The Flaming Lips is one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved bands of the last few decades, mixing the experimentation of psychedelia, underground punk roots and a command of pop sensibilities with a spirit of fun to push boundaries on the level of the greats that came before them.
CityBeat spoke with founding member and frontman Wayne Coyne ahead of The Flaming Lips’ Aug. 12 co-headlining show at the Andrew J Brady Music Center with Modest Mouse.
A sense of gratitude comes up throughout the conversation. He’s been able to make music and art for a living since forming the band back in 1983. Coyne talks about his older brothers and older sister, and their friends, whom he describes as “freaks” — a good thing in the Coyne/Flaming Lips universe. He says they influenced him with their motorcycle riding, playing in rock bands and love of music by groups like The Beatles and Pink Floyd.
“I was always around these guys playing guitars and drums and, you know, doing crazy rock stuff,” Coyne said. “So, by the time I was 12 or 13, I was like, ‘I wanna rock,’ you know, ‘I wanna be in a rock band.’ So, my whole life, I’m lucky that I’ve been able to do it.”
He also expresses gratitude for his decisions early in life that allowed time to think and create. He worked for 11 years at the fast food chain Long John Silvers, and turned down other potentially time-consuming positions, instead focusing on music and his own personal work.
“I didn’t know how wise of a choice that was, at the time, it was just the way I was doing things,” Coyne said. “I think that’s the hardest thing any artist runs into, whether you’re a musician or a painter or you’re just trying to do your own thing, is you have to make time for it, you have to make time yourself.”
The band formed not long after the punk movement, which he credits as a perfect time to start a band, not having to live up to huge groups like Led Zeppelin, and seeing how others in the community made it work.
“It was a great liberator and we were lucky we got to see bands like Sonic Youth and Black Flag and Husker Du and Minutemen,” Coyne said. “Minutemen stayed in my house, just amazing, and to really see real people doing it, driving their van, unloading their gear and, ‘How did they do all that?’ — it was life-changing.”
The Flaming Lips found success with the breakthrough song “She Don’t Use Jelly” in 1993.
“That period where we recorded “She Don’t Use Jelly,” [we were] just insanely lucky that it sounded so cool and people latched onto that crazy song, it was amazing. We were already satisfied that we were able to just be what we were already, even when we made our first record in 1983. It was like, it’s already cool just to be The Flaming Lips and do that.”
While their music had always carried a streak of uniqueness and experimentation, a slight lineup change and extra time in the studio around 1996–97 sparked a dramatic expansion in style and scope. That era saw the band embark on projects like the “parking lot experiments,” where they arranged music to be cued up on multiple CD players and played simultaneously under Coyne’s direction — a concept they later captured on 1997’s Zaireeka, with four separate discs designed to be played together or individually.
Their follow-up release, The Soft Bulletin (1999), marked a turning point where they joined the wild experimentation of their previous work with lush, cinematic arrangements, incorporating a heavier use of electronics, string sounds and percussion with a new level of focused and more refined songwriting.
“I think we discovered that we really did love writing songs and we loved making records, you know. I mean, we love playing but not as much as making records,” Coyne said of that era in the band’s history.
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, released in 2002, expanded even further on both their critical and creative success, featuring one of the band’s now signature songs, “Do You Realize.” They also won their first Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance for the album’s closing track, “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)”.
Coyne brings up meeting people like their longtime collaborator and producer/engineer Dave Fridmann, and Jonathan Donahue, who played briefly with the band from 1989-1991 when they were signed to Warner Brothers in 1990.
“The more records we made, we were just lucky that we ran into people like Dave Fridmann and Jonathan Donahue, who were liking what we were doing, yet were able to help us do more cool stuff, and I think that’s just part of it. I think what you’re doing, you attract. So, if you’re a murderer or something, you probably wanna hangout with other murderers, I mean, I don’t know, we liked crazy, experimental stuff.”
A line can be drawn between The Flaming Lips and bands like The Beatles, who come up often in our conversation. When comparing Fridmann to being their version of Beatles producer George Martin, Coyne responds, “What’s different between Dave and George Martin is Dave will make you go crazier as opposed to make you go, like, try to clean it up. He’s like, ‘Fuck it, let’s just go completely insane.’”
The Flaming Lips have continued to be innovative over the decades, from the Grammy-winning At War With the Mystics (2006) to their highest-charting album, Embryonic (2009), and most recently, the critically acclaimed American Head (2020). They’ve also had more limited releases and collaborations with artists as varied as Nick Cave, Miley Cyrus, Beck and Coldplay. The band also helped record Cyrus’ fifth album, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (2015), and toured as her backing band in support of the record, much like they did for Beck years before.
“We’re just doing it because like we love their music and they’re cool people and you know, ‘You’re gonna make music anyway, we’re gonna make music anyway, let’s see if we can do something.’”
The conversation moves to current work when he mentions recent recording sessions and confirms they are working on a new album. “I think we didn’t intend to — I think we just started to do stuff, but I think we already have like 10 or 11 things,” Coyne said.
Coyne, who is also a painter and visual artist and creates most of the band’s artwork, says he recently finished a graphic novel based on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. “I think there’s always been a little bit of a notion that that’s a concept album and that there’s some kind of a story there, and it’s true that there is — we just never figured out exactly what the story was. So, I think, starting about four years ago, I started to make a story and finished it about five months ago. So, hopefully it’ll be out by the end of the summer.”
He also works out the visuals for the band’s live shows, from the visuals on video screens to lighting design and props. “I love all of it, and I really love doing all of it. So, I think every band needs someone like that,” he tells CityBeat.
In addition to the immersive parade of visuals and spectacle of fun that the band’s live show is known for, Coyne tells CityBeat they are also working on something special to perform with Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock on the tour.
He also says he’s enjoying the venues they play, where The Flaming Lips do three or four-hour soundchecks and work on things. Coyne expresses gratitude for venues like the Andrew J Brady that have made it so easy for audiences to come to shows and enjoy them.
“Back in the day, we played CBGB’s in New York. It was cool but it didn’t sound very good and nobody had cleaned the toilets in 20 years, you know?” Coyne says with a laugh.
It was during that era that the band would play venues like the original Southgate House or long-closed Clifton venue The Plaza, booked by Cincinnati musician Peter Aaron.
Coyne recalls a memory of a time performing in Cincinnati early on and staying at Aaron’s apartment.
“I have to say there’s a song by Can, it’s called ‘Mushroom Head,’ and we were spending the night at Peter Aaron’s house, his apartment. Back then, we weren’t staying in hotels, we were just staying at people’s houses and we were staying up all night, and he played us some records and he played us this Can record, which back then wasn’t easy to find, and he played it and we’re like, ‘What is this?’ We’d never really heard about Can, and I remember that crystal clear, hearing that, talking about that, playing it over and over and over.”
The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse perform at the Andrew J Brady Music Center on Aug. 12 at 7 p.m. More info: bradymusiccenter.com.
This article appears in Aug 6-19, 2025.