In 1983 few would have suspected that a newly-formed band called the Flaming Lips from Oklahoma City would even stick around for twenty years, much less go on to become one of the greatest and most influential bands in the world, but they did, and they are. Though the 'Lips have had only one big hit, 1993's "She Don't Use Jelly", to call them one-hit wonders would do an injustice to the music they continue to create, music brimming with restless experimentation, childlike innocence, and other-worldly beauty. Their latest album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, further solidified their commercial and critical success in the wake of 1999's masterpiece The Soft Bulletin, and also gave The 'Lips their first Grammy. However, life has not always been roses for the band. Line-up changes, a near-fatal car crash, and even an amputation have struck them in the last decade.
Two of the three founding members of The Flaming Lips, singer/guitarist Wayne Coyne, and bassist Michael Ivins, remain with the band today, playing alongside, member-since-1993, multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. Michael and I spoke recently via phone about Christmas on Mars, the liner notes on Stockhausen records, and how the Flaming Lips are not a rap band:
Michael Ivins: We're at this crazy club. It's got four floors. It used to be like, a health club, or something. One of the dressing rooms has a Jacuzzi sauna. This room has a pool table and foosball, video games...
Keith Daniels: Just for back-stage? You're getting the rock-star treatment.
MI: Well, I guess it's just that this used to be something along this line anyway, and they've turned it into a club where bands can play. I guess the Vines were actually here last night.
KD: How are things for you nowadays? You've moved up to New York now, right?
MI: Yeah, I've been living up there for... a couple of years now. Mostly because Dave Friddman, the guy who's produced all our records, was just getting swamped up there, and I'd expressed interest, because I'd worked with him a little bit before I moved up. He called me a couple of years ago when we were on tour and said "Why don't you just move up here?" We were just about to get ready to make this newest record [Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots] and we would've been back and forth for two years, three weeks at a time. It made sense to go ahead and move up there, and stay there.
KD: So the technical side of music really interests you. Was that something that you would have wanted to do even if you weren't in a band?
MI: I think I've always been sortof interested in it, but I think it was definitely being in a band that led me into it.
KD: The Flaming Lips started out with kindof a punk-rock aesthetic, not being very technically skilled...
MI: Yeah, geez, it's weird.
KD: Is it exciting to you what you've been able to accomplish in the last few years, as far as the growth of your skills?
MI: It's more the ideas. I think we've always had these ideas, but were limited by skill on parts of it, limited also in some instances by just the technical side of it. I think some of that stuff happening within the last four, or even couple, of years has allowed us to achieve that.
KD: Who are some of the bands you're working with now?
MI: Uh... let's see I got... It's really weird because a few years ago when we'd leave and come back to the studio, and ask Dave "So what'd you work on?" he'd go "I don't really remember." How can you not remember? Now I'm sort of running into that same thing. I helped work on the new Grand Mal record, Steve Burns, the guy from Blue's Clues, worked on a little bit of his stuff.
KD: You were saying new technology has been a factor in what you've been able to do recently.
MI: Yeah, definitely. Just in the way that we can even work. We are able to have an idea and implement it quickly, and then decide "Was that any good?". Or even to be able to keep options open sometimes, that's a part of new technology. Just to have the computer hard drive be so big now, between that and some of the other stuff that's in the studio. To be able to work on a song and then come back even as long as six months later and be able to recall everything about that song up in a mixable way, and have it sound exactly that same way, and then use it as a springboard to go "Well I liked everything about that but we need to change this and this and this."
KD: This year will be the 20th anniversary of when you started. Does that scare you?
MI: It's definitely weird in a lot of ways, just because I think we didn't really expect to still be doing this. We made jokes when we started "What are you doing for the next twenty years?", never really intending that we would still be doing this in twenty years, but to be able to have that is really great, to have the opportunity to actually say that we can do this for a living and have a good time.
KD: One thing that surprises me about your career is that you were together for ten years before you had a big hit, in '93, and now, from The Soft Bulletin, or Yoshimi [Battles the Pink Robots] you haven't really had a hit, but you're arguably more popular than you were in '93.
