Every month the owner gets a new bundle from people donating their bodies to science or whatever. I didn’t realise I lived my whole life in Oklahoma where there’s a shop which sells human skulls. Yes, about those skulls, Wayne… “The 24-hour song is about death, and came inside an actual dead person’s skull,” he laughs. It’s the same with us – we love you, and I really do mean that! It’s like with the the human skulls: ‘Oh my God, The Flaming Lips really do love us!’” “Radiohead never seem to run out of ideas, and if you’re a fan of theirs, you feel like they love you. It’s about respecting the hardcore faithful.
But it isn’t just ideas for their own sake, he argues. “I wanted to create more of an art-world scenario,” he explains of his latest schemes, adding that he sees Radiohead as peers because they look for new ways to present their work. “Even Sgt Pepper came out with cut-out buttons, and The White Album came with posters. “We always thought Pink Floyd seemed involved in packaging and the way things The Flaming Lips’ increasingly elaborate packaging concepts, their attention to detail and the statements they make with every release have precedents as well. It was about more than just where the right notes were.” Those bands were fun and had personality. I loved that shit because it was retarded! The same as Rick Wakeman with his crazy cape. And the way would stab his organ with knives in his leather jacket. “That’s one of the reasons I liked ELP – they were brash. How about ELP? Their technoflash and pyrotechnical virtuosity is, in a perverse way, “punk rock”, isn’t it? He’s got a quirk, making it feel as though he’s doing his own thing. And Jon Anderson is a funny, unique singer. That’s what I like about Yes – Chris Squire’s crazy fucking distorted and freaky bass. There has to be something ‘retarded’ in it for it to appeal to me. But for me, Genesis had no element of punk rock about them. “There might be elements that remind you of Genesis without us being aware of it. “When you make something that lasts for six hours, it can go anywhere stylistically,” he reasons. While recognising why connections are made between Flaming Lips and prog bands such as King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Genesis and Queen (whose Bohemian Rhapsody they covered for a tribute album), he also sees links with post-rock and krautrock bands, especially on 6 Hour Song. And I love the way Jon Anderson sings – I wish I could sing as good as he does.” I liked the care they would put into making the songs sound like the recorded versions. “At that point nobody really knew how weird or how proggy they were going to get three or four records down the road. “I discovered Yes when Roundabout came out,” he recalls. But then Coyne learned about pursuing one vision from the masters. The success of 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots hasn’t made the Lips any likelier to kowtow to commercial pressures. So too is the band’s commitment to freak-out music that has, if anything, become more far-out the longer they’ve gone on. In 2011 alone, the Flaming Lips – approaching the 30th year of their so-called “accidental career” – did something strange and different every month, including (deep breath): issuing a track titled Two Blobs Fucking, comprising 12 separate pieces on YouTube that had to be played simultaneously to be heard as the band intended releasing the Gummy Song Skull EP, a seven-pound skull made of gelatinous material containing a flash drive with four songs presenting a six-hour song titled 6 Hour Song (Found A Star On The Ground) as part of a package called the Strobo Trip toy making available a 24-hour track called 7 Skies H3 that plays live on a never-ending audio stream, one that you could buy – for $5,000! – as a limited-edition hard drive encased in an actual human skull and performing the whole of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon live at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, an album they covered in its entirety and released two years before.Īs if that wasn’t enough, they recently broke rapper Jay-Z’s record for the most gigs played in 24-hour period, and they collected vials of blood from musicians (everyone from Ke$ha to Chris Martin, Nick Cave to Yoko Ono) for a 2012 album of collaborations called Heady Fwends, and then pressed a limited run of vinyl featuring samples of the same.Įver since The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma in 1983, they have gone through numerous line-up and stylistic changes, but Coyne, together with co-founder and bassist Michael Ivins and multi-instrumentalist genius (and renowned drug addict) Steven Drozd, are the constants. The Tame Impala frontman is probably right.
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