Those little details allow it to really put across what I’m hoping to catch. Having automation allows you to rethink all these details.īut sometimes you can get easily lost in all the details and not understand what the power of the music is doing. Wayne Coyne: Well, it wouldn’t have been even without the automation, but I’m not sure we would have noticed it if we weren’t able to have the automation. Rock Cellar: So not totally insane to go back and do it… We started working on computers around 1997, so we were using automation. When you’re obsessed like we are, that’s allowable. So the very last thing I remember was that we went back to virtually every song on the Soft Bulletin and slightly remixed them with this little slapback ricochet on almost all the snare drums. And then we started thinking we should do it to a couple more songs. At the very end of the mix for the Soft Bulletin record there is this little slapback that we had put on one of the songs on some of the drum parts. You can just keep going back to things if you’re truly making them better. And it was the oldest song we had, because her vocal that’s on it I think is from 2013. The song had been one way for a long time, but the very last thing we did for the record was to insert a new little bit into that song. And even to the last minute, to the very last song on the record, “We A Family” track that we did with Miley Cyrus. That’s why, if you’re lucky like us, you can take a couple of years to put something together. I don’t think I’d want to just write a song off the top of my head every time, but sometimes I do and they’re great. Or you get one really great chorus and then you struggle… but everybody works like that. I’ll do what I think is one really good verse and then I’ll struggle to make the other two or three. You feel the music, and you feel what you’re gonna say. It’s hard to do, but if you try to find what you think a melody is saying, and sing something like that, but at the same time give it character, then melodies can be so powerful and so emotional that you could almost sing anything to it and the audience would still be crushed by it.Īnd a lot of it is just our personalities, I think. We’re trying to create in a subconscious way, and to let the tone and the shape of the melody sort of be what we’re singing about. But I think that’s where Steven and I really make the connection. I want to reach people who know what we think we’re saying, and what we think we’re evoking. It’s just that if I’m feeling like something we’re working on is a really powerful, emotional song, I would hope that our audience would say, “You’re right, it is.” To me, that’s what I mean. I don’t mean I’m trying to reach Beyonce’s audience or anything. Wayne Coyne: Well, I don’t mean it that way. So where’s the balance for you and, with the music industry still relatively topsy-turvy in 2018, who are you trying to reach as the Flaming Lips? Is it your core audience, or do you still want to go beyond that? As any artist who’s been around as long as you guys have, you still have to want to reach the biggest possible audience. Rock Cellar: You said before I started rolling that even while you’re reaching for something you haven’t done yet, or that is truly out there, that you do want to reach a lot of people. Wayne Coyne sat down with Rock Cellar to discuss the band’s legacy, its creative process, and why it pays to be creatively fearless. Oczy Mlody, especially, retains enough of a creative connection to the Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi-era Lips music to make it immediately familiar and engaging. While each is wildly different, there’s no doubting that the fresh, artistically adventurous moments outweigh the misses. Nowhere is the band’s bold vision more evident than on its recent Greatest Hits, Volume 1 – in both standard and expanded, deluxe editions – as well as Seeing The Unseeable: The Complete Studio Recordings Of The Flaming Lips 1986-1990, from the band’s DIY, psychedelic beginnings, and its most recent studio album, mischievously entitled Oczy Mlody, from last year. They don’t compromise on their artistic vision, and they’re not afraid to make flops, especially if they scratch the band’s collective creative itch, or lead to something greater in the future.Īlong the way during the group’s 30-plus year career, core members Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd have developed a collaborative process that has delivered some remarkable highs - 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots from 2002 - as well as what at least casual fans would consider creative follies, like the Pink Floyd homage The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon from 2009 and the 2008 film Christmas On Mars. The Flaming Lips are unique for a major label, chart-topping band.