MI: Yeah, I don't know what sort of realm we're moving into, but you can even look at a lot of bands, what you would call maybe "big bands". Not that I'm comparing us to them, but if you're looking at a route to follow, you might be hard-pressed to follow a better example of, not actually go set out and say we're going to go this way and that way, but bands like The Rolling Stones or The Who. Actually, I don't know if The Rolling Stones are a good example, because they actually did have hits. [laughs] Maybe someone like David Bowie or The Who, who never actually had huge hits on every single record, going along for years and years, but selling enough records that it seemed a viable thing to still keep doing, in the same way that maybe we're going along. Even a band like The Grateful Dead, who went years and years before they actually had a hit, but managed to sell records here and there, and people knew who they were.
KD: How's the "Christmas on Mars" project going?
MI: That is sort of on hold at the moment, because we're out touring.
KD: Has it been pretty much completed?
MI: No, no, there's still plenty of work to go on it.
KD: What's the vision for it?
MI: It's basically, literally, about the first Christmas on Mars. I think in a lot of ways it's just exploring a lot of the themes that we explore in our music and lyrics, only put on screen. The usual, space, and love, and what's out there really.
KD: Do UFOs and that sort of thing interest you at all?
MI: I think we were interested at one point, but we pretty much decided that that stuff's really not real, and I think we've moved into that area, as guys, with philosophy, that what's real is what it's important. That sounds kindof common-sensical [sic] to say, but a lot of people wrap themselves up, I think, personally, with things that don't matter. "Is Big Brother watching?", "Are there UFOs?", and this and that, and right next door there's all kinds of drama going on. People shut themselves out of what's really going on, worrying about stuff that really doesn't matter.
KD: Was coming to that realization a consequence of experience, and getting older?
MI: I dunno. I think we've always been pretty realistic people in a way, but just really, as you get older... because it's kindof fun, conspiracy theories and all that kind of stuff, it's fun, but to have your life revolve around stuff like that, you just miss out on so much realness. It really doesn't make much sense to do stuff like that.
KD: I've heard that you're working on a 5.1 remix of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
MI: Yeah, I think it's done. Unfortunately, I wasn't there for that whole remastering thing. I'd worked on all the old stuff, the whole back catalogue. I put together the thing for the vinyl, but I wasn't able to go to the 5.1 thing, so I'm not really sure what actually transpired.
KD: Have you heard it?
MI: I have heard it, and that's what was weird too. I went over to Dave's house. He's got a 5.1, something you would get at Best Buy, not anything high fidelity or anything like that. Just something somebody would have. It sounded good, but then it was kindof like, it didn't sound great. The next day he said that there's just not enough space on a disc to put all that information. So what we were hearing was basically the audio that you would hear with the video. To get the super-duper version of it I guess you can't actually watch moving video with it, which is just kindof weird to me, because I'm a closet audiophile. I really like that kind of stuff, and it just seems weird that it's being touted as the next step up from CDs, with up-sampling, and blah blah blah, and it's weird that it's only in particular instances at the moment. The technology hasn't progressed far enough to actually give it super-duper sound all in one package, to be able to watch video and have great sound at the same time. It still seems as though it needs to be worked on.
KD: Was that one of the reasons that Zaireeka was multiple discs, that you couldn't fit all the information on one disc?
MI: It was more of an experiment. People have talked about putting that out on DVD, which I'm sure we'll do at some point, but it really was [about] the whole experience. It was a whole bunch of different things, because it's supposed to actually be four stereos. It's not just four speakers, and one CD comes out of each speaker. It ends up being 8 speakers. There's that going for it, so it's inherently different from 5.1, and any of the other formats that might be out there. It was also sortof intended that not everyone's going to get four P.A.s, although clubs, I think, have done stuff like that. It was intended, well, somebody's going to have a boom box, and somebody's going to have a portable CD player, and all this sort of stuff. It was supposed to be a weird experiment in communal nature. Four friends all pile into someone's house and all listen to it in that sort of setting instead of on an iPod or Walkman, or whatever, with head-phones. It was supposed to be a shared experience, and there was the whole idea that you could play different tracks at different times. Really, you could do whatever you wanted. People were even making single-CD mixes of the whole thing, which sortof defeats the purpose in a way.
