can relate. With music, they don't know what it means, so they try to look for personality and say, "I can relate to that." But I don't want that sort of thing. I think it would be easy to portray the loony things we do--"I take drugs and do these cliché things"--but we really don't, and I'd rather people look at me and not think of me as mad or eccentric or anything. 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.

STEVEN:
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.

WAYNE:
I'm under the impression that the people who can't organize their lives have a hard time organizing any kind of ideas. 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 dicks 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. Maybe some of you people are pierced out there, I don't mean to offend anybody, but I don't think it's legitimately crazy. Just silly.

LAUNCH:
Another misconception is that everything you do is drug-inspired...

WAYNE:
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...

STEVEN:
Really, you'd say that to people?

WAYNE:
Sure, you know...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." So I think we're responsible, because we'd just say that and people believed us. We didn't expect people to believe a lot of the things we've said. 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.

STEVEN:
There's a lot of examples, but...

WAYNE:
I'm not saying...I don't do drugs. You do drugs. There's some instances where people can do drugs and do music and they're not necessarily connected in the way. I think people, somewhere along the way--Keith Richards, the Beatles--people think, "Oh, you're in the studio, you take a bunch of drugs and suddenly everybody's sitting around..."

STEVEN:
And it's so magical...

WAYNE:
[Singing} "Picture yourself in a boat on the river..."

STEVEN:
Couldn't be further from the truth.

WAYNE:
Most people I know who do drugs just take drugs and pass out. No records are being made. When they get done, maybe they'll do something.

STEVEN:
I guess people think that really happens.

WAYNE:
Even last week, when I talked to Brian Wilson, I hinted around, "Do you think you're drug-damaged? Do you think you're crazy?" 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. A lot of money and organizing and people to make it work. To just dismiss it as saying, "Oh, he's crazy and takes a lot of drugs"--I think that downplays just how hard it is.

LAUNCH:
How'd you get that interview with Brian? What was it for?

WAYNE:
You know that Reverb show? I think they're trying to change their format into a more watchable program. I think I was third on the list of people to interview him. I think they tried to get Billy Corgan and he didn't want to do it or something. I stepped right up: "Sure, I'll do it." You know, he was on tour. He was going out and playing some shows for his new record. It was a big deal that Brian Wilson was finally playing some shows. He's actually quite nice. I asked him if he was a genius, if he was crazy. His answers were quite telling. He thinks of himself as a genius, but he downplays it as no big deal. He thinks of it as clever: "I get lucky. I'm clever." And in some ways, that's probably closer to what people mean. "Genius" becomes this untouchable thing, you're born a genius. Are you born a genius? Is Stevie Wonder a genius?

STEVEN:
Right, right.

WAYNE:
If you put out a bad record, are you still a genius? It all gets so confusing. Some of those terms become meaningless, but they get used so much. It's so overused that it's meaningless. But they do still have meaning, and people don't know what they mean. Sometimes I ask people, "What do you think love means?" Some people really don't know. "What is an idea? Just tell me specifically, what is an idea?" "Well, uh, I don't know." If you really think about it, we use these terms all the time and they don't have a concrete meaning. So I try to get around some of that when I talk about our ideas and our music and stuff, as not being some abstract thing that we don't even understand. We sit with these songs for years sometimes; we better understand them by the time we're done.

LAUNCH:
Do you usually go into each album with a new purpose? A new ambition?

WAYNE:
I would say that's true, only because you have this opportunity to do something. I don't think, even though Steven is a great musician, we don't think of ourselves as performers who do a certain thing. We think of ourselves as--it is our ideas that we're all about, and if we don't have new ideas, we're not really worth much.

STEVEN:
And things were so different this time.

WAYNE:
Yeah, we didn't have [former guitarist] Ronald [Jones] anymore. 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. I think we seem like we have an agenda, only 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 everyday. But when it comes to art, you have to--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. Because [Steven will] sit there and play something and we'll say, "That's beautiful--too bad we already have 10 songs just like that." And we'll hit each other. We must do something...and expand even through our own ideas...Or I'll come in with a two-chord song, and he'll say, "Come on, how many of those are we going to do?" We have to force ourselves not to do the same record again. I hate to say it, but you know, listening to the The Ramones' records, after the 20th one...you know, I'm not too moved by it, to be polite.

STEVEN:
But you're asking about a grand scheme or a concept, right?

LAUNCH:
Not really--but what was your intention with this album?

STEVEN:
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.

WAYNE:
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. So many people are doing it, it shouldn't be something that you should look for. Five or six years ago, it was different to put in these loud, absurd sounds in these almost childlike sort of songs. And we didn't even come up with that as a sort of a...

STEVEN:
..."grand concept"...

