Mix tapes can say a lot about a person, or a band for that matter - because you only ever make mix tapes when you want to impress someone. And as John Cusack's character in High Fidelity said, there's an art to making a mix tape - it's like writing a love letter where you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. The Flaming Lips, and Steven Drozd in particular, have recently contributed to the Late Night Tales series (which also includes volumes curated by Four Tet, Jamiroquai, and Nightmares on Wax) and have used the likes of 10cc, Nick Drake, Miles Davis, Roxy Music and the Psychedelic Furs to express how they feel about life and love. Drozd also tried to include a rare Beck track to try and balm the savage rift that has developed between former friends - Beck and Lips frontman Wayne Coyne - but to no avail.

Where are you calling in from?
Right now I'm in western New York in a little town called Fredonia that's close to Buffalo, New York. So if you're in New York City go about 400 miles west.

The Flaming Lips are a relentlessly happy band. Is it hard to be 'up' every night?
With the animal costumes and all that? I don't really have to be personally. Wayne has enough happiness and joy for everyone on stage. I'm in my pink elephant suit, I've got my bottle of bourbon, I got a guitar and keyboard. I'm pretty busy so...I should stop saying that. It's sound kind of cliché but once you get on stage and you get the rush of the crowd even if you're in a foul mood it does fade away. You forget about all your troubles when there's how many people and they're all jumping up and down. You look to your left and you've got 10 drunk people in animal costumes. You look to your right and you've got another ten. It's hard to not enjoy yourself at least for the time that you're playing.

As you've mentioned you're renown for wearing a pink elephant suit on stage...what traits does it bring out in you?
Tolerance for drunk people. That's the only one I can think of. You're up there and you've got the suit on and people are stepping on your cords and getting in your way but you can't really yell at people when you're wearing a pink elephant suit. So I think the main thing is just tolerance for people which I could probably use in my real life.

Is it easy to blame things on the pink elephant - as in 'the pink elephant made me do it'?
I never even thought of that before. Boy, am I stupid. Thankyou. Now I've got a whole new reason to wear that thing. 'I didn't mean to come into your room and throw up on your floor - the pink elephant made me do it'. But usually the pink elephant goes on literally two minutes before we play - we go play the show - and then pink elephant comes right off. I usually don't linger too long in the pink elephant suit afterwards.

A decade ago there was a lot more cynicism in the Flaming Lips music - what's brought on the change in attitude?
We're different ages. Michael and Wayne have been together since the early 80s and I'm about eight years younger than Wayne. By the time I joined the band those guys were already into their 30s and now they're into their 40s. I think what happened was Wayne, who's the face of the band and writes the lyrics and puts together the imagery and does the artwork and creates the whole philosophy for the group, just got older and his state of mind changed. He became less of a cynic and his lyrics changed, I think for the better, and it became less like an ironic joke and more, it sounds so hokey to say, trying to connect with people emotionally. I don't think he tried so much but it was just a part of getting older. Maybe I'm wrong but when you're in your 20s you feel invincible - you're going to die young and you don't give a shit and you get to your 30s and struggling with that - 'hey, why am I still alive?' And I'm guessing when you hit your 40s you're happy to be alive. Maybe I'm totally wrong on that but that's my perception of it.

Are you still considered the new boy of the band?
I guess so. We have a drummer that plays with us live now but he doesn't record or anything. Still out of the three of us I'm the kid and I'll be 36 in June. So, yes, I'm the Ronnie Wood of the group. Not as thin or as rock n' roll mind you.

When did you start to become more than just the drummer for the band?
Let's see - I joined in '91 and I guess even on the first record I played a little bit of keyboards here and there and some guitar parts and always helped write some music for the songs but it didn't really drastically change until our guitarist Ronald (Jones) quit in 1996. We were thinking we could try and find another guitar player but we didn't know how we were going to do it because Ronald was such a weird guitar player, actually just an incredible guitar player, and it was really hard to find anyone who could even remotely try to fill his shoes - for lack of a better term. So we said 'fuck it', we just won't get another person and we'll just do it as the three of us. So it evolved from there that I ended up playing more guitar and it opened it up to try more things with strings and horns instead of just guitars all throughout.

Mix tapes tend to say a lot about a person - what do you feel Late Night Tales says about you?
It probably says that I'm sappier than you probably ever really thought. I'm sure people already think we're sappy but it's got a lot of soft, soft things on it.

Like 10cc's 'I'm Not in Love'? It sounds like a Flaming Lips prototype.
It kind of does doesn't it? I couldn't get over the fact it was recorded in 1975 - it's pretty amazing. With 10cc it's the only thing they ever did that I like. That one song is so much greater than anything else they ever did. It's stunning. But you're right though it does sound like a prototype to the Flaming Lips and a bunch of other stuff too.