KD: That's cheating.
MI: Not even cheating, not cheating, but I think some people might have been missing the point. We certainly applaud anyone's interpretation of the whole thing, but just to see what would happen if we did something like that, I think, on the whole, was a great success. It was cool to do, and we had no idea what was gonna happen, or if it was even gonna work, or how successful it was going to be.
KD: The same theory with the tape experiments, too.
MI: Yeah, exactly. The whole idea. I don't know if we even thought about it consciously in a lot of ways, because after a while it's not even the musical experience, just the whole experience in general ends up being what it's all about.
KD: One of the things that I've heard a lot about your shows, is the feeling that there's a connection with the audience. How important is that to you?
MI: Well, I think it would be crucial to anyone who does this in any fashion. Especially when we're playing live, that's what it's all about. We make sure that the people who are coming out to see us, who're paying money... And we want to make sure that everything's going to work, that all the instruments are in tune, and we're not just up there dicking around because we're thinking "We can do anything we want and people are just going to have to like it." People happen to like what we're doing, so that's what we do, because it wouldn't make any sense... I think that whole schtick, I'm sure it'll come back around again, the whole idea of "We're going to get up there and we're only playing twenty minutes, and we're going to turn our backs to the audience." Which we had done before, but I think even that has it's place, and is cool, and I'm sure will become cool again.
KD: At what point was that?
MI: That was probably around '88, 89, something like that.
KD: And what was the idea then?
MI: [laughs] I think it was more in admiration for The Jesus & Mary Chain. [laughs] It just seemed cool at the time. In the same way I think we're doing what we would imagine is cool, and we'd go "Check this out" if someone were to be doing something like this. People seem to like it.
KD: When you listen to music, do you find it hard not to analyze it?
MI: Yeah. I think we all, at this point, tend to sortof... Y'know those pictures that you see where it's two faces and then you [unintelligible]? I think it's safe to say that everyone's gotten better over the years, because it seemed like a little earlier on, when you were a kid, it was "Ooh, it's music. It's great." and then you start doing it, or making it - you start going "Ooh, how did they do that?". Then you start listening to music in that way, and listening to music for enjoyment sortof takes a backseat. I think we've come to a point where it's a lot easier to say "I'm just to going to listen to this song and I don't care what it is they did. I just like the song."
KD: A lot of your experiments seem to take their cues from the mid-twentieth century avant-garde composers. Do some of your ideas come from what you've studied of different schools of art and thought?
MI: Not really. Some of it is, honestly, just plain unlistenable. Everyone's got a [Karlheinz] Stockhausen record, I mean, I have a Stockhausen record. Do I listen to it? I've maybe listened to it twice, and only once all the way through. They've got great liner notes though, it's almost better than what's even on the record. In some ways I think even the whole Parking Lot Tape Experiments are sort of that same way, where the idea is almost better than what it is that's actually done. There's nothing wrong with that. That's why people end up respecting people like Stockhausen, but does anyone honestly sit there and listen to it?
KD: What do you listen to nowadays?
MI: I sortof go through weird phases where I won't listen to anything for weeks on end. Usually anything new, I'll take what's going on and check it out, and I can't for the life of me think of anything..
KD: From the sound of your current records it doesn't seem like you guys have lost touch
MI: Oh yeah, yeah exactly. In a lot of ways that would be the worst thing, at least just for career's sake, to not be aware of what's happening out there, and be some sort of stalwart thinking "This is what we're going to do because we think this is the best kind of music." We definitely listen to a lot of things that are going on in how we decide to approach music, really on a lot of levels.
KD: There were even elements of electronic dance music on Yoshimi [Battles the Pink Robots].
