The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne sounds off on music and mobile

with the Flaming Lips' lead singer Wayne Coyne

Wayne Coyne Photo Credit: J. Michelle Martin Coyne

More than a quarter century removed from the release of their self-titled debut EP, the Flaming Lips remain one of the most fascinating and endlessly innovative bands in contemporary pop music. The Oklahoma City-based psych-rock quartet--frontman Wayne Coyne, bassist Michael Ivins, multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd and drummer Kliph Scurlock--has dedicated 2011 to exploring the outer reaches of how its music is recorded, distributed and consumed, mounting a series of projects including "Two Blobs F------" (a track separated into 12 separate YouTube videos and designed for simultaneous playback across a dozen iPhones), the Gummy Skull (a seven-pound edible skull produced from gummy candy, complete with four new songs contained on a flash drive lodged within the object's brain cavity) and collaborations with artists as diverse as Neon Indian, Lightning Bolt and Prefuse 73.

In September, the Flaming Lips completed work on "I Found a Star on the Ground," a six-hour song recorded to benefit The Central Oklahoma Humane Society and The Academy of Contemporary Music at The University of Central Oklahoma. "I Found a Star on the Ground" is one of three exclusive tracks released via USB stick included with the Strobo Trip, a Flaming Lips-branded multi-sensory phase illusion toy now available at selected independent record stores. Next up: A song clocking in at a full 24 hours.

Later this month, the Flaming Lips will resume their 2011 concert tour, playing a series of East Coast gigs before crossing the globe to headline a handful of dates in Australia. Coyne somehow found time in the band's frenetic schedule to speak to FierceMobileContent about his creative process, the power of Twitter and how technology shapes our relationship with the world. 

FierceMobileContent: Let's start with "I Found a Star on the Ground." Is a six-hour song a concept you've hoped to explore for some time?

Wayne Coyne: We're looking at this as a year of being independent. We're still essentially signed to Warner Bros., but our contract ran out, and when we originally started discussing the idea of signing a new contract, we thought "By the time our deal comes up, someone will have come up with a good plan by then, and we'll all do this new plan or this new way of working in the music industry." But there is no new way or new plan for how to do this thing.

We said to Warner Bros. "Let's do a bunch of crazy s--- and see if we can get away with it." So this is our "Let's-do-whatever-the-f----we-want" kind of year--if we wanted to be avant-garde or freaky, we just would. We don't always know where it's going while we're doing it. It just evolves.

So we found this toy called the Strobo Trip. We made some new designs for it and branded it as a Flaming Lips toy. Then we said "Let's come up with a song you can play while you play with this toy." Why not? If we can record it and package it, we'll do it.

When you say you're doing a six-hour song, immediately you get compared to everything in the pantheon of longness. Someone will say "Brian Eno already did this years ago" or something. So now we're doing a 24-hour song--something you can listen to all day and all night.  

FierceMobileContent: You said that you found the Strobo Trip, and then you decided to record a song to go with it. At this point in time, are the Flaming Lips more likely to record new music and then figure out the vehicle for releasing it, or are you looking at different technologies and packaging concepts and thinking "What can we do to exploit this opportunity?"

Coyne: We first discovered this toy last Christmas. My wife Michelle bought it for Steven [Drozd]'s son. On Christmas morning Steven started texting me: "This is the greatest toy ever. You gotta see it." So I went over to Steven's house, and we said "We have to find a way to make this a Flaming Lips toy." You can play with it for hours by yourself or with others--it's such a cool idea. It's psychedelic, it's got strobe lights--it's everything we like.

After you arrive at an idea, then you start to ask yourself "What color is it going to be?" and "What will the song be like?" It all starts from looking at an idea from far away and the closer you get, that's where the torture arrives. Nothing ever works like you think it's going to. But you have to begin somewhere. We just want to do these things. I don't care how it's made, and I don't care how we get there.

In the case of something like a six-hour song or a 24-hour song, I always assume that the s--- that enables you to do it must already exist, so why can't we do this stuff? Then you get into it, and it's not easy because the tools you need don't exist after all, so you have to figure it out yourself.

