Tough(-ish) questions with the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne

The Flaming Lips began June in a feud with R&B singer Erykah Badu and ended it with a Guinness World Record. On Thursday night, the Flaming Lips became the answer to a future trivia question, performing eight shows in eight cities, which is the most ever concerts in multiple cities in a 24-hour period. The previous record holder was Jay-Z with seven.

“I’m glad it’s over,” Coyne told Pop & Hiss about one hour after setting the record during a string of shows throughout the Mississippi Delta. The event was to promote VH1, as well as Viacom Music and Logo Group’s O Music Awards. The band started in Memphis, Tenn., ended in New Orleans and stopped in smaller cities like Hattiesburg, Miss., along the way, joined by the likes of Jackson Browne, Grimes and Neon Indian.

“I’m glad it went well. I’m glad no one is dead. I’m glad we got the world record. I’m glad we got to play some really great songs for our most dedicated, hard-core fans,” Coyne said.

It’s been an odd few weeks for the Flaming Lips, a band that has made a career out of celebrating weirdness. In 1997, for instance, the band released a quadruple album, “Zaireeka,” with all discs meant to be played simultaneously. More recently, the Flaming Lips covered their 2009 effort “Embryonic” in a fur case, and released songs on a USB drive -- encased in a gummy skull.

Earlier this month, the Flaming Lips also found themselves in the midst of a pop feud. The band’s newest collection, “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends,” features collaborations with the likes of Kesha, Bon Iver and Badu, among many others. A video was released for the band’s reinterpretation of the popular song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” with Badu. It’s most definitely not-safe-for-work, featuring Badu and her sister Nayrok sans clothes and covered in various substances.

Badu requested the Lips take it down and expressed her discontent with the clip. “As a human I am disgusted with your what appears to be desperation and poor execution,” she posted online. “And disregard for others. As a director I am unimpressed As a sociologist I understand your type. As your fellow artist I am uninspired. As a woman I feel violated and underestimated.”

Needless to say, Pop & Hiss had questions for Coyne.

You’ve released music in a gummy skull and now broken a Guinness World Record. Do you think at some point this kind of stuff just becomes a gimmick?

I think it goes both directions at the same time. On one level, to be involved with VH1 and the O Music Awards is already trendy, gimmicky, semi-mainstream silliness. So you either embrace it or not. But the other part is: What do I get to do with it? I like the ridiculousness of it. Jay-Z thought this was important enough when he put out his last record, and here we are challenging it. There’s an element of this that is absurd.

We’ve also been thinking of different ways to do shows. We draw enough people that we’re playing these slightly uncomfortable sheds some of the time. Ticket prices get high because there’s a lot to do and a lot of seats to fill. So we want another way to do shows. I don’t want it to be like we play to 5,000 people or we don’t play to anyone. I looked at this as an opportunity to see if we could go to little places. You would not believe the welcome you get in a place like Hattiesburg at 8 a.m. People were crying. No one ever plays there. We’ve never played there.

So I will go as far into the gimmicks and the hokeyness and whatever it takes as long as I can get in my agenda for the Flaming Lips fans. So I’ll do whatever they want me to do as long as they let me do what I want to do.

I wanted to bring all these cool underground, experimental bands along with us. This was going to be the only time these fans would get to see us play these songs. Some of these songs were just made up on the spot. We wanted to make a great effort to say that if you saw these shows, perhaps you’ve seen us play a song that we’ll never play again and in a place we’ll never play again. We’ll never play at 4 a.m. in Mississippi again. If I can do that, I’ll do whatever hokeyness they want.

When you show up in smaller markets like Hattiesburg and see the response, does it make you start to think about approaching your next tour different? Something that avoids the standard theater/shed venues?

I think we’ll try to do both. I’m in favor of doing more rather than trading off. I don’t want to say that we don’t like playing the sheds. It’s a big audience and a way to make lots of money. But seeing this way of doing things does make me think, “Couldn’t we do this, too?”

Maybe one night we’ll be in a big city playing a shed, and the next day we’re in a little place and it’s a unique show. I don’t know how we make money and make that successful, but success has a lot of different dimensions to it. To see those people this morning was a powerful experience.

