Flaming Lips talk trains, art and meaning of life

Of all the acts to grace Pittsburgh over the last few years, it’s a safe bet that, before The… Of all the acts to grace Pittsburgh over the last few years, it’s a safe bet that, before The Flaming Lips, none had enlisted passing trains as guest stars.

But during a July 20 performance at the Amphitheatre at Station Square, the ever-inventive Lips did just that.

Placing microphones along the nearby tracks to create a bizarre accompaniment to their bittersweet psych-rock, it was, as is always the case with the Oklahoma quartet, strange, spontaneous and somehow fitting.

The Pitt News called lead singer Wayne Coyne before a show in Lewiston, N.Y., to talk trains, art and the meaning of life.

TPN: Where did you get the idea to set mics near the train?

Wayne Coyne: (Laughs) Well, you get the idea because there’s a train going by all day, and I thought, “Well, that never happens where there’s a train that can be part of the show.” So I told our engineers, “Let’s put some microphones out there and as it goes by let’s see if it sounds like something.” … I think everybody that’s at the show was kind of hoping that we’d have a different thing than just a normal concert or whatever. I thought, “Maybe it’ll go by at a time during the show where we can all just sit there for a minute and listen to this train.” You don’t know if the train’s going to come in 20 minutes or what. You don’t know what’s really going to happen, but it ended up like a lot of things: we took a chance — we do that sometimes — and it worked out pretty great. I thought it was a great moment.

TPN: You recently told New Music Magazine that fans give a concert their own meaning. Have you developed a good sense of what fans will find particular value in?

WC: I think they love the unexpected … I remember we played a long, long time ago in San Francisco … The show was just getting ready to start when a big power outage happened — the whole neighborhood was black. And we didn’t know if this was going to last for 10 minutes or if it was going to last all night — you just don’t know … And we sat there and the audience allowed us to play acoustic guitar songs, and we talked to each other. And I talked through my bullhorn … The power came back on — it wasn’t that much longer — and we really got to do what was essentially a normal show, which the audience liked a lot. But I know for sure I still talk to people about that show — that moment that happened where we were all in the dark, dealing with it together …So there’s always things like that. You know, the night we were in Pittsburgh, playing in this amphitheatre outside, and right next to the venue are the train tracks … It was a great, unique moment, and I think the audience loved that.

TPN: The Flaming Lips have this very elaborate, well-imagined aesthetic — particularly in concerts, with the giant hands and the confetti. How did that evolve?

WC: In the late ’90s we knew that we were going to go into another phase in what we were about, and we made this record “Zaireeka.” And we made the record “[The] Soft Bulletin,” and a lot of it was us being very internal. And I was singing a lot about my own experiences and death. [It was] sort of a bleaker version of music — not bleak in that it’s bad, but speaking openly and seriously about emotions and death.

And a lot of people liked these records that we did. And we would go out and play, but I knew that we were going to be singing songs about death. And I was 35 or 36 years old at the time, and I was singing something to give [the audience] perspective. And I thought perhaps a lot of the audience would be hearing about this and complaining to people that are 20 years old — on a Saturday night, they’re taking ecstasy — and here I am, this older guy, singing about death.

And I thought, “If we’re going to sing about death, we’re going to have to make this look like a f*cking party.” So it’s my idea that the more I sing to you about what death means, the more you’ll understand what life means. That was the reason I wanted to do it. So we sang about death, and we made it look like a birthday party.

TPN: There’s an emotional sincerity that permeates even the crazy, wacky stuff you guys always do. How important would you say this is?

WC: I think without that, I don’t think it would appear to be true. People are really free to be themselves — I mean, some of it’s very awful, some of it’s very silly, some of it’s very serious, some of it’s very funny. They do everything — they don’t just stay in the middle. I know myself, I don’t want to be restricted — if I think something’s crazy, well, it’s supposed to be crazy. I want there to be this ability to be mystical, or to be nonsensical, or to be whimsical as well. I think of something off “Embryonic” like “I Can Be a Frog” — it’s just absurd. But [the lyrics] are true. To me, I can only believe that they’re true. Life is absurd. Life is life. It’s whimsical. I’m just being alive.