mxdwn Interview: The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne Talks About “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” 20th Anniversary Box Set and Accompanying Graphic Novel

As the years go by, anniversaries of landmark albums come and go, and 2022 holds a very special anniversary for the indie, psychedelic rock group, The Flaming Lips. 

In July 2002, The Flaming Lips released their incredibly bold and wildly colorful, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots which garnered much critical acclaim, leading to the band’s first Grammy award for the track “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia).” Considered to be their magnum opus, Yoshimi contains some of the most beloved songs from the Lips’ discography such as “Do You Realize??” and “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell.” 

To celebrate the 20th year anniversary of the album, The Flaming Lips released a massive Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots box set including four-track cassette demos, live performances, remixes and many other fun extras any music lover would be excited to discover. 

Even with the holidays quickly approaching, frontman and founding member of The Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne, found some time out of his busy schedule of making art and trying to keep up with his kids for an old fashioned phone interview to discuss the significance of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the overall process of deciding what to include in the box set and working on a new graphic novel accompanying the album. 

Wayne Coyne: You know, I have to say I don’t do very many plain phone calls now. Everything is like a Zoom you know, so it’s a strange feeling, but I’m doing great! 

mxdwn: It’s a little old school but, I’m here for it.

Wayne: Yeah, yeah. I would talk about that every time I’m doing a Zoom. Now we just do them even if it’s not recorded or anything. It’s just a way to talk. Yeah, there was a time when we talked on the phone, so this is strange. 

mxdwn: First off, how are you and where are you currently in the world?

Wayne: We have a couple of young kids, one is 3 and a half and one is nine months. And the 3 and a half year-old is finally figuring out there’s a Santa Claus and there’s reindeer, so that’s all insane and wonderful. And everybody just got over the flu, so this is the first couple days where the house doesn’t have flu. When your kids are sick, nothing is good. But when they’re good, the whole world is wonderful again. We have our whole house set up for Christmas. 

Steven (Drozd) and I, and one of our engineers are working on our podcast today and I’m working on a graphic novel for the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots story. And the Yoshimi Battles Pink Robots big box thing has come out in the past couple weeks. So yeah, lots of, too many things.

mxdwn: With the 20th anniversary of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots coming out this year, how do you think the album has maintained its relevancy throughout the years, not only with fans, but with the band as well?

Wayne: Well, you know, the song “Do You Realize??” sort of leads the way with everything that happens with The Flaming Lips. It’s little by little, I think if you know that song that’s what leads you to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and then that leads you to like, “Oh! That’s The Flaming Lips that do that!” Which I think is what musicians want, you know? I think you wanna be known for your music and not some scandal or your haircut. In that way, it’s amazing. 

I wouldn’t really know if it’s relevant or not. I mean those sorts of things, who knows?  It wouldn’t be up to me to even agree or disagree about. And I think when we made the album we were already, I was already in my 40’s and stuff, so it wasn’t something that we did when we were young and now we have to deal with it when we’re old. It doesn’t feel like that long ago, for me. I’m gonna be 62 in the beginning of January, so it’s like I was in my early 40’s then. 

And the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots record, along with the record that came out before it, The Soft Bulletin, they’ve become such landmark records for us and our fans. Those records, we’ve never really left them. There are times I think when we try to forget about everything that we’ve done and you just try to make new music that has nothing to do with who you were and all that sort of stuff. But those records, every night we play a third of the songs are from The Soft Bulletin, and a third of the songs are from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Most of the audience is there because of the song, “Do You Realize??” 

So we’ve never really been away from it. And it’s a great, great, great, amazing, impossible thing to think, “Oh, gosh! In every big town in the world, there’s a couple of thousand people that know your music.” It’s insane, yeah. 

mxdwn: What was the process like going through old demos, live shows, and other recordings anticipating the release of the Yoshimi box set? Was there anything that you uncovered that you decided should stay on the cutting room floor? 

