Their song, bad daysFrom batman forever The soundtrack was one of the first tracks for Flaming Lips I heard when I was 11,” recalls Kevin Parker of Australian brogue explorers psychic Tami Impala. “Then I saw them living in Japan a few years ago and they blew up my breasts. I’ve been a slave ever since. Are they a modern prog band? definitely yes. Crimson XXI Century, Floyd or Yes? I don’t think they are something from the twenty-first century. They are in a league of their own.”
Maybe the Tame Impala captain is right. In 2011 alone, The Flaming Lips – approaching the 30th year of their so-called “unintentional career” – did something weird and different every month, including (deep breathing): a track release titled two fucking blobs, consisting of 12 separate YouTube tracks that must be played simultaneously in order to be heard the way the band wants it; release Gummy Song Skull EP, a seven-pound skull made of a gel containing a flash drive with four songs in it; Presentation of a six-hour song titled 6 Hour Song (Finding a Star on Earth) As part of a package called Strobo Trip; A 24-hour route called . is available 7 Skies H3 It plays live on an endless stream of audio, you can buy it – for $5000! – As a limited edition hard disk covered in an actual human skull; And the performance of every Pink Floyd band The dark side of the moon Live at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, an album they totally covered and released two years ago.
As if that wasn’t enough, they recently broke rapper Jay-Z’s record for most gigs played in a 24-hour period, collecting vials of blood from musicians (everyone from Ke$ha to Chris Martin and Nick Cave to Yoko Ono) for an album 2012 year of cooperation called Masker Viewsthen pressed a limited set of vinyl containing samples of the same.
If you take the word “prog” to mean crazy ambition, crazy adventure, and a no-nonsense approach to putting seemingly unworkable ideas into action, surely The Flaming Lips are one of the biggest bands ever?
“There’s a lot of great jargon,” said 51-year-old Leps frontman Wayne Quinn, who has the energy of a hyperactive kid; despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that much of his work deals with annihilation, dread, and loss. “People sometimes call us psychedelic, but psychedelic means Mr. Barrett and Jefferson Airplane, and we’re not. What we do is totally open-ended. That’s why we like to call what we do ‘punk rock’ — it’s about doing what you want.”
Since The Flaming Lips was formed in Oklahoma in 1983, they’ve gone through many lineup and style changes, but Quinn, along with co-founder and guitarist Michael Evins and multi-instrumental genius (and famous drug addict) Stephen Drews, are the constants. So too is the band’s commitment to horrifying music that, if at all, becomes far-reaching the longer it goes on. 1999 success soft flyer and 2002 Yoshimi Pink Robot Battles It did not make the lips more inclined to succumb to commercial pressures. But then Quinn learns about the pursuit of the vision of one of the gentlemen.
“I found out when Vertigo [from 1971’s Fragile] It came out,” he recalls. “At that point, no one really knew how weird it was or how far ahead they had to get three or four records on the road. I saw them live too. I loved the care they put into making the songs sound like the recorded versions. And I love the way John Anderson sings – I wish I could sing as well as he did.”
Realizing why the connections were made between the Flaming Lips and brog gangs like King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Genesis and Queen (which bohemian rhapsody They covered it for a tribute album), also seeing links with post-rock and krautrock bands, especially on 6 hours song.
“When you make something that lasts for six hours, it can go anywhere stylistically,” he says. “There might be elements that remind you of Genesis without us realizing it. But to me, Genesis just didn’t have any element of punk rock. There had to be something ‘backward’ in it for my liking. That’s what I like about yeah – sound Crazy, disfigured and amazing Chris Square. And John Anderson is a funny and unique singer. He has a quirk, that makes it look like he’s doing his own thing. That’s punk rock.”
What about ELP? Their technical prowess and pyrotechnic prowess are, in a rotten way, “punk rock,” right?
“you are right!” He says. “This is one of the reasons I love ELP – they have been candid. And the way [Keith Emerson] He stabs his members with knives in his leather jacket. I loved this shit because it was retarded! Like Rick Wakeman in his crazy cape. Those teams were fun and had character. It was more than just where the right notes were.”
The Flaming Lips’ increasingly elaborate packaging concepts, and their attention to detail and the statements they make with each release also have precedents. “We always thought Pink Floyd seemed to be into the packaging and the way things are
“Release them,” he says. “until [The Beatles’] Sergeant Pepper Exit with broken buttons [badges]And the white album It came with stickers.
