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In 1983, if you wanted to play bass with the Flaming Lips, all you needed was the right hairdo.  Enter Michael Ivins.  It was Oklahoma City in the early ’80s when a couple of freaks decided they’d start a rock band.  Brothers Wayne and Mark Coyne weren’t very good musicians, so Ivins fit right in.  He couldn’t really play, but the Coynes liked his hairdo, so he became the bass player.  In the intervening twenty-odd years, many members have come and gone from the Flaming Lips as the band grew from a bunch of amateur misfits to an interesting, if a bit weird, indie-noise-rock band, to the vanguard of orchestral art-pop, but Ivins has remained as the only founding member with singer Wayne Coyne.

The following interview was conducted in 2006, right after the Lips had released At War with the Mystics, an album that wasn’t exactly bad, but one that was a bit of a letdown after the stunning work on the band’s previous three albums (Zaireeka, The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, respectively).  The interview provides an interesting look into the workings of the group at the time and a great vantage point from which to view the new Lips double-album, Embryonic.

The Flaming Lips have really redefined theatrical rock, with the costumes and things like the nun hand puppet, the laser pointers and the giant foam hands.  Who thinks of those things?

I think the giant hands were an outgrowth of . . . Wayne used to have some Hulk hands, and he was probably just thinking at some point, “What if I just had really gigantic hands?”  I think even some of that stuff is, you know, you start playing some places that are a little bit bigger, and you have to do things that are on a grander scale to fill out the stage.  We don’t have a particular preference, one way or another, like, “Oh, we really love playing the clubs as opposed to the really big places.”  We’re just sort of, “Hey, wherever we’re going to play, we’re going to try to put on the best show that we can.”  And then, even when we play small places, I think we try to cram the big show into the smaller places.

Out of all the wild theatrics you’ve have done, I think one of the coolest things was landing a spaceship on stage at the “U.F.O.s at the Zoo” concert, a la 1977-era Parliament/Funkadelic.  I can’t imagine the amount of work that must have taken.

You know, I guess it’s like a lot of the ideas we do.  You just do them, and you can’t know until you actually do it.  I think it all ended up happening without a hitch.  We look at it like it’s more different, exciting stuff to do instead of just walking out on stage and playing some instruments or something.  It’s nerve-wracking.  I mean, we’re fairly certain that it’s not going to fall on us.  We go to great pains to make sure, but there’s an element of we’re not sure what’s going to happen.  But you don’t know until you actually do it.

Do you feel any pressure to constantly live up to this wild live show?  Do you ever just want to get on stage and play a normal show?

I think any pressure we might have just comes from us wanting to do things this way or that way.  I think a lot of it ends up being . . . we’ll think of something and think, “Wouldn’t that be great if someone did something like that?”  And then we’ll say, “Why don’t we just do it and see what happens?”  Early on, we came to the realization that – for ourselves, anyway, I mean, different ways seem to work for different bands – but just for us, making the albums was one thing and performing in front of people was a whole totally different thing.  Sometimes I think when you go into a studio, you’re trying to capture a performance instead of, “Hey, there’s only four people in the band, but we’re going to record fifty instruments.  Who cares?”  That’s sort of the point for us in the studio.  We’re free to allow ourselves to do whatever we want to do.

So, the album and the live show become separate works of art.

Exactly, and I think when you step out of the studio and go in front of people, it becomes something else because it is a performance.  The words go right into what it is we’re actually doing.  I think you have to do all these things because, I mean, for us – we just don’t find ourselves that interesting.  When we’re playing during rehearsals, well, that’s us playing the songs, and, gosh, it’s boring really, just to sit there and do that and not have the mayhem and the confetti.  You know, because when you listen to a record, or if I listen to a record – I don’t know what cool names I can throw out there, you know, Alpha Band, or Architecture in Helsinki, or Belle and Sebastian or whoever you want to name.  *CLICK TO LISTEN* If I’m listening to the record, they don’t really have any control over . . . is the music in the background while I’m having the best-cooked meal at home ever, or driving down the street, just whatever, you’re driving around the block or something because you’ve locked your keys in the house.  All that stuff sort of ends up coloring the record – or as you say, the work of art – in a way that the artist doesn’t really have any control over.  I think that movies do that in a lot of ways, especially if you latch onto a movie and watch it over and over again.  You can really dig deep into giving the movie or the music some kind of meaning that sometimes really wasn’t intentioned.  And, I think that’s what makes it great, so that when all these people who listen to this music – whether it’s ours, or Belle and Sebastian or whoever – go and see a show and bring in their heads what they’re thinking about the music, we can still be augmenting ourselves giving meaning to the songs in another way, to add even like a third layer after the record’s been done, and augmented by the sorts of visuals and videos that we show on the screen, or just the general atmosphere that you have when you go and see a show.

It’s interesting you mentioned movies, because your albums are so theatrical.  They are produced so beautifully and are really cinematic in terms of orchestration, instrumentation and the way the actual sound field is panned.  The songs play like mini movies, and the albums as a whole have a very grand, sweeping scope.  Is that something you do intentionally or does it just come out that way?

