THE FLAMING LIPS
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Oklahoma nu-psych freaks’ epochal LP, The Soft Bulletin, with its survivors: “It was like walking a maze in the dark.”
Oklahoma City’s punks-on-acid were expecting to be dropped when they set out for NY’s Tarbox studios in ’97. Instead, despite heroin, bereavement and despair, and a detour into experimental noise, they created a millennial psychedelic pop masterpiece. Twenty years on from its release, they remember its prelude, recording and aftermath. “We were so buried in our own weird shit,” says WAYNE COYNE, “but I didn’t want it to be a bummer.”
Steven Drozd: A lot of weird shit happened around the same time. Ronald [Jones, guitar] left the band [in August 1996], my [heroin] addiction was ongoing, Michael [Ivins, bass] had a car crash and Wayne lost his father to cancer, all within a year. There was a sense of, what the fuck’s going on? It was a time of uncertainty and the unknown.
Wayne Coyne: Ronald was so introvert, just being recognised would take him the whole day to deal with, which was very frustrating. When he quit, I was secretly relieved. Now we had a perfect reason to go down another path. Steven and I had already talked about making tapes to play in our friends’ cars, which became [1996/7 happening] The Parking Lot Experiment. We
didn’t need a guitarist, or think about chords and lyrics, it didn’t require money or a studio.
Scott Booker: Grunge was dying off, and bands were being dropped, so we consciously decided not to ask Warners Bros for money. The Parking Lot Experiment became [1997/98 multiple tape decks live event] the Boom-Box Experiment, which we could sell tickets for and survive while the dust settled at the label.
Michael Ivins: We didn’t have a great track record with Warners, apart from [1993 album] Transmissions From The Satellite Heart because of [hit single] She Don’t Use Jelly. Our next album, Clouds Taste Metallic [1995], had been a flop, so the fact Scott persuaded Warners not to drop us was amazing.
SB: The logical step was to make a record out of the Parking and Boom-Box Experiments. I pitched the idea of two albums they’d make simultaneously – the one with four discs, which became [1997 noise-experiment] Zaireeka, and to use that as a marketing tool for a single disc, which became The Soft Bulletin. The Lips had made beautiful music before, but all the press wanted to talk about was how weird they were, so I told Warners, “Let them release their weirdest record ever, then people won’t say The Soft Bulletin is weird.”
Dave Fridmann: I first worked with Flaming Lips in 1989, and ever since, they’ve looked for new ways to express themselves, sometimes to a fault. Every day, they ask to try something that might be impossible. Like, “Build a wall… no, not that kind of wall, I meant a desert.” We discussed how The Wizard Of Oz apparently lined up with Pink Floyd – we tried with A Saucerful Of Secrets – and how we visualised taking the music from black and white to colour. We knew there was an end point to all this, we just didn’t know how to get there. It was like walking a maze in the dark.
WC: We had a couple of difficult sessions assembling Zaireeka. We had some miserable failures – one was Race For The Prize, which is possibly our greatest song ever! Weirdly, Zaireeka freed us up. We’d begun as a freaky rock band and now we were constructing sappy songs using strings and piano. We thought it would be the last record Warners would allow us to make. We were so buried in our own weird shit, we had no idea if we even sounded like a contemporary band.
SD: By the time we had four songs that weren’t going on Zaireeka, Wayne put them on a cassette and titled it ‘The Soft Bullet In’.
WC: I had the line “the softest bullet ever shot” in The Spark That Bled. I loved the word ‘bulletin’, the idea of an urgent statement, but it’s a soft version, without any distortion, feedback or noise. We were telling each other what we were feeling, singing about being friends, and deep, sad, personal stuff, which was so cornball, but brave too. It wasn’t something bands that wanted to be cool would ever do.
DF: One day, Steven said, “Check my hand, it’s a spider bite.” I replied, “Wow, crazy, you almost lost your arm,” and didn’t think twice about it [the ‘bite’ was actually an abscess from injecting]. A lot of people were doing [heroin] at that time, which I’d never allow at the studio. Steven would withdraw every time he came to [Fridmann’s studio] Tarbox, upstairs, and we’d call him down to record something, and eventually he returned to normal. He’d repeat the process for every session.
