The Flaming Lips

Interviewed spring 1996 at the Melkweg in Amsterdam

If there's one band that could play on Sesamestreet, then it would be The Flaming Lips. The songs are littered with subjects that kids enjoy: circus, christmas, frogs, zoos, girafs and halloween. Wayne: "Oh yeah, that would be fun. I think there probably are kids listening to our music. But sadly they can't go to the store to buy our record." Steven: "Even if they could we wouldn't be a match for Michael Jackson."

But The Flaming Lips were once a match for Michael Jackson. In 1994 they suddenly got a hit with 'She don't use Jelly'. Completely out of the blue it had been picked up by every radiostation in and outside the United States, while the record 'Transmissions from the satellite heart' had already been released two years earlier. Wayne: "We were shocked. But it wasn't like we were nothing one day and the next day the millions came pouring in. We haven't seen a cent of that. Someone must have gone rich on that single, but it wasn't us. Oh well, we've never been doing this for hits or the money." The Flaming Lips have been around too long to worry about those things, the most recent record 'Clouds taste metallic' is their eighth in a row. Wayne: "We have changed a lot over the years, but not in essence. We were always a happy serious band. A melting pot of all kinds of shit. I don't know what we are, a bit of rock, a bit of pop, intellectual and amateurist at the same time." Humor is a very important factor in the music of The Flaming Lips. Wayne: "Yeah, but I wouldn't want people to think of us as some kind of comedy band. There's a subtle difference between being too humoristic or too serious, and we try to be right in the middle."

The humor side of The Flaming Lips is generated by their eclectic use of instruments. On 'Hit to death in the future head' the instruments were listed on the record, they varied from an ordinary guitar to Leslie Machines (Steven: "That are those revolving speakers which they use in Hammond organs.") and various powertools. Wayne: "We don't see them as instruments, but as sounds. If we need a certain sound we try to make it with the instruments we have. For the most part we use the guitar, because it can sound like anything these days. But sometimes we try something different. We also have used computers and samplers. There are many people who use these things because they're easier to make sounds with. But you still need a good idea. I'm not against the use of computers or a rhythmbox. Instruments aren't good or bad. The people who use them are the ones with or without an idea. It has been said that the guitar is dead, but a guitar can't be dead or alive, it is the jerk who's playing it whose ideas are dead or alive."

You could conclude that The Flaming Lips try everything to sound different and weird. Wayne: "No, we're not trying to be weird an forced way. For the bigger part we try to make records we don't hate ourselves. When we make a record we sift out everything we hate of the things we made until we're left with the stuff we can listen to without turning it off." What is left is very difficult to hate and guaranteed to make you smile. And a recent scientific study concluded that smiling makes you find things more funny. Wayne: "Oh yeah, that's great isn't it? I'm fascinated about those things, the brain, the consciousness, the part where ideas come from. I have no idea who it works, but it's a great subject." It's a subject that comes up various times in the songs. The brain and the confusing and chaotic aspects of life. Wayne: "Life doesn't have to be confusing, as long you accept the chaos. It starts to become confusing if you try to understand and can't accept that you won't succeed anyway. It's the same with our songs, we accept certain strange elements. During the recording we take that into account, accidents will always happen and they don't have to fit musically but they make the songs a lot more interesting."

During the conversation we talk about one scientific subject after another. Like the discovery of planets around other stars. Wayne: "Wonderful! People have speculated so long about those things. And that's what interests me. What would it be like to discover other life. What would it be like for someone who believes in god and thinks this is the only planet of it's kind?" The satellites Voyager I and II maybe picked up by other life forms and they'll discover the recordplayer and the record in it. Wayne: "I wish some extraterrestrial being sent me some music! I wonder if they'll ever understand and I hope not. I like my music to be hard to understand, because when you do it's a lot less interesting."

Another subject that pops up sometimes in the songs of The Flaming Lips is religion. How do you look at religion apposed to science? Wayne: "I wouldn't know how to compare those two. The analythical scientific approach looks for answers by proving a thesis. The religious approach gives answers too, but there doesn't have to be a proof. I think the idea of God is a beautiful abstract concept, but without any proof I'm not going to believe it. Religion is okay though, but I'm not taking it too seriously. Religion is used by many people as an answer to things that don't have any meaning. But things just happen and there usually isn't a meaning and that's hard. Take death for instance, at any moment in time it can mean something different for anyone. It is something so many people struggle with because there is no answer. Science can't help us there by saying: 'it works so and so, now you can sleep quietly again'. That is so fascinating, I can think for hours about things we will never have an answer for."

And finally, creativity. Wayne: "Recently I had a discussion with someone about creativity and if you could compare scientific creativity with art. He posed an interesting question. What is more important, the scientist or the poet? The answer to the question is of course, a poet can tell you why you want to go to the moon, the scientist tells you how. And in this way everyone is doing different things, but the one couldn't do without the other." And that's what makes The Flaming Lips such a good band, an interest in science, philosophy, humor and sound experiments. Or like they say: 'a melting pot of all kinds of shit'. Do you need more?