Multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd grappled with drug addiction for years (allegedly costing the band the continued services of guitarist Ronald Jones), culminating in his shooting heroin on-camera for Brad Beasley’s 2005 documentary The Fearless Freaks. In 1996, bassist Michael Ivins had a tire crash through his windshield in a bizarre auto accident. “Death is the only thing worth singing about,” Coyne said in an interview last year, “but I don’t want it to be a bummer, so I embrace it by saying, ‘We are going to die, motherfuckers, so let’s make sure we are alive.'” The Flaming Lips’ music is riddled with images of giant bugs, robots, and brains, nearly all of which are deployed as various metaphoric steps in coming to grips with a wonderful world that will see us all buried.Īs reluctant residents of Earth, the Lips have had their brushes with tragedy. Spectacle is a fantastic thing, of course: it jolts us into a new view of our surroundings, or simply affords us a distraction along our graveward path. All the extrasonic stuff - the giant hamster ball, the fans donning animal suits, the gummi skulls and fetuses housing flash drives - is absolutely integral to understanding the Flaming Lips. Veterans of the anything-goes hardcore scene that gave us Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, et al., the Flaming Lips were always firmly in the second camp, first on a DIY level (bringing a motorcycle onstage for accompaniment, embellishing their stage setup with Christmas lights), and then on some proper major-label shit. The neo-psychedelic boomlet of the ’80s and ’90s produced acts (generally British) that focused on evoking the sounds, and acts that evoked the whole trip. And always, there would be the detours: collaborative EPs with Neon Indian and Lightning Bolt, parking-lot concerts consisting of dozens of audience members playing tapes in their cars, the long-gestating film Christmas On Mars. Zaireeka was recorded while they were piecing together the simplest, most anthemic record in their catalog: The Soft Bulletin, a permanent fixture in best-of-decade lists. They followed up the winningly daft alt-rock breakout hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” with Clouds Taste Metallic, an album of honed, buzzy guitar-pop tunes, then followed that with Zaireeka, a record designed to be heard on up to four CD players simultaneously. The band has ebbed between periods of intense experimentation and relatively straightforward songcraft.
For 30 years, he’s been the Flaming Lips’ own Paul McCartney, the man who keeps things moving by setting creative challenges, enlisting collaborators, and providing indefatigable enthusiasm. It connects whether your sympathies lie with punk, urbanity or secular humanism.) Of course, the Lips broke out of the Sooner State with one hell of a psychedelic crowbar: Wayne Coyne, a restless, boundlessly energetic musician and performer. (Their wonderful origin story holds that the band heisted its instruments from a church. And like Guided By Voices, Melvins, and Ozric Tentacles (and unlike the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who’ve had four between-album gaps of four-plus years) they’ve maintained a steady release schedule for decades.Īll of this - the longstanding major-label relationship, the continued relevance, the tens of thousands of people gleefully becoming hamster-ball supports - is remarkable stuff for a one-time acid-punk band out of Oklahoma City. Unlike fellow ’83 alums Phish, Camper Van Beethoven, and My Bloody Valentine, who had their own reasons for pulling the plug, the Lips have never taken an extended hiatus, despite major lineup changes and personal struggles. Of the Class of ’83, the Flaming Lips have outlasted Bathory, Killdozer, Poison, and the Jesus & Mary Chain. This happy, heady band of self-tabbed freaks has indulged nearly every creative whim in a career that has taken them from Oklahoma (state rock song: “Do You Realize?”) to the festival circuit, which they rule on the regular.
The first anniversary reflects the band’s perseverance the second, their canniness.
Which is more amazing: that 2013 marks 30 years of the Flaming Lips as a functioning concern, or that it heralds the 23rd year of their partnership with Warner Bros.