Wayne: Well, luckily our manager, Scott Booker, he’s really the one that sort of curated this big collection. And he’s a collector, but I do not wanna make that seem like a bad thing. He loves, loves music and he loves, loves, loves The Flaming Lips. So whenever we would do a radio show back in 2001 or in 2002 or something, he would follow up, even if it took him a couple of years, he would follow up and get a recording of it and he would get the rights to use it, and all these boring things that Steven and I wouldn’t think about. We would be like, “Oh, who cares about that?” But he would be so diligent at every show that we played back then that had a decent recording of it, he would hunt them down. He would stay on it and stay on it and not only get it, but the rights to use it, all that stuff.

And I think he was masterminding this all along thinking, “Well, I got this and I got this.” And back then we did a lot of the demos on my four-track cassette recorder. As we moved along, I didn’t use it as much because we had our own studio and we would do demos right into the big computer ProTools thing and it wouldn’t be the same process. But back then there would be literally hundreds and hundreds of these little tapes that had a piece of a song on it, maybe it had a piece of three or four songs. A lot of stuff to go through but luckily he went through a lotta, lotta, lotta stuff over the past five or six years starting to kind of piece together what all this big box set could be.

Then about a year and a half ago, maybe a little longer than that, he started to urge me to go through my big stockpile of these, not demos, just the four-track recordings trying to make up songs. Luckily after COVID, like a lot of people, we cleaned up a part of our house that hadn’t been cleaned up for 20 years and I found a box of these old demos that I really didn’t even remember I had. And I found it and started to go through it. Literally hundreds of them. And luckily, with a very patient engineer, I would be listening to the four-track cassette machine and we put that right into the big computer ProTools machine. And as we go we would sort of decide what’s on it. Some of them would be labeled what was on it and then some of them wouldn’t have any label. Just like, “What is this?” That’s where we found this very, very first take of me struggling to piece together the very beginning of the song “Do You Realize??”

Steven and I talked about this demo, but we found another demo that was later than this original one that we assumed was the first one for the longest time. But then I found this other one a little while back and I was like, “Oh! Well, here’s the real first one.” So all that, it’s all kind of exciting if you know how it ended up. It’s not exciting if the song never went anywhere, but it’s exciting if you know the way it ended up. And here’s the way we know this song and this story of the song to go all the way back to the very beginning. It’s great.

And we always remember sort of the inception of the songs but it always helps when you’ve got a little bit of a helper. “Here’s the tape. Here’s a couple things that can help jog your memory again.” Some of it is kind of embarrassing but I’m kind of like, if everybody likes it, that takes the embarrassment away a little bit. You don’t feel so bad if everybody’s like “It’s amazing, so primitive!” And all that. But I think it’s inspiring in that way that songs can become such a big beautiful majestic thing, really just from a simple couple lines and a couple of chords and a couple of expressive moments. You could really make something.

But like I said, our manager, Scott, he would’ve picked a lot of things out of the thousand of things that he probably has and got that down to the hundred things that it is now on the box set. And we would trust him. If he loved it and he felt like it was important I’m not worried about the embarrassment too much.

mxdwn: It seems like it’s kind of like taking a puzzle apart and seeing all the individual pieces spread out, and it’s really cool.

Wayne: Well, and knowing that album is so loved I think it kind of helps you feel like people would be interested in how all that went together. And I know we were. When we think of records  from when we were young and nowadays everybody has a “making of” and “behind the scenes” and all these sorts of things. We love that sort of stuff. I think with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots we’re lucky there is a lot of stuff. Some of our albums there wouldn’t be that much because they’re kind of done in a hurry and we wouldn’t have released five or six different singles and stuff like that. It’s a lot of stuff. I was surprised, yeah. 

mxdwn: When revisiting all these old demos and stuff, were there any production techniques that you rediscovered that really made this album stand out from anything else you’ve done? 