WAYNE:
...yeah, a recipe of something we're going to do. It just happened. But you see, people copy stuff. We copy other bands. But it gets copied so much, you see it so much, that it gets boring through repetition. Just because we saw it happen so much, you almost feel like, well...

STEVEN:
Yeah, and it's not like we said, "We can't do that anymore." It's like, we have done that already, let's just keep that in mind and try a new way.

WAYNE:
But to think that it would end up being, you know, because I think it's too simple to think if you take those elements out, you become more accessible...

STEVEN:
Especially now.

WAYNE:
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, you know, so it isn't as simple as having---if we didn't have that, we'd have this. Not having that just opens a whole new problem area. Well, if you don't do that, what are you going to do, what are you capable of doing? So, yeah, I guess there was an agenda, but also just to go into the unknown a little bit and dick around in the studio a bit.

LAUNCH:
I see these shows you're performing are being billed as the "world's first headphones concerts." Can you talk a bit about that?

STEVEN:
We ordered 500 headphones and 500 little Walkman things. We take our mix from the board, send it through an FM transmitter, and you take your little radio and headphones and dial into the station, and it's basically our whole mix goes through there and we have a big video screen so you can watch the video and hear the music and it's pretty exciting. Logistically, it's tough to pull off.

WAYNE:
Those logistical sort of things you have to work out--from the sheer technical side it works, but it's like--starving people in Africa, they need food. But getting it there and getting it to them is impossible. It's a simple idea, but it's organizing it all that's hard. That's where we are: the food is on the dock, but the people are still starving. I'm sure in a couple of months, we'll work out the annoying things of doing it.

LAUNCH:
What is going on with the Boombox/ Parking Lot Experiment thing? Are you ever going to do those things again?

WAYNE:
I'm sure we'll do it again, at a festival in Copenhagen. Hopefully we can do two or three things at the same time. But really, it's all us doing music--so even though it seems probably like five different identities, it's like, we do this stuff all the time so it's like, "Oh let's just go do that." Hopefully we can pursue whatever kind of music, concepts, or anything we want.

STEVEN:
That'd be cool to do both. A week of live shows and then some college in the Northeast wants to pay us a lot of money to do a Boombox Experiment...

WAYNE:
Because I do think people are interested in new ideas, not just popular ideas or ideas that make money. There are times when people say, "Let's see what can happen!" Luckily, we can fall into that gap sometimes. We have just enough notoriety that if we call and tell people we want to do these weird shows, they let us do whatever we want. At the moment, we're in a good spot to be experimental and hopefully popular at the same time.

LAUNCH:
Besides the logistics of getting the headphones back, how have these shows gone overall?

WAYNE:
I think it went good, really, I think...

STEVEN:
I was surprised. People seemed to respond to songs they'd never heard before, and that's usually a good thing.

WAYNE:
Our audience would be more into it than, say, maybe the audience that just wants to come get drunk and beat each other up.

STEVEN:
Or if we're opening for someone else.

WAYNE:
When we do our own shows, we have more of a say over who the people are, and we have more luck. If we are able to do it and keep doing it, it's not as hard as people think, and I don't think we'll be the only ones trying out these ideas. It's just so much fun. We're not doing it because we think it will change the world or change people's perceptions of music; it's just fun. It's just a different thing you can do in a concert, and with our sort of music, we try to portray our ideas in concert the best that we can. I use the analogy, if you're a painter, it took you a year to make that painting--the way we make our records--and you take it on tour and have to repaint it in two minutes, it would suck. I can't do it! So we try to present our shows and our music in the same way. The headphones just make everything we do--you can hear it a little better. That's what sound's all about. If you can't hear it, there ain't much there. So, it's all about sound.

LAUNCH:
It seems like an outgrowth of the Boombox/ Parking Lot Experiment concept.

WAYNE:
Totally, yeah. Just doing those and seeing the response and really--our interest in how you can go further in that way and just seeing if people accept it. One led to the other. Even musically as well, some of the music we were doing with the Parking Lot Experiments and the Boombox thing, all that really has just sort of been integrated into what we are fully now. When we first started, it was like we were this weird little rock band and we like to come over here sometimes and dick around in the studio. We really just pursue the things we like instead of thinking, "We'd love to do that, but we should do this." Seems like if you do what you like, you don't need people to encourage you and you don't need money. You just do it.

LAUNCH:
You are on one of the biggest major labels, Warner Bros., and they do seem to give you a lot of freedom. It's not like all they care about is you having more radio hits...

WAYNE:
Oh, they want 'em! Don't get me wrong. We hide under the desk a lot, is what we do.

STEVEN:
They're passive-aggressive.

WAYNE:
Don't get me wrong. There's some lovely people there who love music and art, but they want to make money. And we want money, too. Money's great, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to paint it like we're some art project that gets funded by Warner Bros. or something. The agenda's the same with us. Sell records or hit the road, fellas.