MI: Oh yeah, we like Madonna, we like a lot of that kind of stuff, The Chemical Brothers, all kinds of stuff that's happening now. The sounds themselves are really cool, interesting, and I think we were interested enough in that way of making music that we decided to incorporate it into what we were doing. Wayne and I were talking about rap the other day, I mean, actual rapping, and we like it. We like Eminem, and whatever names you'd rattle off, but we don't like it enough to say we'd actually do that. We don't actually do that. We're not a rap band. [laughs] We can't really incorporate that aspect into what we're doing. We do things that we like, but I think there's different levels of what it is we're interested in, and there's some that's just purely on an entertainment level. We can't deny that Eminem is imminently entertaining, but on another level I don't think we would ever do anything like that.
KD: [laughs] You guys seem too nice to...
MI: Not even whatever the persona is, but the rapping, to actually rap lyrics - I don't think that's ever going to happen on a Flaming Lips record.
KD: Have you ever heard Wayne rap in private?
MI: Only if we were being silly, making a joke or something. Never seriously, like "Hey check it out. Look what I wrote." That's never going to happen.
KD: What do you like about being on tour?
MI: I like the playing, and that's pretty much about it. I think we're all older, and kindof over the whole "We're out on the road!", the whole rock'n'roll lifestyle thing. In some ways I think if we could get out of touring we'd much rather be at home, but I do really enjoy playing in front of people, for people, however you want to say it. I think concerts are great experiences in-and-of themselves, but the actual driving around and having to go from place to place, be in places at certain times, gets a little old after a while.
KD: If you didn't have to tour, do you think that would change your music?
MI: I don't think so. It's been a long time since we've actually decided to [not] do something on a record because we thought "How are we going to do this live?" I think probably even by the second record we did we sortof threw that out the window. Being a three piece, and then multi-tracking the guitars, and even bass parts, or pianos, stuff that we didn't play with live. So I don't think it would really change.
KD: That's another thing that's changed, with technology, you're able to replicate what you do better on stage.
MI: Yeah. Now we actually have a guy playing drums, with the stuff that's going on. Even that I think we were sort of skirting around the issue, and then we were able to actually do something about it, because it's fun to watch. It's a lot more interesting, to actually see someone bashing along to music, whether he's playing along with other musicians or whatever, the whole visual seems a lot more exciting as opposed to... People don't go watch DJs, or if they do, they're just waiting five minutes until the ecstasy kicks in. That's not what they're there for, but if you go see a band, I don't think people want to see [musicians] standing around staring at their shoes. In a lot of ways I think that was cool, and probably will be again, but people like to go out for the evening and have a good time. I think we've reiterated this a lot of times, that concerts are a lot more than just going to see a band. It's being out with friends and having a good time and wanting to see a show. You go and see big productions in the enormodomes, and they're big productions, because people go out, leave the house, to go be entertained, and that's what it's all about it. Hopefully to see a good band at the same time.
KD: Was there a concert that you saw when you were younger that blew you away, made you want to be a musician?
MI: I think it was just punk rock in general. That made it seem like even though I didn't really know anyone, or know how to play or anything, that maybe one day I could actually be in a band. Then I just got lucky. However it's happened, actually joining a band, and just continuing on, not really knowing any better.
KD: Would the twenty year old punk from back then recognize you today?
MI: I think he would, yeah.
KD: Would you consider the Flaming Lips to still be a punk rock band, from an aesthetic perspective?
MI: In it's ideological form. Some of it would depend on who you talk to, in the same way as "What's psychedelic music?". You're going to ask people and they're going to have twenty different versions of what it means, but I think we look at punk rock as "Hey, there's no rules. You can do whatever you want." That way of saying "Hey, let's go for it." People I think now will look at punk rock, and I don't know if they're looking at Green Day, or they're looking at the Clash, but in some ways just looking defining it is all about it. Maybe ignoring a band like Siouxsie & the Banshees early on, which really wasn't punk rock in terms of the Ramones or something. There was all kinds of weird different stuff happening. I think that's what drove us to the whole idea, because there was all this stuff going on, all under the banner of this one thing that was really all different.