Wayne: Well, Dave Fridmann is the producer of most of our records. There’s been a few that we didn’t do with him but since 1988, we’ve mostly worked with him. And he built his own studio starting in 1996, so it’s the same studio today. So it’s been going ever since then. We would be working with him starting in 1996 at his studio. And Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots comes out in 2002, so we would’ve been up at Dave’s constantly, constantly, constantly making the Zaireeka album and then Soft Bulletin, recording all the way through all this stuff and ending up probably at the peak of what we were capable of with the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Dave as well, we’re all on this trajectory of learning and figuring out, and being curious, and finding new stuff and all the new technology and all the stuff. And I think we’re just very lucky that we had this strong batch of very likable songs that you can kind of do any kind of production to and they would still be pretty great. 

We all became a little bit more curious. I think we were listening to like Missy Elliott and Timbaland. These things were new to us, I don’t think they were new to the world. But they were new to us. And we were like, “How the fuck are they doing these things?” And some of those records will always sound amazing. And we would just try to do what we thought they were doing and find our own way of making stuff. So it’s an immaculately detailed but sonically just masterful record. But on the other side of that, records like that they’re just hard to make. I don’t think we would have wanted to just kept on making records like that forever. It’s just very intense. I think after five or six years of recording, recording, recording, you would wanna kill each other. 

And luckily it was successful and everybody embraced it, and everybody loved it. Don’t get me wrong, we love making music, we love recording and all that, and still work with Dave Fridmann all the time, even now. But those are just very intense times. And luckily we didn’t have to keep doing that because we could move on and do other other things. So it’s great but it’s hard to stay on that level.

And we still wanted to make lots and lots of different types of music. I think we, little by little, will be defined by these records that people know. But these other things that we do that aren’t big popular records, they define us even if they don’t define us in the world. And without that I think it would just be a very frustrating way for the creative people to work to think, “We kind of have to sound like that song “Do You Realize??” because no one will know it’s us.” We just don’t ever think like that. We will just sound however we want to sound and we’ll deal with it. 

So I think it was a great thing that happened but it was also at a great time that we could say, “We’re satisfied that we did that, and let’s find another way of being The Flaming Lips at the same time.” 

mxdwn: So when you’re recording nowadays your mentality is a little bit like trying to move forward and try to find a new and refreshing way of being able to present new songs?

Wayne: I think it’s always the same in a way. It’s like if you have a couple of great songs. And great, it doesn’t mean production and all that it just means the very basic level saying, “That’s saying something.” You don’t really know when those are going to happen. You’re kind of always doing stuff and suddenly you’re like “Hey! We have this great song!” So any time we would get like three or four of those we would feel like, “This feels like another version of The Flaming Lips.” Then we would call in the troops and say, “Let’s see if we can start to put something together around these.” 

Because we’re always working and we’re always writing songs, and always fucking around in the studio and stuff. But those magic songs are just not really up to you to decide because something has to happen. So with The Soft Bulletin and even Yoshimi, there would be a batch  of three or four that compels you to, “You got to move on this. You can’t just let this sit here. You got to work on this.” 

That’s kind of always where we’re at. With our last album, American Head, there were three or four songs that we kept going back to. It’s a collection of songs from three or four years ago.  It wasn’t just songs that we just did in a year. And then we ended up with like five or six really great tracks that all sort of connected. And then in the last year of working on that you work hard to make more stuff that makes all those other things shine and makes them all believable and expressive to each other as an album. But we’ve made a lot of records so it’s fun to kind of not worry about it too much. 

mxdwn: Besides music and painting, you’ve also been working on your graphic novel for Pink Robots. How is the process of making a physical narrative differ from a sonic narrative?

Wayne: I think about that a lot. In some ways a song is a little bit of a story. Luckily I’ve been in that zone. I don’t think all the songs that we do work that well as a story. But you’re always thinking like you’re the character and you’ve got this philosophical, I don’t know if it’s a dilemma, but whatever it is that you want to present in the song. You’re the character that’s going through this struggle or whatever. 

