The Flaming Lips
“Bands in the beginning are like a gang. As long as you’ve got your guys with you, you can do anything. And that was very true for us.” WAYNE COYNE
How did The Flaming Lips start out as OKC’s football-loving Fearless Freaks?
The punkish ballad “With You” originated on the Lips’ first full-length album, 1986’s “Hear It Is,” which marked Wayne Coyne’s debut as the band’s lead singer. One of his brothers, Mark Coyne, started out as the frontman when they first formed the group in 1983 alongside bassist Michael Ivins and drummer Richard English and released their self-titled EP the following year.
“Once we get into it, it’s not what it looks like: You really have to love music, and you have to love to be creative and all that. And he wasn’t really any of that: He liked the idea of getting drunk and singing and going places,” Coyne said of his brother’s departure.
“Bands in the beginning are like a gang. As long as you’ve got your guys with you, you can do anything. And that was very true for us.”
Growing up in a rowdy family of six children in OKC gave the future frontman, who was born in Pittsburgh, a sense of security and fearlessness: The five Coyne brothers and their friends were famous in their Classen-10-Penn neighborhood for playing no-rules sandlot football games as the team the “Fearless Freaks.”
“I’m not really hanging around piano players and people playing flutes and violins. We were just into rock and drugs and motorcycles. It wasn’t really about music, but as soon as we started to make music ... I really loved it,” the singer-songwriter said.
As the band played its first shows at OKC’s long-standing Blue Note Lounge, Coyne said the idea of leaving for New
York, Los Angeles or another music industry hot spot never occurred to him.
“We didn’t have any money, anyway. We would visit groups that would be similar to us who had gone. ... It’d be like 12 dudes working at McDonald’s and Kinko’s to pay to live in New York City. We’d be sleeping in their kitchen; there’d be rats crawling on you. It was horrible. Same thing in L.A.,” he recalled.
“We’d have a house with bedrooms and kitchens and back yards and dogs and lawn mowers, just normal Oklahoma living. ... We had a place to rehearse, and we had our own equipment.”
How did meeting longtime manager Scott Booker set The Flaming Lips on a major-label path?
If Coyne and his cohorts hadn’t stayed in OKC, they might have never met Scott Booker. A record store clerk who eventually became the Lips’ manager and helped them sign a major-label deal, Booker became a fan of the band the first time he saw them perform, at an unofficial after-party following Sting’s 1985 Halloween show at Norman’s Lloyd Noble Center.
“They were playing a punk version of ‘If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,’ and I immediately thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen in my life. And all of my friends thought it was horrible, and they all left,” Booker recalled.
Through his job at Rainbow Records, Booker got to know Coyne, and he eventually became neighbors to his bandmates, including the Lips’ guitarist at the time, Jonathan Donahue.
“The phone rings, and I’m sitting there. But it wasn’t at my house, so I didn’t pick it up. ... Jonathan picked up the phone, and he hung it up really quick. Then, the phone rang again, and Jonathan was like, ‘You pick it up,’ and I picked up the phone. And it was like, ‘Hey, don’t hang up. This is Warner Bros. Records. We have an A&R person that’s going to come out to Oklahoma and really wants to see the band. Can you arrange for a show?’” said Booker, adding that Donahue was big on making prank calls and was concerned he might be in trouble.
“I’d been promoting some shows like Superchunk; I did a Nirvana show where they didn’t show up, and I lost my whole life savings. ... But I said, ‘Look, yeah, of course, I’ll help set this up.’ So, I set up the show.”
He even personally picked up at the airport the A&R executive, Roberta Petersen, who not only signed the Lips to Warner Records but also suggested that Booker become the band’s manager.
How have The Flaming Lips evolved over the decades?
For Ryan LaCroix, director of content and audience development at KOSU, it’s fairly straightforward to track the changing seasons of The Flaming Lips’ music: from the punk-rock days of the 1980s, into their early 1990s MTV era when the unlikely hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” landed them a guest spot on “Beverly Hills, 90210,” into an experimental and otherworldly era of the late ‘90s and early 2000s that earned them critical acclaim, and then into an almost frenzied 2010s phase of collaborations and creative ventures, not just in sound but in form.
Through it all, he noted, the Lips have stayed weird.
Over the past four decades, they have garnered a Tony nomination for their work on the “SpongeBob SquarePants” musical, landed on Q Magazine’s “50 Bands to See Before You Die” and made music with Miley Cyrus, Kacey Musgraves, The Chemical Brothers and more.
“Getting to play ‘Happy Xmas’ with Yoko (Ono) and Sean Lennon, those kinds of moments are like, ‘Is this really happening?’ Playing Carnegie Hall with Philip Glass on piano with Lou Reed in the audience, you’re just like, ‘Is this really my life?’” Brown said.
“To play ‘SNL’ with Miley dressed as a pink bunny, it’s gonna make a good highlight reel at the end of my life. ... There’s just not that many bands like The Flaming Lips that combine this really top-notch artistry with this wacky entertainment.”
How have The Flaming Lips lasted for 40 years?