LAUNCH:
Speaking of hitting the road, you didn't play live for three years. Did you miss playing live?

STEVEN:
When we played our last few shows with Ron, we were so burnt a little bit anyway, and then when he left the band, it was so up in the air anyway that we didn't think about playing live again anyway. When this new record came out, we were out there anyway, doing the Boombox Experiments...

WAYNE:
I don't really miss [playing live]. It's not that I don't like it, I just feel like it's like doing a book tour or something: "Hi, buy our record!" Honestly, that's what it feels like. I really like driving in the car and listening to tapes, though, and that's what you do when you're on tour.

STEVEN:
He likes that, yeah.

WAYNE:
I sing in the car. I love doing that. I do that at home.

STEVEN:
[Playing live] is fun for me, 'cause I play guitar and piano and don't have to play the drums. I don't miss the drums at all.

WAYNE:
I don't miss [playing live]. I think, to me that's the Elvis syndrome, where people feel like they have to be in front of the audience that loves them. Gosh, no. I do it and get out of there as quickly as I can.

LAUNCH:
How do you pull off the sound of The Soft Bulletin live?

STEVEN:
We have the drums and various miscellaneous sounds pre-recorded. And we have them on a videotape synched up with these videos Wayne has made. You get a video and this music that's pre-recorded. It's mostly the sounds from the record, anyway. And that all comes out of the PA at the same time. [Bandmate] Michael [Ivins] plays bass and guitar. Wayne sings and plays a little guitar. He has a gong onstage. He does that.

WAYNE:
And hand puppets!

STEVEN:
And hand puppets. And then I have piano and guitar, too. I switch off. Some of the old stuff, some new stuff.

WAYNE:
And there's videos of him playing drums.

STEVEN:
He has videos for every song. It's pretty bizarre. If you haven't seen us in four or five years you'd think, "What the hell?"

WAYNE:
Especially the new record, there are so many orchestra sounds and miscellaneous keyboards. We could hire five guys to go on the road but--even last week, I went to see Brian Wilson. He has like, 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 ago 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. I thought robots would be cool. Maybe in 20 years we'll have robots...

STEVEN:
Cyborgs.

LAUNCH So you prefer using recordings to hiring real touring musicians?

WAYNE:
Well, yeah, honestly.

STEVEN:
That's what we're saying. There's so many different sounds...

WAYNE:
It goes back to the painting sort of thing. In many ways, with playing live you sacrifice the ideas that the song has. Because you can't do everything.

STEVEN:
Now, "Slow Nerve Action" off the Transmissions From The Satellite Heart record, we used to try to play it live and the drums never sounded like they did on the record. Now, we just use the drums on the record and play everything else live. It's the best of both worlds. You get to see him singing, and get to hear the really cool-sounding drums at the same time.

WAYNE:
We don't know if it works.

STEVEN:
It sounds good onstage.

WAYNE:
We just do it because we like it, and hope that everyone else likes it too.

LAUNCH:
Playing to pre-recorded tracks could be considered a cop-out.

WAYNE:
That would be fair. If people think playing to pre-recorded music is a cop-out, that's fine. I used to think that, but I don't anymore. Gosh, if rap acts didn't play to a backing track, what would they do?

STEVEN:
In fact, you see some rap acts live and it just doesn't sound good.

WAYNE:
You prefer the tape.

STEVEN:
And we do have the hand puppets. You've got the good videos going. It's entertaining.

WAYNE:
We're just trying to entertain the troops. We would actually kill people onstage if we could get away with it, but there's a limit.

STEVEN:
There's laws against that.

WAYNE:
If someone was to come up and kill themselves onstage...would you let them?

STEVEN:
I wouldn't. You would...

WAYNE:
If someone wanted to come up and pierce their dick onstage...

STEVEN:
...would you let them?

WAYNE:
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.

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

WAYNE:
And my mom has even seen it now. There's so much genital lifting going on, there's hardly any music left. 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...

LAUNCH:
So do you feel it's really tough to do something new or shocking to get someone's attention? Like everything's been done already?

WAYNE:
I think that term gets thrown around so much--that everything's been done--I just never say that. Listen, you have to come up with the ideas. 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, okay, I'll just go home and die"? I just say, just because you can't think of it doesn't mean it's not out there. I would never say that [there's nothing left to create] and hope I never will. It's just never true. 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. And it may evolve again like everything else. 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. We try to do it immediately. And that's how music evolves. And five years from now, the music scene looks nothing like it did five years ago. And I say, f--kin' A! If you can't come up with new ideas, 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. I'm saying, That's what it's all about. People don't need sympathy. They need to think.

STEVEN:
You got kind of brash there at the end!