One of the more unique concert experiences in recent history was the 1999 headphone experiment, in which fans could listen to the Flaming Lips live or via little radios. As fun as the current celebratory concerts are, and as odd as it is to break a Guinness World Record, they seem less about challenging the listener to experience music in new ways.

I know exactly what you mean. It’s up to us to pursue different ways we can do things. It’s not up to anyone else. That’s why when this was presented, I looked at this as a way to see if there was a new way we could do things as well.

There are a lot of reasons to do things, for sure. I love absurdness. The absurdness of this crossed over into so many worlds. Everyone knows what the the Guinness Book of World Records is. It’s like winning a Grammy. You don’t think you care until you’re standing in line at the bank and someone goes, “You got the world record!”

So when you have an opportunity to do something like this, to pass it up would have been different than us doing this ourselves. This was presented to us. We were able to say that this sounded like something that could be fun. I don’t think we ever would have considered pursuing this on our own. We’re taking the momentum of what’s happening to us as opposed to what we need to happen.

Was there any moment during the 24 hours where you thought breaking the record was in jeapordy?

You trust that it’s going to work. The worst thing that can happen is our fans show up, give us their money and time, and they think, “Ugh, this stinks. Wayne, why did you do this?” That didn’t happen.

Do you wish the Erykah Badu situation would have been handled differently?

There’s an unpredictable side to Erykah. I don’t tell anyone the true ins-and-outs of working with people. That’s a sacred obligation. If we’re going to work together, the way you clip your toenails is nobody else’s business, if that’s what you let me see. So I will never really say the circumstances, but I know what happened. I know she was a little blindsided. Her sister is really the one in the blood and semen – it’s not real blood and semen, of course. Her sister is the one doing that. She was blindsided by everyone thinking it’s her. She had to answer why she would want a video where she’s covered in semen ... So she asked us to take the video down and said I didn’t do what I said.

Well, we did exactly what we all said. We all watched the video while we made it. People know how videos are made these days. You can watch them while you make them. This isn’t the old days where you go develop film. We shoot stuff and turn the monitors around. Her manager and her lawyers were there the whole time. The whole time. They saw everything we did. There’s no trick I can do. I’m not that smart. I’m not trying to trick anyone.

I think part of it is she also likes making a stink about what she’s doing. She’s good at seeking attention. That’s what I like about her. I wasn’t in this fight to fight with her. I wanted to talk about the ideas of art and what are the limits. Perhaps the limits the Flamings Lips have are different than Erkyah Badu, but this is a Flaming Lips video. I made it, did exactly what she wanted and she wasn’t happy with it so we took it down. But her reaction called attention to it and caused everyone out there to grab the video illegally. But it was out. It’s still able to be seen, and mostly because of the controversy.

Granted, I helped it along ...

I was about to say – you did post a photo of your lips covered in glitter [in response to Badu’s suggestion Coyne kiss her “glittery” behind].

I’m trying to make it funny. It’s just a video. I’m not able to check Twitter diligently every day. I get people on Twitter tweeting to me that their sister died of cancer yesterday and they’re really struggling and just want me to say hello. I use it mostly for those sorts of things. I’m not using it to say how cool I am. I use it to promote Flaming Lips things and touch people I wouldn’t otherwise know.

I can’t call everyone, but there are a couple times per week when I can say something special that changes someone’s horrible situations. So I like being on Twitter and like that it’s uncensored, but don’t want to play into things where it’s just meanness.

Your last album, “Embryonic,” was one of the band’s most experimental, weirdest albums in years. What can we expect on the new Flaming Lips album due later this year?

We were completely ... around with what kind of music we can make, and we were making strange, sad, emotional music again.

I don’t know why, but we kept going back to something that wasn’t funky. There’s stuff on ‘Embryonic’ that is two-note bass line driven by this complex chord structure and these angry, existential lyrics. I’d love to make another “Embryonic.” I’m easily swayed.

But this other music just started happening. We weren’t really making it. Little by little we started collecting these little pieces of music we couldn’t explain. But we liked it. It still will fall into the category of experimental, but it’s very simple and emotional. It’s not beat-driven like “Embryonic.” It’s strange. It sounds like distorted religious music from some distant future.

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