It wasn't the most auspicious of beginnings. I spent the entirety of my 12 p.m. class glancing at my watch: I was expecting a call from Wayne Coyne, lead singer of The Flaming Lips, at 1.
2009 was a busy year for the psychedelic alternative rock band: The year marked the release of both its 12th studio album Embryonic and a cover of the classic Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon.
When I heard that the Lips would rock the Charlottesville Pavilion tonight, I could not help myself. I e-mailed the band for an interview but did not hold my breath.
When Coyne replied that he would like to talk to tableau, I nearly fell out of my chair. Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips - the influential band that helped shape the landscape of American music for the past three decades - he wanted to talk to me.
He called right as I got out of my class.
"Are you busy right now?" he asked, probably in response to the noise of students spilling into the halls of New Cabell Hall.
"Hold on one second!" I said.
I ran into a random classroom, open windows dousing me in sunlight. A moment later, I dropped my phone, which hit the floor with an awful crunching noise.
I gasped, fumbled and picked it right back up. "Hello?"
"Um, hi," he said. Then, with genuine concern, he added, "Are you OK?"
I assured him that I was fine, albeit a bit frazzled, and we made the requisite introductions. He was polite - very polite - with Midwestern manners and infinite patience for a fumbling college student.
"You know, your band has been around for longer than I've been alive," I said in the early minutes of our chat. It was the first thing that popped into my mind.
"How old are you?" Coyne asked.
"19."
He let out a low whistle. "How do you know about an old guy like me?" He laughed. "19's a great age to be."
Once I moved past the awkwardness, the dropped phone and the fumbling, I found Coyne to be a great conversationalist with an incredible sense of humor - quite unexpected for a performer known for his crazy live shows, the tour de force of which is the giant bubble he uses to run over the heads of his audience like a frenetic hamster.
"You know, my greatest fear with [the bubble] is that I'll walk over a group of girls who are texting on the floor," he said. "They'll be telling their friends something like, 'Look at this old guy running around in his ball,' and - and I plop onto them. I have to be looking out for that."
The ball is merely the icing on the cake for a show known for trippy music videos, endless amounts of confetti and crazy stunts. How do the Lips keep the insanity from getting old? Well - they don't.\n"It's weird because some of our fans like knowing what's going to happen," he explained. "They like seeing the same thing. It's like going to your restaurant and getting your favorite dish. In my opinion, some elements of The Flaming Lips show shouldn't change because that would be like going to McDonald's and finding out they don't have french fries."
But Coyne also added, "Even within the context of the same show, there's a lot of room for everything to be new. We're always gauging that. However, we don't want to stop playing 'Do You Realize' because some people are coming to see that song specifically."
Coyne himself has experienced the disappointment that may come from hoping to hear a band play a certain song. For Coyne, the band was Radiohead, and the song was "Creep," the group's 1992 debut single. At the time of the show Coyne attended, Radiohead was in the midst of changing its image somewhat. But even knowing this, Coyne still wanted to hear the song from the band's early stages.
Bands sometimes opt to play setlists that are not filled with hit singles, whether in an effort to move away deliberately from what it is known for or just to keep their listeners on their toes. The Lips, however, find it easy to do both.
"Our show is about a variety of experiences, and we've learned that there's a kind of power when the audience knows every moment, but that the audience can also enjoy the show when they're wondering where things are going," he said. "We want multiple dimensions. We want this big variety of dynamics."
And what of the group's latest release, a cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon? I mentioned that I could only begin to imagine the difficulties involved with recreating one of the greatest albums of all time.\n"Well, we [as a band] have an empathy or a sympathy or a brotherly connection with Pink Floyd." He paused. "If I were at a truck stop and someone came up to me and said, 'Hey, you're in that weird band, right? So what do you sound like?' I think I'd reply, 'We sound like Pink Floyd, but louder.'"
He laughed before continuing, adding that even though his group may identify with the English psychadelic rock band, the Lips do not want to emulate Pink Floyd down to every last detail. For example, lead guitarist Steven Drozd brainstormed "a bad hip-hop beat" for "Money."
"[As a band], we had dabbled with songs from Dark Side of the Moon already. But for our cover, we weren't interested in doing the album note-for-note because there was nothing exciting in recreating it sound by molecular sound. We knew we wanted our own trip ... We didn't stop to think about whether [our covers] were the worst or best thing ever. Of course, you have to hope that you aren't embarrassed about it later, but even if it were embarrassing, we don't care that much."
He stopped, and his voice took on a philosophical tone.
"All of our material has in common a level of experimentation because I believe that life is about being curious, whether it is with new food, music or sex toys or whatever. You have to constantly be asking yourself, 'I wonder what will happen?' I believe that you can't be afraid of failing in art and music, because that's just part of it. If you don't look like a fool, you don't deserve an audience."\nI ended the interview by asking him what he did in his free time.
"I don't necessarily have free time, and that's fine by me," he said. "I never have long to just sit on some mountain retreat and drink champagne. After all, I get to work with people who are cool, and I have a wonderful wife and dogs and a house."
He paused, thinking. "Recently, my wife and I - we live in Oklahoma City - we went to see her sister and her new baby in Dallas. That was wonderful. But in our free time? We sleep late and we hang out with friends. We watch movies and eat food like everyone else."
He laughed again.
"I get to do so many wonderful things, so it's up to me to find the joy in what I'm doing, and that's true for everybody. I'm especially lucky because I get to do the greatest thing anyone would want to do, which is play music that I love in front of people who love it, and they give me money for it. It's the greatest, stupidest job anyone could ever have. I love it"
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