“I wanted to create more of an art world script,” he explains of his recent plans, adding that he sees Radiohead as peers as they look for new ways to present their work. But he argues that it’s not just ideas for their own good. It is about respecting the strict believers.
“Radiohead seems to never run out of ideas, and if you’re a fan of theirs, you feel like they love you. It’s the same with us—we love you, and I really mean it! It’s like human skulls: ‘Oh my God, flaming lips really love us!'”
Yeah, about those skulls, Wayne… “The 24 Hours song is about death, and it got into the skull of someone already dead,” he laughs. “This is so crazy. I didn’t realize I’ve lived my whole life in Oklahoma where there is a store [Skull City] that sells human skulls. Every month the owner gets a new pack of people who donate their bodies to science or whatever. It smells very bad in there. Put it this way: If he was in one of David Lynch’s movies, you’d swear it was an exaggeration. He put flesh-eating beetles with the skulls and they started working for two weeks. Then they are washed and ready. Like I say, it’s crazy.
“People walk around the studio when we’re working on these things and they’re like, ‘What medications are you taking? What would make you want to do this? But you want your thoughts to be like the drug you’re taking as often as you can, to the point that you’re overdosing on it. The worst thing in the world is being in a band that’s been doing music for 30 years, and it all sounds as ridiculous as it gets. This would drive me crazy.”
There have been several occasions – after their MTV channel She does not use jelly In the mid-nineties and they have soft flyer/Yoshimi Climax – When The Flaming Lips could have faded. But they always take the path of most resistance, whatever the cost.
“I stopped worrying about money a long time ago,” Quinn admits. “We’ve done so much for the money and there’s so much mental pain, we don’t do that anymore. We want a reason to live. We’re not going to make anything else Yoshimi. “
Quinn isn’t afraid of burnout, but admits that his unrelenting creativity “can easily set others on fire.” He also admits that he is increasingly “attracted to dark shit”.
What he has been able to do recently, he says, is “learn to listen”. “soft flyer And the Yoshimi During the shock of discovering that things are dying,” he explains of the period when he lost his mother to cancer and Stephen Drews became increasingly addicted to heroin. As a result, those albums were almost high. Now, though, Quinn wants to delve deeper into his inner world. .
He says, “I want to challenge myself, precisely because we’ve been successful. We become free, even if it means that we fail for free. And I think I became someone who really listened.”
Specifically, he was listening to Druze. He reveals that “Stephen has been addicted to drugs now three different times, the last period being last February.” “It was really awful, but I’m used to it; that’s how he lives. That’s a different kind of desperation that I felt when we were making Yoshimi and Bulletin, where I was like, ‘My friend is going to die – let’s find a solution.'”
“So, I’ll be in studio one with Bon Iver or Ke$ha [working on Heady Fwends] And Stephen will be in the other, making music to calm a tormenting thread in his mind. I would walk in there and say, “This is the scariest, most depressing, suicidal music I’ve ever made.” And he’d be like, “Yeah, whatever.” So I listened and thought, “Let’s make music like this.”
The result is The Flaming Lips’ fifteenth studio album. TerrorIt is scheduled to be launched early next year. Quinn decides it’s “my favorite of all the records we’ve ever made. Especially for a Lips fan, it’s going to be a great moment. I’m not sure many people will understand that, but they will in time.”
After recent attempts to rewrite the rules regarding registration, issuance, packaging and promotion, Quinn said “[The Terror] It goes against everything we thought we were going to do. This is the power of listening.”
It will be a testament to Drews – who is “clean” now, hopefully forever – and his uncanny and unorthodox robotic skills, which Quinn likens to Miles Davis circa Bitches Brew, and The Flaming Lips’ enduring ability to find new things to say, and new ways of saying it.
“We’re like fucking kids still figuring out what to do next, and that’s amazing to me,” Quinn explains. Stephen would have easily said, ‘Life is not the same for me if I wasn’t able to be high,’ which is the complete opposite now. He’s able to see the world in a way he didn’t when he was on drugs. And I understand. Drugs Interesting. But the world is also interesting. You just have to be aware of it, and listen. I know that sounds huge, but it’s true.”
Quinn realizes that Lips’ refusal to stick to the obvious line is what makes them so attractive, not just to fans, but other bands or artists. And Kevin Parker believed in lips to the end. “There’s nothing stopping Wayne,” says striker Tammy Impala. “He will do this until the day he dies. Shall we pick up the lip stick? They haven’t dropped it yet!”
This article originally appeared in Issue 30 of prog magazine.