Do You Realise? The Weird and Wonderful World of Wayne Coyne

The Flaming Lips are the very definition of a band that has too much creativity to quit. Their unique psychedelic rock has been around since 1983, but they're not the type of band who'd sign, seal and deliver the same hits over and over. Having said that, you (or someone in close proximity) probably have their greatest tunes perpetually on high rotation, from ‘Do You Realise??’, ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’, to ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part 1’ and ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’.

Listening to these psychedelic ditties is a joyous trip of an experience in itself, but seeing them live is something else entirely. The Flaming Lips' undeniably brilliant album, Clouds Taste Metallic, is currently enjoying its 20th anniversary and to celebrate, The Flaming Lips are off on tour yet again. Ahead of their Sydney Festival and Palais Theatre shows, we managed to catch up with the very chatty Wayne Coyne and asked him about giving new life to a 20-year-old record, his next-level live shows, and of course, his work with Miley.

Image: George Salisbury.

WHERE CLOUDS TASTE METALLIC AND HEADY NUGGS ROAM

The Flaming Lips have released a whopping 16 studio albums since 1983, with the beloved seventh album Clouds Taste Metallic hitting shelves in 1995. Over a decade later, how does Coyne feel about the album now? "Some of those songs are just really great, dynamic, freaky songs to play. It’s one of those records that is never that far away from us.” The reissued vinyl, titled Heady Nuggs: Clouds Taste Metallic 20 Years Later, comes with quite a few extra goodies, including a live Seattle set from 1996.

“We’re a very lucky group that virtually everything that we’ve ever recorded, we really do have absolute say over what we can reissue.” At first, the live vinyl was not going to cut it. “We never liked the quality. Even though we liked the show, it never sounded very good.” After a little playing around with plug-ins, the band was able to recreate the “crazy, freaky, exciting show" they knew they had on their hands. “I think when people listen to that they get a sense of that very amped-up punk-rock meets psychedelic rock, meets prog-rock weirdo group that we were," says Coyne.

With track names such as ‘Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles’, it's hard not to ask for the story behind the album title Clouds Taste Metallic. Turns out Sydney had a hand in it. About 20-odd years ago The Flaming Lips were hanging out with Tool in Sydney. Tool’s then bassist, Paul D’Amour was taking a ride in a four-seater airplane (as you do) and asked the pilot to fly through a cloud (because Paul D'Amour). “He opened his mouth because he thought, 'How often do you get to go through a cloud?' I asked him, what did it taste like? And he said, 'You know, it tasted kind of metallic.' That’s an absolutely true story."

ON FINDING A KINDRED SPIRIT IN MILEY

The Flaming Lips are no strangers to collaboration; just check out their 15th studio album With a Little Help From My Fwends; a star-studded cover album of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One creative partnership stands out amongst them: Coyne and Miley Cyrus. “The way that we live our lives is very similar,” Coyne explains, “She’s so on it. She has so much shit to say and songs to sing. I think that’s why we like each other. I’m always going and she’s always going, and so we meet up and we’ve got 20 things we want to do.”

According to Coyne, the writing and recording process is more impulsive and natural rather than scheduled and labored. Coyne may start working on something at his studio in Oklahoma, then brings it to Cyrus, where sometimes all they’ll need is one take. “Usually even though we would say we’d start recording at noon, we usually wouldn’t start until 2am,” says Coyne, “She always has a lot of stuff going on. She can be in her house with 50 people and there can be a crazy party going on, and I’ll go in and say ‘Let’s go out and we’ll do some stuff for 20 minutes’. There’s five to six tracks we did together where it’s literally one take and I went into the house, got her, she came out, sang, and that will be the song.”

Image: Todd Spoth.

LIVE SHOWS AND THE VIEW FROM INSIDE A HUMAN-SIZED BUBBLE

There's a good reason why The Flaming Lips have been declared by Q Magazine as one of the 'Top 50 Bands to See Before You Die'. If you're fortunate enough to have witnessed them live already you’ll be familiar with confetti guns, crazy light shows, costumes, and of course, Wayne Coyne rolling over the crowd in a human-sized bubble. So what’s it like to literally walk on your audience? “I’ve done it so much now that it’s not an utter freak-out surprise,” he says. “I have a certain control over where it’s going to go, I can get a sense of how freaky and exciting it is for the audience. It’s one of those cool moments that we embrace, we’re glad we get to do something like that, and that the audience gets to play along with it.” The only thing that Coyne worries about in the bubble is potentially breaking a nose or a pair of glasses. Bless.

For Coyne, the live show experience is a chance to bring everybody into their colourful world. “The things that we do with the lights and the volume, it includes everybody. Even if they don’t know the songs, it brings everybody together. That’s why we want it to be so dynamic. You want everyone to get the most out of it.” The Flaming Lips are most at home in a festival atmosphere, as Coyne explains, “I think it works well with our type of optimistic message. The things we really love to sing, those really do communicate at festivals pretty well.”

Coyne believes there could be a new Flaming Lips record ready by April or May this year, but depending on their future work with Cyrus, no plans have been set in stone. “But that’s the great thing about always creating, sometimes by shear accident you stumble across this great song that you didn’t even know that you were going to do. That’s what we want to happen, that’s the reason to always be doing stuff. Some special moment may accidentally happen.”

See The Flaming Lips perform live at Melbourne's Palais Theatre on Friday, January 8 and at Sydney Festival on Saturday, January 9 for free in the Domain. More details on The Flaming Lips' website.

Top image: George Salisbury (WB).