KD: Do you ever miss the 'fro?
MI: Well, it just goes to show that you can't be in control of everything.
Visit The Flaming Lips at Flaming Lips.com
Two of the three founding members of The Flaming Lips, singer/guitarist Wayne Coyne, and bassist Michael Ivins, remain with the band today, playing alongside, member-since-1993, multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. Michael and I spoke recently via phone about Christmas on Mars, the liner notes on Stockhausen records, and how the Flaming Lips are not a rap band:
Michael Ivins: We're at this crazy club. It's got four floors. It used to be like, a health club, or something. One of the dressing rooms has a Jacuzzi sauna. This room has a pool table and foosball, video games...
Keith Daniels: Just for back-stage? You're getting the rock-star treatment.
MI: Well, I guess it's just that this used to be something along this line anyway, and they've turned it into a club where bands can play. I guess the Vines were actually here last night.
KD: How are things for you nowadays? You've moved up to New York now, right?
MI: Yeah, I've been living up there for... a couple of years now. Mostly because Dave Friddman, the guy who's produced all our records, was just getting swamped up there, and I'd expressed interest, because I'd worked with him a little bit before I moved up. He called me a couple of years ago when we were on tour and said "Why don't you just move up here?" We were just about to get ready to make this newest record [Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots] and we would've been back and forth for two years, three weeks at a time. It made sense to go ahead and move up there, and stay there.
KD: So the technical side of music really interests you. Was that something that you would have wanted to do even if you weren't in a band?
MI: I think I've always been sortof interested in it, but I think it was definitely being in a band that led me into it.
KD: The Flaming Lips started out with kindof a punk-rock aesthetic, not being very technically skilled...
MI: Yeah, geez, it's weird.
KD: Is it exciting to you what you've been able to accomplish in the last few years, as far as the growth of your skills?
MI: It's more the ideas. I think we've always had these ideas, but were limited by skill on parts of it, limited also in some instances by just the technical side of it. I think some of that stuff happening within the last four, or even couple, of years has allowed us to achieve that.
KD: Who are some of the bands you're working with now?
MI: Uh... let's see I got... It's really weird because a few years ago when we'd leave and come back to the studio, and ask Dave "So what'd you work on?" he'd go "I don't really remember." How can you not remember? Now I'm sort of running into that same thing. I helped work on the new Grand Mal record, Steve Burns, the guy from Blue's Clues, worked on a little bit of his stuff.
KD: You were saying new technology has been a factor in what you've been able to do recently.
MI: Yeah, definitely. Just in the way that we can even work. We are able to have an idea and implement it quickly, and then decide "Was that any good?". Or even to be able to keep options open sometimes, that's a part of new technology. Just to have the computer hard drive be so big now, between that and some of the other stuff that's in the studio. To be able to work on a song and then come back even as long as six months later and be able to recall everything about that song up in a mixable way, and have it sound exactly that same way, and then use it as a springboard to go "Well I liked everything about that but we need to change this and this and this."
KD: This year will be the 20th anniversary of when you started. Does that scare you?
MI: It's definitely weird in a lot of ways, just because I think we didn't really expect to still be doing this. We made jokes when we started "What are you doing for the next twenty years?", never really intending that we would still be doing this in twenty years, but to be able to have that is really great, to have the opportunity to actually say that we can do this for a living and have a good time.
KD: One thing that surprises me about your career is that you were together for ten years before you had a big hit, in '93, and now, from The Soft Bulletin, or Yoshimi [Battles the Pink Robots] you haven't really had a hit, but you're arguably more popular than you were in '93.
