Wayne Coyne
To Be A Flea On A Whale
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NATN: Have you ever thought about making the transition from entertainer in the entertainment industry to politician in politics?
Wayne Coyne: Um.. no. Only because I really think it must be better to be an entertainer and easier to say exactly what you think than it would to feel like you have to speak for somebody else. I don't think it would be good to put myself in a position where I would have to speak for regular people. I don't think that would be good.
NATN: Even if you were a pro wrestler?
WC: Well, I think the pro wrestling thing does speak for the everyday guy out there and I don't think that I do. I'm glad when the everyday guy sees something that it can relate to in what I do. Because I purposely try to get it where it isn't. You don't have to be a music-phile sort of person to understand what we do. But I definitely think there are some areas of my philosophy that wouldn't suit the mainstream.
NATN: Who do you think the Flaming Lips are speaking to right now musically?
WC: I think we are speaking to people who are watching and participating in the evolution of music. I think people like yourself, you do something like a zine. What you are essentially doing is saying that this culture and art is going to go. You could stop tomorrow and it would still go on tomorrow and everyone realizes that. But what you do is, you say, "since I'm here and I'm alive and I'm knowledgeable in some things, I want to get in there and see if I can shift it and go a little more the way I want it to."
I don't know about yourself, but for me, I'm going to do this until I die. Whether that's being a hundred years old or being a week from now, I'm going to do this. And I want it to be more favorably in my direction.
So I use this analogy sometimes, as though art and culture are like a giant whale and you're just a tiny flea somewhere in it. And it's so big that you can't actually control it. So I try and place myself in the best spot. So if a flea could have some sort of effect on a giant whale, where would he best be placed that he could de-whale the route that this big whale is on? Sometimes I think it would be right in his eyeball and he'd be right in there. And that would be a good spot. Or maybe you'd be right on the tip of his dick -- ya know, a little area with a big effect. Well, that's kind of the way I look at what we do.
Given our opportunities, how could we best affect this big thing that is culture and art and music and make it go in the direction that is more favorable to our ideas? So I would say our audience are people who are not necessarily artists themselves but interested in shaping it one way or another.
NATN: Speaking of shaping culture with art, when the Flaming Lips first started, you were pretty much thrown into the mainstream culture with a lot of alternative bands that I grew up listening to as indie bands. Do you feel any sense of attachment to the indie scene now and how has it changed for you since 1983?
WC: I think there's an idealism that a lot of people think that there's a music community out there where people support each other and their ideas. And I've never really felt that to be true or helpful. I never wanted to be apart of a scene really. I think it's a lot better that you just be your own thing. I don't think we need a bunch of bands that look like the Flaming Lips, who act like the Flaming Lips, or play the same kind of music like The Flaming Lips. I think it's much better for bands to be unique and exist because they want to.
For instance, Nirvana becomes popular and there are thousands of bands that want to be just like them. This isn't something we should applaud. The same is true for bands like Fugazi. Fugazi becomes popular not necessarily in a mainstream sense but in an underground sense and there's a fucking thousand bands that want to be Fugazi. And to me, it doesn't matter if you're trying to copy Pearl Jam, The Velvet Underground, or Fugazi. If you're a rip off, "fuck you, get outta here." It doesn't matter if you're trying to rip off popular stuff or unpopular stuff. My standards always stay the same, I think people should pursue their own ideas.
Even though I think that sometimes, scenes can act as a support for people who feel insecure about "should I be in a band, should I make music, should I acquire some identity for myself." At the same time, I don't think you need that. The world has never needed that. The world supports art plenty. Go to any bookstore and there's hundreds of music magazines. People will say that the type of music that we do or a lot less popular music than we do, needs to be supported. And I say, look, "if people like it, they'll support it and if they don’t, they won't support it." It isn't as though art in America doesn't have plenty of people already involved in it. The music industry makes billions and billions of dollars.
NATN: So how does a band like The Flaming Lips fit on such a huge record label/corporation such as Warner Brothers? And part two of that question: what kind of demographics do the higher ups at Warner Brothers see as targeting for The Flaming Lips?
WC: I think they really look at us like all their bands, which is to make money. I don't think they ever looked at us being as absurd as our fans do. Sometimes our fans are nuts. And they think we are the strangest, weirdest band they've ever seen.
NATN: Can you blame them?
WC: Well, it isn't necessarily that I blame them, but if you look around, you'd see that there's lots of stuff that is weird and not exclusively underground music.
I use the example of John Coltrane: He's a popular icon of jazz music, but his music is utterly insane. Or what about The Bee Gees doing Saturday Night Fever. People have accepted this as some normal scenario, but I say if you look at it, you'll see how absurd it is. Here's a big man. Barry is like 6'1", with a beard and all this stuff. And he sings in this almost Mickey Mouse falsetto. And if you would had done a skit like that on Saturday Night Live, people would have thought it was funny, like a comedy act. But when you look at the Bee Gees, people just accept it: "Oh, that's the sound they make." It's insanely catchy disco music sung in a Mickey Mouse voice sung by this big burly guy. And it works.