It’s probably maybe a little bit of both.  When you’re first doing a record . . . I mean, it’s not like we come into the studio and we’ve got fifteen songs and then we play them.  Sometimes, even with Yoshimi, that didn’t really ever start off being any sort of concept record, you know, there sort of reaches a point as you’re putting the songs together and something will happen where it’s like, “This could be a collection that all hangs together.”  I think it’s conscious in that way, that some songs more than others seem to fit what it is that’s happening.  And then, you get to the song order, and I think just because we’re used to people making albums, we still definitely try to do that even though we know people will latch onto a song or a few songs in this day and age of iTunes, where you can just go and pick and choose, and really you can just make your own record out of somebody’s records.  I think all that stuff’s cool and everything, but when we’re actually doing it . . . I mean, we’re not steaming over here that people are doing this sort of thing.  It’s just happening and that’s just the way it goes.  We’re big believers that people, on the whole, actually are doing what they like doing – I’m speaking specifically of artists and musicians and people in bands, you know, whether it’s Beyonce, or Justin Timberlake or Apples in Stereo.  I just think some people aren’t that concerned with making an album.  A lot of people who make pop music – which is a lot harder to do than people would have you believe – they like just the song aspect of it.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.

Yeah.  Me and Wayne we’re actually remarking yesterday, I think Modest Mouse’s new record entered at number one.  And, you know, people are always saying, “It’s rigged.  These people are getting the breaks and it’s shaded toward this type of music,” or whatever people might think, and then you have stuff like that happen.  Nobody knows how this stuff works.  I’m sure if the record companies had their way, every single record that came out would sell a million records.  This idea that people are being force-fed stuff, I don’t really think is true.  I mean, Justin Timberlake is all over the place because a lot of people actually like him.  And he is funny.  He was funny on Saturday Night Live.

How would you describe each member’s role in the Flaming Lips?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* In a simplified version, I think that the four of us, including [Dave] Fridmann, we’re basically like a production team, and we happen to work on our band.  Me and Wayne have been doing this for an awful long time, so I think we’ve moved beyond the whole . . . you know when you’re younger, a band that’s first starting off and doing things, there’s that element of everyone’s hovering around the mixing board going, “I can’t hear the part I played.  Turn that up,” and then you have to start the mix all over again.  We’ve sort of moved through all that idea that this person must play the guitar, this person must play the keyboards, or whatever.  Actually, it’s not even whoever comes up with the idea will do it.  Sometimes it’s like, “Whoever comes up with the idea, tell Steven [Drozd] to go execute the idea.”

Do you remember the first time you ever performed?

Yeah, it was in a bar that was two doors down from our practice space.  Of course, there was no one there, and it was just, “Hey, I guess this is what you do.”  It just happened to be next door, and I think that’s why we picked it as the place.  This was ’84.  We’d been practicing maybe six months by then, and back in those days, it wasn’t like there was a circuit.  There really wasn’t a scene, so to speak.  Well, I think there was one, I take that back.  But, we really weren’t a part of it.  That was down in Norman, which is a college town south of Oklahoma City.  I mean, no one knew who we were.  I think we blew a circuit somewhere, and the amp blew up or something, and you know, you’re up there and it’s just sort of embarrassing.

Did you have any theatrics at that show?

We played it pretty straight, I hope.  I don’t know if it we were a little bored standing up there playing, or maybe covering up a little bit of inexperience or not really knowing how to play all that great.  There are some bands and musicians that can pull a guitar out of their pocket and launch into a rendition of anything.  I mean, Steven’s sort of like that, but me and Wayne don’t really fall into that category.  I think adding some of what we’ll call theatrics to the mix made it a more fun and interesting show.  Because I think, really, it was the Butthole Surfers – when we saw them the first time, here were the kings of really crazy, drug-addled punk rock, but they were actually putting a show on, using strobe lights, and fire and all that sort of stuff.  I think we looked at each other and said, “We need to step it up.”

If you could share any wisdom with the young Michael Ivins playing his first show, what would you say?

I would have said, “Practice a lot more.” [laughs]  I think we’re managing to do, as we go along, exactly what we want to do.  I think that the big goal is just making records and trying to figure this “Christmas on Mars” movie, you know, stuff like that just to keep moving forward, and really just trying to do this as long as we can.  Every time we go in the studio – I’m not going to say it’s literally fun, because there is a lot of work involved that is sometimes pretty boring – but, going into the studio is a lot of fun, and playing in front of people is a lot of fun.  I mean, being in a band, in a tour bus, sleeping in the little coffin bunks, it’s not really my idea of a good time.  But, being able to walk in and figure out how we’re going to pull off the show the way we want to do it, and then playing in front of people who genuinely seem to be there to see us play our songs.  It’s truly – not to sound all sentimental – but it’s a great honor that people really actually pay attention to us at all.

Bottom photo by Eric Atria

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