Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
In his own words
Artist, rocker Wayne Coyne reflects on intersections of his work.
When Wayne Coyne’s art installation “King’s Mouth” opened in downtown Springdale in July, the rock star/artist/singersongwriter says there wasn’t time to put together a proper opening reception. So, Coyne returned to Springdale on Aug. 10 for an intimate, sold-out engagement where he could interact with fans and fellow artists.
Since the immersive installation had already been on display for over a month — and is coming to the end of its time in Springdale — Coyne says the conversation centered more around audience questions and less around the specific piece. Bringing his spin art machine along also didn’t hurt.
“You never know if people are going to be willing to come to an art gallery and not know what to do,” he shares. “It can be kind of awkward standing there with everybody wanting to talk to you, but nobody knows what to say, including myself. So taking the spin art machine and doing spin art [pieces] for people and talking about ideas and art and all that, that seems to suit the atmosphere for myself. I mean, I don’t know what artists do; I suppose they stand there and say, ‘Oh, hello,’ and ‘Thank you’ and just get drunk or something.”
The lead singer of psychedelic space rock band The Flaming Lips is at once jaunty and introspective as he thinks back on chatting with fellow creators in the intimate space, the importance of art, and his own creative journey. The relaxed event allowed for an exchange of ideas, and for those in attendance to be more open with the real questions they wanted to ask.
“‘How do you do art? How do you get to where you can be someone like
you, and they mean me, where it’s you get to do art, you get to do music and you get to be you?’” Coyne recalls. “And I think it’s a great, great question. I mean, most of the times, I’m talking to younger artists or younger musicians or younger weirdos that want to say, ‘How do you go from a person that wants to do this and is trying to do this, to a person that is doing it?’
“And I always say I still feel like I’m one of them,” he goes on. “You’re trying to make things work, you want people to like it, you want it to succeed, you want it to make money, you want to be able to live off what you’re creating. So it’s a great environment for all that. And I think once one person speaks up, it allows other people to feel like, ‘Oh, I can speak, too.’”
On finding his medium:
When I was growing up — you have to remember I was born in 1961 — and I have a lot of older brothers, older sisters, and they were crazy. You know, they loved the Beatles, they loved painting, they loved motorcycles, they loved drugs. And we all grew up through the ‘60s and into the ‘70s. And so having these older brothers,
especially in my family where I love my brothers and especially when I was young, I wanted to be like them.
By the time I was, like, 3 or 4 years old, I was already drawing. I could draw quite well. I think it was probably just the competitive, alpha male environment I was in. It wasn’t so much I thought my drawings were good, it was like, ‘Look, my drawings are better than your drawings!’ But quickly, it got to where I could see that people loved that I was capable of drawing. And everybody in my family and all their friends would always marvel at my paintings and my drawings and stuff.
And it was always a house full of music. So by the time I got to be, I don’t know, 12 or 13, I didn’t really think too much about it, but I was putting together music and art and painting and songwriting. All that was the same thing to me.
So I started to play guitar and since I couldn’t figure out anybody else’s music — I mean, I could figure out the very simple, simple music, but I couldn’t figure out how to play music, really — I just made up my own songs in the beginning.