It doesn't have to be underground or strange or people don't have to have their dicks pierced before things can be absurd. I think there's a different million levels of absurdity and I think, obviously, some of the things we do fit into one or a couple of them.
But I don't think we're that absurd and I don't think the people at Warner Brothers look at us that way. I think they look at it as just how it sounds and what we present and, if people came to see us, what their reaction would be. They look at if it'll be marketable or not and that's up to them.
I never want to paint myself as some weirdo who would never amount to any popular status. I always look at what we do as I hope people will like it -- I try and make it the best I can, and I want the biggest audience possible to hear it. And if that means being on Warner Brothers to do it then that's great. If Warner Brothers wouldn't do it then I'd find some other way.
But I think it's a good thing. You know people think of major labels as being controlling. And it's really so silly to think that a major label holds a gun to the guitar players head saying, "you must turn down the distortion box or I'll kill you." And that's just not true. Bands are tempted by success. If they choose to sell-out, it's risky and you take your chances.
NATN: Lets talk about the music a little bit. You mention a lot about how you're really bored with bands that limit themselves to just their selective instruments. Ya know, the bass player just plays the bass guitar…At what point did it occur to you that there was more out there for you or that you wanted to experiment more?
WC: Well, I don't look at myself as a musician. I think I did earlier on but I'm not. I am an artist who happens to be in a band who makes records.
NATN: So you're using the band to…
WC: I'm using the band as my format that I'm doing my thing in. And that's different than being a musician. Steven (Drozd, multi-instrumentalist) is a great musician. He can sit in with Lou Barlow tonight and he'd be able to figure out all the songs. Even the ones he doesn't know, he'd figure them out. He's that good. He can play with anyone in town on almost any instrument. He hears music the same way some people look at color. He hears a note and knows what it is the same way you see a color and say, "Oh that's blue or green." That's where musicians are different than artists. It's a separation of a different mathematical approach to how things are organized in their head. And I'm not that and I'll admit that.
But that doesn't mean I want to exclude myself from music. If someone came up to me and told me, "Wayne, you're not a musician, you should just quit." I'd say, "fuck you, I wanna do it anyway." I do it because I like it. I have no credentials that ever let me in the door that said, "do this." I always say, don't worry about how I get there, just listen to it at the end. It doesn't matter how you get there. People argue, "is it digital, is it analog, is it real musicians, it is samples?" And I say, "I don't care, as long as at the end, what I have there moves you and affects you."
A lot of times people get so caught up in the process of what you do and they can't tell at the end if it's any good. And I hopefully, don't have that problem. All I care about at the end is "is this moving me?" I don't care how we got there.
NATN: So, was there a specific moment, like you were playing guitar and realized there was more out there?
WC: It occurred to me all along. The first three weeks I picked up a guitar, I think I went from being no good to fairly good. And I think everybody wrongly assumed that well, "if you can do that in three weeks, then you should be like Jimi Hendrix in three years."
Well yeah, but I never got any further than the first three weeks. Ya know, I can plug it in and do some stuff on my own but still can't tune it up on my own. But that never stopped me. I never thought that you needed those particular skills to be in a band and obviously you don't.
But as I went along, I thought in some ways that my own abilities would restrict me little by little. I'd hoped that just through people being interested in what we do, they would attract musicians or would attract people who had the same mindset as me, that we would find ways to make the music.
As I've gone along, I've done just that. If I can't play piano, I'm not going to just say, well I'm going to limit what I want to create with what I can do with my hands. I would just get someone who can play piano or strings or horns. It's not that different from people reading books and gaining knowledge in any way other than things you'd think of on your own.
You get ideas from a lot of people and you use them yourself and they become part of what you are. But they're actually not your ideas. It's knowledge that you're getting in there. I use big musicians and technology all the same way. I have an idea of what I want to do and I find a way to get there. It doesn't matter to me how we get there. Sometimes, I don't even play anything on any of our records anymore. I just sit in the back with a whip and go, "do that again" or "stop that." And as long as it works in the end, it doesn't matter.
I'm not above playing, but sometimes it doesn't really matter who's playing as long as it's doing what the music sort of dictates that it does. I don't think there's any specific time. It occurred to me little by little that if I restricted our music to what we were capable of, I don't think we'd be very different from say The Ramones or Sonic Youth. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I think they do the same thing over and over and over. If their ideas are the same over and over, then that's fine. But mine aren't. I get to where I start thinking, "man, I'd like to do this bigger, more ambitious things" so I try and find a way to do them.
NATN: "Guy Who Got A Headache And Accidentally Saves The World." Where do song titles like that come from?