For me, it's all about new experiences. And we're fortunate to be in a position to have opportunities that most people don't have. We're even making our own vinyl now. The record plant lets us in and we see how everything works. It's not about understanding the technology--we just want to go in there, play around with it and see what happens.

FierceMobileContent: The Flaming Lips released "Two Blobs F------" earlier this year. Are you considering plans to delve further into concepts optimized for mobile phones and portable media devices?

Coyne: I still run into a lot of people with very old-fashioned phones. They don't carry the kind of devices you need. We don't want to make something that's an esoteric or exclusive thing. We want everyone to play with it. If you don't have the right kind of phone, it's very frustrating. But the time seems right. I was in the airport not long ago, and I saw so many people on mobile devices. Most of our fans probably have a device like that.

You can't always tell where your interests are going to go next. This is the year of "Let's do freaky stuff," but then you get into the nuances of an idea and it's pure hell. Sometimes an idea seems great and it just doesn't work. But looked at from outer space, it looks cool to have 12 people huddling in a bathroom and listening to a song at lunchtime.

We had a great response from "Two Blobs F------." A lot of people are intrigued by those kinds of ideas. It's such a different kind of listening experience. I've had people complain to me that the individual parts don't always play together. But the point is that sometimes they do play together.  

FierceMobileContent: Are you familiar with Björk's Biophilia project? She's creating interactive mobile applications for each song on the album. Is that something you could envision the Flaming Lips doing?

Coyne: I like that Björk is exploring that--some of that is fun, but sometimes, it becomes a bit too much. Remember when you could make a video for every song on your record? I never cared for every song to have a video. I love Björk, but I don't need 12 Björk videos to watch. I prefer one or two fantastic ones to watch.

I just drove downtown for this interview, and I listened to music while I was driving. It was just coming out of the speakers. For me, that's where music has its greatest power over us. It doesn't need to take over all of our senses--it's just a friend along for the journey. I want the music to leave us alone. Music is always best when it's not accompanied by magic dust and trinkets.

FierceMobileContent: You've become extremely active on Twitter. How has that changed how you interact with the Flaming Lips' fans?

Coyne: We've been a band for almost 30 years. We've been doing things for a long time, and we've always done those things a certain way. I always welcome new things like Twitter because I'm tired of doing things the other way.

I like to do things myself. You don't need to organize a press release. I can say it 100 different ways for three weeks straight, and then it comes from me. We're the ones doing this. With Twitter, people get to see the process, which I think makes the end product more... [pauses] You feel more of the love and energy we put into it.

Flaming Lips fans have given me this amazing life. I get to wake up and do absurd s--- every day, because I can. I feel a sense of obligation to show people what I'm doing. You've invested your time and money in us--here's what I'm doing with it. I'm pursuing the art and ideas that you think I should.

A while back I read an interview with someone--maybe it was Lady Gaga. It was written about Lady Gaga, but the writer never talked to her. He got all his information from Twitter. I thought "That would be cool if I could talk to people that way. You do your own research by following what I'm doing on Twitter." That's what I like most about it--everybody knows what I'm doing.

FierceMobileContent: Interaction is one of the central themes of your life. So much of what the Flaming Lips do is about interaction. But we live in a time where people live inside their own hermetically sealed worlds--they're wearing earbuds and immersed in their mobile phones. Do you feel like you're fighting against the current? 

Coyne: Just this morning, we were having coffee--Michelle, a friend of ours and myself. There was a moment with us sitting there that we all went to our phones. I see that being more a way of saying we're all connected in real life, but we also have a cyber connection to the world.

Life can be kind of boring. It isn't boring all day. But I'm around interesting people all the time and even then we all spend time looking at our phones, then we go back to being here, right now. Both of those things can exist at same time--I can be here with you, but I can also keep in touch with everything happening somewhere else. For me, if I don't want my phone, I simply shut it off. But there are other times that I want to know what's going on.

I think it's a joy to be absorbed in your own world. We can be in this world together, but we can also be absorbed in our own worlds. Technology allows us to carry our inner world into the outer world and have it with us all the time.