WC: I felt so conflicted about Steven. Does being in the band give him access to this lifestyle? I didn’t think he’d purposely kill himself but drugs are hazardous. I’d sometimes check on him upstairs and I’d brace myself, thinking he could be dead. But I also wanted him to get his part done for the song! All of that seeped into the sound and mood and lyrics, talking about grief, and death, and do I have to live without you?
DF: We finished Feeling Yourself Disintegrate and agreed everything had to have what that track had. It was a weird kind of melancholy. Like, something bad is happening, but it’s not all bad, we’ll get through.
SD: We’d done stuff with chord progressions, key changes, big productions with strings and horns… Feeling Yourself Disintegrate had none of that. We felt cleansed of bombastic ideas so it was easier to move on – to add acoustic guitar, Hammond organ, soft drums. Dave added echo repeats and delays for a hazier wash. Wayne was singing less about giraffes and more straightforward emotion.
SB: Wayne’s father passing away was the first any of us had experienced losing a parent, which was an incredibly powerful moment. To feel yourself disintegrate – that’s what we all do, but the way that Wayne put it, it felt peaceful to me. And it’s
“The band had changed from The inside ouT.” Wayne coyne
such a Wayne way of thinking. It was beyond belief, that these psychedelic road warriors were writing these beautiful and heartfelt songs, like Race For The Prize, which they still open every show with.
WC: Losing my dad was a tough blow. Also. Steven’s family had had three or four tragedies, including suicide, so he was going deeper inside himself, into music and grief. The Soft Bulletin sounds like we knew what we were doing but, really, we were lost, we were just psychically guiding each other through. The prize in Race For The Prize was the cure for cancer – meanwhile, I’m just making dumb music. I still feel that way, but though we’re not medication, if you get good medication, I think we can help in the aftermath.
DF: In my mind, there is a trilogy of related records from that time – Spiritualized’s Ladies & Gentlemen…, Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs and The Soft Bulletin.
Jonathan Donahue: Rev and the Lips ended up at Tarbox at the same time, through [former Rev bassist] Dave. What united us was his willingness to allow us our vision. It was a time after grunge and Britpop, and pop songs getting shorter, quicker and more formulaic, but the music out of Tarbox was slowing down, it was much more contemplative. I felt a collective consciousness that we all pooled from, a kind of wormhole that hovered over Tarbox that we could access. Where we all ended up through the wormhole was different. When we returned, he’d log the information and filter it between us. Dave empowered fragile people like me to stand the ground that you don’t even know you’re holding. SB: I was hyper-aware how well Deserter’s Songs had done, and you knew fans of each album would appreciate the other. Jonathan was very gracious to invite the Lips to tour with Mercury Rev in the UK after The Soft Bulletin came out.
MI: We knew we had to reinvent our live show too, so we embraced the idea that art and entertainment weren’t mutually exclusive. We also decided to continue as a trio. Steven wasn’t interested any more in being the guy at the back, so he played guitar and keyboards, which led us to using backing tracks, and using video, like a fourth member of the band, which no one else was doing.
WC: Being the support band to Mercury Rev gave us ridiculous freedom. If we’d been the headliners, people would’ve thought we were insane. We were using video and backing tapes, I had hand puppets, blood on my head and threw confetti over the audience. I didn’t want it to be a bummer for the audience, hearing these sad personal songs, but to transcend to something else. And it absolutely worked. I saw people crying, and yet they didn’t even know the songs yet.
SD: We were thrilled and surprised with the response to The Soft Bulletin, especially when critics put it in their end-of-year lists and different kinds of people came to the shows. We felt vindicated – our grand plan seemed to work, and we could make the music we wanted to, which is the ultimate goal.
WC: I think The Soft Bulletin was this bridge from my younger self, who thought the world is a wonderful, beautiful place with some bad stuff in it, to the realisation the world is brutal and painful and, if you’re lucky, you can escape once in a while by creating your own beauty, which helps others get through too. That carried over to [subsequent album] Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots [2002] The band had changed from the inside out.
MI: We started playing The Soft Bulletin on its tenth anniversary and we’re playing it this year for the 20th. The songs mean even more now. That, among these moments of tragedy and despair, there’s hope and joy, and you keep going. It’s why music touches people, and transcends, like a sunset, or sex, or death. It’s why people still talk about The Soft Bulletin, and it’s a great honour to be a part of it.
The Flaming Lips’ new album King’s Mouth is released by Bella Union on July 19. They play The Soft Bulletin live at Edinburgh Usher Hall, Manchester Academy and London Brixton Academy in September.