WC: I think sometimes, the song titles are more complicated than the songs. Sometimes, the songs have less lyrics than the song title. As you're working on things, you get a big sub-title. But sometimes you can't express it in the song that clearly. Ya know, they just come out of you. I try and make the song make sense but if you didn't have this big title, I don't know if you'd know what the song is about.
Sometimes, they're vague, slogan rock. Words rhyme and there's a story going on but you scratch your head at the end, "what the hell was that about?" So, I sometimes would put a big old title since I know I haven't made it clear lyrically, so here I'll make it clear with the title.
Other times I think it's fairly clear in what I'm saying in the song, so the title becomes sort of obvious - like "When You Smile." And "She Don't Use Jelly" was originally called Vaseline because that's what everyone calls it. And I wanted to call it "Vaseline" but Warner Brothers wouldn't let me. There's all these battles when you use names and when they said you couldn't use it, I said, "okay," ya know, I've got thousands of titles, so "You Don't Use Jelly." But everyone still calls it "the Vaseline song."
NATN: I noticed that on your new record, The Soft Bulletin, there's a lot of references to love with songs like "What Is The Light?," "Waiting For Superman," and "Buggin". Are you a hopeless romantic?
WC: No, I think I've been that way all along. I think that sometimes you get to a point when you feel you can really say it more clearly that it doesn't come across as hokey or a joke. And when people talk about love it is hard for them to place it in a seriousness without it seeming sappy. And sometimes I feel like the music that we're making kind of dictates how brave you'll be in revealing what you're really thinking. And with some of this music, I thought it would be sort of easy to talk about the grand themes of love and death. We sort of had a grand plate that we were working with. In some ways it seemed appropriate where as other times we may have disguised it. I think it has a lot of power. Even though people take it the wrong way, I think that songs like "All You Need Is Love" do speak with a simplicity that is universal. I don't think people should think about it all the time but it certainly is a nice sentiment that works in a song format.
NATN: What's the worst question or interview you've ever done?
WC: Well, I'd say that the worst ones I do are the independent magazines. And that's no way reflected on you.
NATN: Oh sure, great. I was looking to get some dirt on Rolling Stone or SPIN.
WC: Well, a lot of magazines you see at Barnes and Noble don't pay. And that sucks. But Rolling Stone…
NATN: Do you think Jon Stewart's funny?
WC: (haha) Not as funny as he used to be. When I was there on the show, in between being on the air, he was funny. I don't think his new show is as funny as the other guy was. But I do like him. Actually, I don't even know him.
NATN: Do you think you'll ever get asked back to play on 90210?
WC: No, I don't think so. Not because of something we did but I don't think they'll care about something like that again. I mean, if they asked us, we'd go in a second, of course.
NATN: What song would you play?
WC: Oh, whatever they wanted us to. That shit is fun. I mean, when you're doing it, it's not much fun. But I mean, you go home and could be standing in line at the bank and you could say, "I was on 90210" and people say, "oh wow." It's something everyone can relate to. But sometimes, a lot of stuff we do isn't something everyone can relate to. Ya know, Zaireeka, 4 CDs, parking lot experiments, the way sound works and arranging that. And a lot of people relate to the other stuff and ask, "hey, how was Lollapalooza….The Beastie Boys." And I understand that, so when we get asked to do something that people can relate to, yeah, we'd love to.
NATN: So is The Flaming Lips Y2K Compatible?
WC: I don't know. I'm not sure if Y2K is a hoax or if it's real. What do you think?
NATN: I think you need to prepare yourself.
WC: I think we're safe.
NATN: Final question, you've been a band for quite a while now, what do you see as possibilities for the future?
WC: I kind of go in two stages. I think everyone is hoping that music like what we do will survive and doesn't just become this swell that could gain some acceptance but just get crushed by the Backstreet Boys or what people consider techno music.
I think the verdict is still out there on whether people will care about innovation and the evolution of music on a bigger scale. Sometimes, I wish there was more of that but people will do what they like to do. I will do it regardless of what the whale is doing. Ya know, I'm always thinking of stuff. I feel like I've opened up a whole new path for myself. I may not be holding a guitar and people have accepted me as a guy who beats on a gong and stuff -- I never thought they would. It never occurred to ourselves what we would do. We just thought, well, we'd do something. So we played shows and people either throw shit at you or they like it.
This article also appeared in Muddle.
DAVID BROWN | David works on the stellar zine Muddle and also owns and operates Holiday Matinee, a publicity and marketing company based out of San Diego, California (www.holidaymatinee.com) as well serving as part owner and operator of Better Looking Records, a record label with releases from The Good Life, The And/Ors, The Jealous Sound, The Gloria Records and more (www.betterlookingrecords.com). David was a 1998 graduate from Ithaca College with an honors degree in Sociology. He currently resides in San Diego, California.