Intimate Portrait: Wayne Coyne

You might think it’s difficult for Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne to be so damn psychedelic all the time, but it’s not much trouble for a guy who loves to soak in fake blood and dance with furries. Every day. The Lips have been touring behind their stellar Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots for a year and a half and are now releasing a deluxe version plus an EP with four new songs. We zoomed through the streets in a soapbox racer, and I totally let Wayne control the brakes.

 

So, the Lips were recently touring with the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Yeah, and Mike Watt [former Minutemen bassist] was also on the tour. I think the Chili Peppers just wanted to have opening bands who are even older than they are.

In 2002, you pulled double duty as the opening and backing band for Beck. That required total dedication. It was up to us to decide what to do -- even with his own material. It's a big responsibility to know he will be playing to a couple of thousand rabid fans every night and could easily blame [debacles] on us.

So what's the deal with this Christmas on Mars film you've been working on? It just seemed like all interesting bands have movies: Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the Ramones, the Spice Girls. In our film, people living in a space station on Mars are getting ready to celebrate their first Christmas there, and they're losing a grip on what is real and what Christmas means. I play a benevolent superbeing traveling home from Orion's Belt who is mistaken for Santa Claus. Most of it has been shot in Oklahoma, but I've been talking to this guy from a leg of NASA who has Mars simulators at the North Pole and in Utah. I think I'll go to the one in Utah.

Sounds like you sure love Christmas. I like eating those damn dirty stinking turkeys. Gimme gimme! I do, too! We decorate our house as gaudy as we can get away with.

I'd imagine that's pretty damn gaudy. In these wild political times, is there anything you'd like to throw your support behind? I think everybody is wondering what's up with Jack white's mustache. He has this weird little John Waters thing going on right now, and I just want to go on the record saying that I think it looks marvelous.