Redbrick Meets… The Flaming Lips

4th Dec 2009

Red­brick edi­tors Erica Ver­non, Alex Spencer and Sam Langtree bounce along to the O2 Acad­emy to meet the great Wayne Coyne

On tour­ing:

We’ve been play­ing since last April. We’ve not played that many shows, but we’re always sorta doing some­thing. So, y’know, it’s a lot. There’s a point I think where you get, like, oh we’re really good at this, and there’s a point where it’s, woah, we’re just play­ing all the time. But it’s been good. Peo­ple seem to really love the new stuff, and we get to do our trip. But today’s the very last day. I mean, I say last day, we’re gonna play a New Year show and… we never really just tour for a year and then take 3 years off. We’re always just kinda play­ing and recording.

On play­ing live:

For me, I’m not a very good musi­cian so I always feel a bit scared get­ting up in front of peo­ple. I’m just a weirdo doing weird things, y’know? I don’t really know if it’s any good. I think peo­ple like that junk, and I’m glad they do. But I never feel like it’s really a skill. Any­one could get in that space bub­ble. And maybe that’s why peo­ple like it – any­one could do it, but I’m the one who does it.

The stage vs. the studio:

When we’re doing music and stuff, I mean record­ing, that just feels like you’re doing art. I’m more com­fort­able doing that. You know, when you’re doing a show, there’s a lot of things that have to go right. And when you’re doing your art in your own space and time, that doesn’t all have to go right. There’s no-one pay­ing money, there’s no-one wait­ing in the cold. I really care about the peo­ple that are com­ing to the show and I want it to be as good as it can be but there’s a lot of things about it you can’t con­trol. So I stress out about those things. Whereas when I’m doing art, it’s just me doing shit, I don’t care. It’s just me and the guys and it is what it is.

Audi­ence participation:

At fes­ti­vals, obvi­ously, not everyone’s there to see us. But they’re there ’cause they’re ready to rock. And they’re usu­ally drunk or on acid or some­thing like that. We do a lot of stuff to get them to react. We shoot con­fetti and we throw bal­loons and I’m say­ing ‘c’mon moth­er­fuck­ers, let’s do this’. I think, if you’ve seen us do a show you kinda know a lit­tle bit of what the rou­tine is, or the way our shows go. If you had never seen us play and you’re there with every­one else, I guess it’s kind of like going to some­one else’s church or some­thing. At first you don’t know what to do but you just join in with all the stu­pid shit they do.

The rock con­cert as an artform:

We played some sta­dium shows with Cold­play at the end of the sum­mer. 80,000 peo­ple in this giant sta­dium, and Chris Mar­tin had every­body get out their cell­phones and they would do the wave up and down the lengths of the sta­dium, and they turn off all the lights so all you can see is 80,000 cell­phones. And that’s not music and I don’t know if that’s art but it’s some kind of extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence that you can’t get unless you have 80,000 peo­ple all will­ing to participate.

A lot of groups, y’know, they come on stage, they play their music, you lis­ten, that’s the way it goes. But a lot of groups will get the audi­ence involved so the thing just becomes a big­ger col­lab­o­ra­tion of the two ener­gies or what­ever. And I think there are prob­a­bly some groups that don’t feed off of that energy but I know we do. When the audi­ence gives you that love and enthu­si­asm it just makes us play bet­ter. It has more mean­ing to it.

Music is magic:

I’m not a sci­en­tist but I know that your expe­ri­ences enter into your mind or your con­scious­ness through your eyes and your ears and your senses. And there’s a moment there where you do really get to say, ooh, that’s cool, I like it and I’m tast­ing it and I’m feel­ing it. But then it goes fur­ther into your mind and it becomes part of your expe­ri­ences and mixes with every­thing else. Music is some sort of mys­te­ri­ous emo­tional thing. Y’know, you sing songs and even though the song is the same song, it means dif­fer­ent things to every­body in the audi­ence and they bring that with them. They bring their own rea­son why they love this moment. So, yeah, it’s cool.

Christ­mas on Mars:

I made this movie Christ­mas on Mars sim­ply because I was around a bunch of peo­ple that were mak­ing movies and I started to see – oh, well, I see how you could do this. And it gives you ideas and it inspires you and it makes you think of new pos­si­bil­i­ties. And so, y’know, I say things like, any­thing is pos­si­ble. Which is kind of a silly idea. But in art, it really is true.

Music is art:

To me art is… it’s really all the same. I just look at it as, it’s all just dumb art. If you’re an archi­tect or if you’re a fash­ion designer or if you’re a tat­tooist, y’know, there’s ele­ments of all that being exactly the same thing. I’m not gonna drop names, but Damien Hirst came to our show the other night. And when I meet peo­ple, whether they’re musi­cians or painters or what­ever, everybody’s relat­ing to the same thing. You get some fuckin’ idea in your mind or some idea gets a hold of you. The tor­ture of doing it – which is a lot of tor­ture – is not as bad as the tor­ture of not doing it. So you do it.

Con­ceiv­ing Embry­onic:

I guess it’s really all con­nected – we’d be work­ing on these big dense arrange­ments, we’d spend a lot of time work­ing on them, and at the very end of that, some­thing would trig­ger some­thing and we’d just throw away all that shit we’d worked on for a year and go with this other thing. I think that’s really what we’ve learned as we go – that you don’t really know why you like some­thing or how you’re gonna like something.

The birth of Embry­onic:

We write songs all the time ’cause we think we’re stu­pid song­writ­ers, you know, but the songs don’t always turn into any­thing. Some­times you think you’ve got the great­est song ever and you go in to record it and, it’s not very good. It’s not what you think, it’s what you do that mat­ters. A lot of times, peo­ple think it’s the oppo­site. They’ll say, I had this great idea, too bad it turned out like shit. As if ideas are hard. I’m sure every­body has fuckin’ great ideas of how to do things all the time. But doing it is really all that matters.