MI: Yeah, I don't know what sort of realm we're moving into, but you can even look at a lot of bands, what you would call maybe "big bands". Not that I'm comparing us to them, but if you're looking at a route to follow, you might be hard-pressed to follow a better example of, not actually go set out and say we're going to go this way and that way, but bands like The Rolling Stones or The Who. Actually, I don't know if The Rolling Stones are a good example, because they actually did have hits. [laughs] Maybe someone like David Bowie or The Who, who never actually had huge hits on every single record, going along for years and years, but selling enough records that it seemed a viable thing to still keep doing, in the same way that maybe we're going along. Even a band like The Grateful Dead, who went years and years before they actually had a hit, but managed to sell records here and there, and people knew who they were.
KD: How's the "Christmas on Mars" project going?
MI: That is sort of on hold at the moment, because we're out touring.
KD: Has it been pretty much completed?
MI: No, no, there's still plenty of work to go on it.
KD: What's the vision for it?
MI: It's basically, literally, about the first Christmas on Mars. I think in a lot of ways it's just exploring a lot of the themes that we explore in our music and lyrics, only put on screen. The usual, space, and love, and what's out there really.
KD: Do UFOs and that sort of thing interest you at all?
MI: I think we were interested at one point, but we pretty much decided that that stuff's really not real, and I think we've moved into that area, as guys, with philosophy, that what's real is what it's important. That sounds kindof common-sensical [sic] to say, but a lot of people wrap themselves up, I think, personally, with things that don't matter. "Is Big Brother watching?", "Are there UFOs?", and this and that, and right next door there's all kinds of drama going on. People shut themselves out of what's really going on, worrying about stuff that really doesn't matter.
KD: Was coming to that realization a consequence of experience, and getting older?
MI: I dunno. I think we've always been pretty realistic people in a way, but just really, as you get older... because it's kindof fun, conspiracy theories and all that kind of stuff, it's fun, but to have your life revolve around stuff like that, you just miss out on so much realness. It really doesn't make much sense to do stuff like that.
KD: I've heard that you're working on a 5.1 remix of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
MI: Yeah, I think it's done. Unfortunately, I wasn't there for that whole remastering thing. I'd worked on all the old stuff, the whole back catalogue. I put together the thing for the vinyl, but I wasn't able to go to the 5.1 thing, so I'm not really sure what actually transpired.
KD: Have you heard it?
MI: I have heard it, and that's what was weird too. I went over to Dave's house. He's got a 5.1, something you would get at Best Buy, not anything high fidelity or anything like that. Just something somebody would have. It sounded good, but then it was kindof like, it didn't sound great. The next day he said that there's just not enough space on a disc to put all that information. So what we were hearing was basically the audio that you would hear with the video. To get the super-duper version of it I guess you can't actually watch moving video with it, which is just kindof weird to me, because I'm a closet audiophile. I really like that kind of stuff, and it just seems weird that it's being touted as the next step up from CDs, with up-sampling, and blah blah blah, and it's weird that it's only in particular instances at the moment. The technology hasn't progressed far enough to actually give it super-duper sound all in one package, to be able to watch video and have great sound at the same time. It still seems as though it needs to be worked on.
KD: Was that one of the reasons that Zaireeka was multiple discs, that you couldn't fit all the information on one disc?
MI: It was more of an experiment. People have talked about putting that out on DVD, which I'm sure we'll do at some point, but it really was [about] the whole experience. It was a whole bunch of different things, because it's supposed to actually be four stereos. It's not just four speakers, and one CD comes out of each speaker. It ends up being 8 speakers. There's that going for it, so it's inherently different from 5.1, and any of the other formats that might be out there. It was also sortof intended that not everyone's going to get four P.A.s, although clubs, I think, have done stuff like that. It was intended, well, somebody's going to have a boom box, and somebody's going to have a portable CD player, and all this sort of stuff. It was supposed to be a weird experiment in communal nature. Four friends all pile into someone's house and all listen to it in that sort of setting instead of on an iPod or Walkman, or whatever, with head-phones. It was supposed to be a shared experience, and there was the whole idea that you could play different tracks at different times. Really, you could do whatever you wanted. People were even making single-CD mixes of the whole thing, which sortof defeats the purpose in a way.