So it’s not that much different but I’m doing the storyboard and drawing the whole thing out. So that all helps. I’m not just writing it as words. It’s like a comic, thousands of little drawings on pages and stuff. And I’ve done comics before, but I haven’t done one that’s 400 pages. I’ve done some that are 50 pages and stuff. I haven’t done one that’s 400 pages. But luckily with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, my story just follows the songs and the order of the songs that they were when it was released in 2002. I don’t know what it looks like when you know you get it on digital or whatever. So it’s easy for me to say, “Well, the story follows the songs.” Even though we don’t really know what the story was when we did the songs. 

And I know people like the songs. So you get a lot of things that are kind of helping it move along. So I’m not working from nothing. I’ve already done lots of painting. Now I’ve probably done 20 to 25 paintings. And each time I would do a painting, I wouldn’t really know what to paint either. I do a painting and say, “Well, that could be part of the story.” 

So I think that’s probably the best way to work. I mean, otherwise you would get trapped into what you think is a story and you go every way around it. Where I’m kind of going the other way where there’s a lot of great pieces. Let me see if I can connect them into something that has some emotion and that you care about the characters and stuff. To me it’s the only way, it’s the best way because I think drawing pictures and making paintings and stuff, you always want it to be a part of a bigger story, a bigger narrative. I think all of our albums that we make, they’re probably all concept records to us. Even though it wouldn’t be apparent to people listening to it. You have to get into this connecting things and things being similar. 

We always say it’s like making a movie. You have like 10 great scenes and then hope that they can all connect into something that makes sense. But in a sense I think it’s really all the same and for me, there’s a feeling that I get when I’m creating and then it starts to work. I’ll do something like, “Oh, fuck! Hey, that’s really working!” It’s like a drug and it’s only way I can get that drug is to be in that zone. And if I want that I’ve got to be creating and doing stuff. It doesn’t mean it has to turn out to be the greatest thing ever. It’s just for me. But it wouldn’t be like that for everybody. But for me, I know I’m doing it for my own selfish reasons.

mxdwn: As we reach the end of 2022, there’s always a reflection of the past year and everything we’ve done and accomplished but I want to know how do you feel like you’ve grown as an artist over the last couple years with big life changes like fatherhood and the pandemic? How is that affecting your art creation? 

Wayne: I don’t think you know it’s gonna affect you, but definitely being a father, having another baby just last March. I think I’ve just been really lucky that I still have a lot of energy. I’m gonna be 62 and I have a lot of energy because when you got little kids, they just go, go, go. So I’m glad to be able to keep up with them. And that energy and that way that you have to do things that are important, you don’t wanna waste your time. You don’t want to do bullshit stuff. I think all that has helped me be a better human, a more patient human, a better understanding human, I think I’m a better listener than I used to be. I think I laugh more than I used to. And laughing just helps you learn so much. And having little kids that don’t care what you’re thinking. Sometimes when you’re an adult you think what you’re thinking is so important or deep or whatever. And kids just throw that all away. So I think that lets you be in service of something. I don’t know if that sounds hokey to say. But instead of it being like, “I’m important. What I’m doing is important.” It’s just not that important.

And that helps your art be a lot better because you can take a lot of risks and you can throw things away, and you could not be so caught up in your own bullshit. And I think that all helps. Everything gets put into a better perspective when you’re not just living for your life. You’re living for others. And I think it sounds hokey, but it really changes everything for the better.

The Flaming Lips are embarking on a spring tour in 2023 supporting their 2020 release, American Head as well as celebrating the 20th anniversary of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. For more content including music videos and their fascinating podcast, Sorcerer’s Orphan, check out The Flaming Lips’ website.

Featured Image Photo Credit: Ekaterina Gorbacheva