Of course, it hasn’t all been quirky highlights, as the rockers have weathered an array of upheavals, from drug addiction and divorce to lineup changes and music industry shifts. Nowadays, the band members are facing work-life balance challenges as they’re raising children and making music. Still, the Lips play on: Multiinstrumentalist and songwriter Steven Drozd, who joined the band in 1991, said he and Coyne are working on new music after their longest break from composing to date, while playing for some of their biggest crowds yet on the “Yoshimi” tour.
“By the time I joined The Flaming Lips, they were one of my favorite groups. ... With Wayne, he’s really encouraging and is always up for new ideas, new anything. We just hit it off writing songs together. It feels like we hit our stride on ‘The Soft Bulletin’ and just kept going from there. He feels like an older brother,” Drozd said.
“But I really think it’s a combination of Scott and Wayne. I actually call them ‘the elders’ ... and Scott has been the steward of keeping the ship on course.”
Along with his relentless creativity, Booker said Coyne boasts some quintessentially Oklahoman traits that have helped the band endure over the decades.
“There’s so many things that probably shouldn’t have worked for us that did, just because we had the right attitude about it and would make it work,” Booker said.
“Ultimately, I think, it’s a very Oklahoma thing. ... I’ve worked with bands from all over the world, and I haven’t seen that same kind of work ethic that Wayne has very many other times.”
How have The Flaming Lips and Oklahoma City grown up together?
Mayor David Holt was working as then-Mayor Mick Cornett’s chief of staff when he attended Coldplay’s 2006 Oklahoma City concert, where frontman Chris Martin praised Coyne as one of four great American voices, along with Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan.
“He told the crowd they should feel so fortunate to live in the same city as Wayne Coyne ... so I became obsessed with this idea that we were not appreciating The Flaming Lips like we clearly should be,” Holt said. “Part of it really resonated with an idea I’ve had in my whole adult life ... that we had this long list of things that were from Oklahoma City that Oklahoma City didn’t appreciate.”
So, he helped Cornett craft a proposal to name three Bricktown streets after famed OKC musicians: The Lips, Charlie Christian and Vince Gill. The idea for Flaming Lips Alley stirred a local controversy that gained national and even global attention.
“It’s a great shorthand way to communicate that Oklahoma City is not the stereotype that you have in your mind: That it’s a place that can be the home of Wayne Coyne and Ed Ruscha and Ralph Ellison and Kelli O’Hara, and all these fascinating and interesting people from different fields who have created great art,” Holt said.
“It was definitely a passion project for me personally, and then, of course, we had the dedication. The Lips went all out. They had a stage, and they had all their characters. Wayne cursed, and it was great. ... Now, they’re old friends. It’s been a long journey. I’ve grown up with them.”
In many ways, the Lips and their hometown have grown up together, too. As the band’s music was bringing it
The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, left, signs a guitar at the 2009 opening ceremony of the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma in Oklahoma City. Scott Booker, the Lips’ longtime manager, as well as the CEO and executive director of ACM@UCO, looks on. THE OKLAHOMAN FILE mainstream acclaim and Grammys success, the OKC alley wasn’t the only recognition they were getting in the Sooner State. Coyne was honored at the OKC Public Schools Foundation’s 2007 Wall of Fame Humanitarian Awards, and later that year, his band was featured at the Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular alongside Gill, Patti Page, Reba McEntire and more.
The efforts to honor the Lips were sometimes controversial, as when Gov. Brad Henry signed an executive order honoring “Do You Realize??” as the fanvoted state rock song, after the state House of Representatives failed to pass the resolution by three votes. The poignant anthem lost that status in 2013, when Gov. Mary Fallin let her predecessor’s executive order lapse.
Despite the occasional dispute, the band showed their love for OKC with a series of hometown New Year’s Eve Freakout shows and March of 1,000 Flaming Skeletons Halloween parades. The Womb art gallery Coyne opened in 2011 transitioned in 2019 into the headquarters of the OKC artist collective Factory Obscura and its popular “Mix-Tape” attraction.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lips rounded up worldwide attention when they staged 10 unusually social distanced Space Bubble Concerts at OKC’s Criterion. By early 2022, when Holt and Coyne revealed that a splashy 18-foot-by-18-foot spin painting the singer created with iconic visual artist Damien Hirst had been installed inside the OKC Convention Center, the band’s weirdness no longer seemed to cause contention.
“I’m glad that it’s been a mutual admiration society these last 15 years. ... It really aligns nicely with Oklahoma City’s awakening on so many levels and becoming a city that more openly appreciates art, culture, food,” Holt said. “I think it’s not a coincidence that The Flaming Lips’ rise in profile in our city coincided with a deeper appreciation of any number of things.”
For Coyne, making music as The Flaming Lips has granted him the luxury of traveling around the world, which has only deepened his appreciation of OKC.
“You don’t have to be living in a place that someone said is cool. The place you’re living in is probably cool; you just don’t realize it,” he said. “The way I live is amazing. ... I’m living in a place that allows me to live the way I want and do the stuff I like to do. That’s good enough for me.”
“I think it’s not a coincidence that The Flaming Lips’ rise in profile in our city coincided with a deeper appreciation of any number of things.”
WAYNE COYNE