KD: That's cheating.
MI: Not even cheating, not cheating, but I think some people might have been missing the point. We certainly applaud anyone's interpretation of the whole thing, but just to see what would happen if we did something like that, I think, on the whole, was a great success. It was cool to do, and we had no idea what was gonna happen, or if it was even gonna work, or how successful it was going to be.
KD: The same theory with the tape experiments, too.
MI: Yeah, exactly. The whole idea. I don't know if we even thought about it consciously in a lot of ways, because after a while it's not even the musical experience, just the whole experience in general ends up being what it's all about.
KD: One of the things that I've heard a lot about your shows, is the feeling that there's a connection with the audience. How important is that to you?
MI: Well, I think it would be crucial to anyone who does this in any fashion. Especially when we're playing live, that's what it's all about. We make sure that the people who are coming out to see us, who're paying money... And we want to make sure that everything's going to work, that all the instruments are in tune, and we're not just up there dicking around because we're thinking "We can do anything we want and people are just going to have to like it." People happen to like what we're doing, so that's what we do, because it wouldn't make any sense... I think that whole schtick, I'm sure it'll come back around again, the whole idea of "We're going to get up there and we're only playing twenty minutes, and we're going to turn our backs to the audience." Which we had done before, but I think even that has it's place, and is cool, and I'm sure will become cool again.
KD: At what point was that?
MI: That was probably around '88, 89, something like that.
KD: And what was the idea then?
MI: [laughs] I think it was more in admiration for The Jesus & Mary Chain. [laughs] It just seemed cool at the time. In the same way I think we're doing what we would imagine is cool, and we'd go "Check this out" if someone were to be doing something like this. People seem to like it.
KD: When you listen to music, do you find it hard not to analyze it?
MI: Yeah. I think we all, at this point, tend to sortof... Y'know those pictures that you see where it's two faces and then you [unintelligible]? I think it's safe to say that everyone's gotten better over the years, because it seemed like a little earlier on, when you were a kid, it was "Ooh, it's music. It's great." and then you start doing it, or making it - you start going "Ooh, how did they do that?". Then you start listening to music in that way, and listening to music for enjoyment sortof takes a backseat. I think we've come to a point where it's a lot easier to say "I'm just to going to listen to this song and I don't care what it is they did. I just like the song."
KD: A lot of your experiments seem to take their cues from the mid-twentieth century avant-garde composers. Do some of your ideas come from what you've studied of different schools of art and thought?
MI: Not really. Some of it is, honestly, just plain unlistenable. Everyone's got a [Karlheinz] Stockhausen record, I mean, I have a Stockhausen record. Do I listen to it? I've maybe listened to it twice, and only once all the way through. They've got great liner notes though, it's almost better than what's even on the record. In some ways I think even the whole Parking Lot Tape Experiments are sort of that same way, where the idea is almost better than what it is that's actually done. There's nothing wrong with that. That's why people end up respecting people like Stockhausen, but does anyone honestly sit there and listen to it?
KD: What do you listen to nowadays?
MI: I sortof go through weird phases where I won't listen to anything for weeks on end. Usually anything new, I'll take what's going on and check it out, and I can't for the life of me think of anything..
KD: From the sound of your current records it doesn't seem like you guys have lost touch
MI: Oh yeah, yeah exactly. In a lot of ways that would be the worst thing, at least just for career's sake, to not be aware of what's happening out there, and be some sort of stalwart thinking "This is what we're going to do because we think this is the best kind of music." We definitely listen to a lot of things that are going on in how we decide to approach music, really on a lot of levels.
KD: There were even elements of electronic dance music on Yoshimi [Battles the Pink Robots].
MI: Oh yeah, we like Madonna, we like a lot of that kind of stuff, The Chemical Brothers, all kinds of stuff that's happening now. The sounds themselves are really cool, interesting, and I think we were interested enough in that way of making music that we decided to incorporate it into what we were doing. Wayne and I were talking about rap the other day, I mean, actual rapping, and we like it. We like Eminem, and whatever names you'd rattle off, but we don't like it enough to say we'd actually do that. We don't actually do that. We're not a rap band. [laughs] We can't really incorporate that aspect into what we're doing. We do things that we like, but I think there's different levels of what it is we're interested in, and there's some that's just purely on an entertainment level. We can't deny that Eminem is imminently entertaining, but on another level I don't think we would ever do anything like that.
KD: [laughs] You guys seem too nice to...
MI: Not even whatever the persona is, but the rapping, to actually rap lyrics - I don't think that's ever going to happen on a Flaming Lips record.
KD: Have you ever heard Wayne rap in private?
MI: Only if we were being silly, making a joke or something. Never seriously, like "Hey check it out. Look what I wrote." That's never going to happen.
KD: What do you like about being on tour?
MI: I like the playing, and that's pretty much about it. I think we're all older, and kindof over the whole "We're out on the road!", the whole rock'n'roll lifestyle thing. In some ways I think if we could get out of touring we'd much rather be at home, but I do really enjoy playing in front of people, for people, however you want to say it. I think concerts are great experiences in-and-of themselves, but the actual driving around and having to go from place to place, be in places at certain times, gets a little old after a while.
KD: If you didn't have to tour, do you think that would change your music?
MI: I don't think so. It's been a long time since we've actually decided to [not] do something on a record because we thought "How are we going to do this live?" I think probably even by the second record we did we sortof threw that out the window. Being a three piece, and then multi-tracking the guitars, and even bass parts, or pianos, stuff that we didn't play with live. So I don't think it would really change.
KD: That's another thing that's changed, with technology, you're able to replicate what you do better on stage.
MI: Yeah. Now we actually have a guy playing drums, with the stuff that's going on. Even that I think we were sort of skirting around the issue, and then we were able to actually do something about it, because it's fun to watch. It's a lot more interesting, to actually see someone bashing along to music, whether he's playing along with other musicians or whatever, the whole visual seems a lot more exciting as opposed to... People don't go watch DJs, or if they do, they're just waiting five minutes until the ecstasy kicks in. That's not what they're there for, but if you go see a band, I don't think people want to see [musicians] standing around staring at their shoes. In a lot of ways I think that was cool, and probably will be again, but people like to go out for the evening and have a good time. I think we've reiterated this a lot of times, that concerts are a lot more than just going to see a band. It's being out with friends and having a good time and wanting to see a show. You go and see big productions in the enormodomes, and they're big productions, because people go out, leave the house, to go be entertained, and that's what it's all about it. Hopefully to see a good band at the same time.
KD: Was there a concert that you saw when you were younger that blew you away, made you want to be a musician?
MI: I think it was just punk rock in general. That made it seem like even though I didn't really know anyone, or know how to play or anything, that maybe one day I could actually be in a band. Then I just got lucky. However it's happened, actually joining a band, and just continuing on, not really knowing any better.
KD: Would the twenty year old punk from back then recognize you today?
MI: I think he would, yeah.
KD: Would you consider the Flaming Lips to still be a punk rock band, from an aesthetic perspective?
MI: In it's ideological form. Some of it would depend on who you talk to, in the same way as "What's psychedelic music?". You're going to ask people and they're going to have twenty different versions of what it means, but I think we look at punk rock as "Hey, there's no rules. You can do whatever you want." That way of saying "Hey, let's go for it." People I think now will look at punk rock, and I don't know if they're looking at Green Day, or they're looking at the Clash, but in some ways just looking defining it is all about it. Maybe ignoring a band like Siouxsie & the Banshees early on, which really wasn't punk rock in terms of the Ramones or something. There was all kinds of weird different stuff happening. I think that's what drove us to the whole idea, because there was all this stuff going on, all under the banner of this one thing that was really all different.
KD: Do you ever miss the 'fro?
MI: Well, it just goes to show that you can't be in control of everything.
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VIEW 19 of 19 COMMENTS
The Lips are one of my favorites, especially the early nineties noise.