What was the brief you were given for the compilation?
When I made the list of songs originally our manager just said 'make a list of 50 songs you would love to hear on a compilation' and that was it. It wasn't like 'hey it's for this Late Night Tales thing'. I made a list of a shitload of songs and then he came back a month later and said, 'I've got clearance for twenty six of them so here's the deal this thing called Late Night Tales want you to make a 70 minute disc of different songs and you do the cross fades and edits and they'll master the whole thing and put it out'. I did a little research on Late Night Tales - I'd heard of it but I didn't really know much about it and then I got the Four Tet one that's really cool. The thing with the Flaming Lips is that it's a lot more...not commercial but it seems like it's more pop or popular music than obscure, underground stuff. Like the Four Tet one most of his stuff is really obscure like funk and fusion and shit like that which is great. But I'm glad ours is more English pop and New Wave and shit like that.

I've read that your brothers initiated you into the world of stoner rock - Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Black Sabbath, Robin Trower...that influence is kinda of missing on this collection.
I didn't really have any of that stuff like Hawkwind, Sabbath and Robin Trower. It's not like I thought about it and then said 'no' I just don't think I ever thought about. I don't know why. That's a really good question I never even thought about that. Even something like 'Bridge of Sighs', which is the more mellow rock stuff, might not have fitted the way the other things do. Mind you now that it's done there's a couple of things that don't fit on there anyway like the other things do. Like our cover of the White Stripes I don't think that fits on there very well but the Late Night Tales people asked us to put that on there. But I think that sticks out weirdly and doesn't work very well. And the Chameleons track. I love it, it's one of my favourite tracks but I'm not sure I'm not sure if I think it sits well with the rest of them. Back on the stoner rock thing - none of those artists really crossed my mind.

You're not enamoured with the White Stripes cover?
Not that I'm not enamoured of it. I think it's fine it just doesn't fit very well with the compilation. Part of the deal is that when an artist does a late Night Tales series they actually contribute one of their cover versions. I actually wanted to put on a cover version we did of 'Everyone's Gone to the Moon' by a guy named Jonathan King. It's like a breezy, late 60s English pop song that's just really cool and we did a live radio version five or six years ago. It was just acoustic guitar and piano version and very mellow and that seemed to suit the compilation a lot better but by that time they'd decided they wanted the White Stripes cover.

What does Jack White think of your version of 'Seven Nation Army'?
He loves it. We opened for them in Chicago New Years Eve 2003/2004 and we on stage and played that with him and he asked Wayne to grab his megaphone and sing his lyrics instead of the White Stripes version.

Your father was a truck driver and a musician of some renown in the Austin, Texas area - what kind of music was he into?
He was mostly into old country and western up until the 70s which is where he kind of stops. Merle Haggard and George Jones and Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and I love all that shit too. Of course I think country music now is the armpit of music along with hip hop. But that's just me. Country and new hip hop - it's the arm pit and they should stop whatever they're doing - please stop doing it. That was his bag and he also played polka and waltz music. He grew up playing Eastern European polka and waltz music - Polish and Czech music. Traditional stuff.

What kind of relationship did you have with him growing up?
Everybody says their family is weird but my family was weird and my dad was a freak. We got along really well because I played with him professionally from the age of ten on. I played in his band. He worked like a dog during the week, drove a beer delivery truck and was working 12 hour days and stuff and then on the weekend that's when we'd hang out because we'd have jobs on the Friday and Saturday night and sometimes Sunday afternoons where you'd go to dance halls and end up playing for four hours or whatever. We were close in that way cos we always played music together. And that was my reality that's what I would do with my dad - play music. And we still get along to this day but I don't live very close to him and I don't see him even on a monthly basis. I see him three or four times a year at best.

That country influence doesn't surface on Late Night Tales.
I think I had a Tammy Wynette song called 'Till I Get it Right' and then I decided no. I love that song but as I said before it's heavily English. My mother was into the Supremes and Marvin Gaye and all those things but there's not much hint of that on this record either. I had Stevie Wonder 'Golden Lady' on the list but then I decided I didn't want to put it on there. But it was supposed to be for the Flaming Lips, for all of us and not just for me. Also some things just didn't get cleared. Have you ever heard Robert Wyatt's version of 'At Last I'm Free'? It's a pretty weird, obscure thing but it's by that band Chic that Robert Wyatt did a cover of. The Chic version sucks but his version is pretty cool. I couldn't get clearance for that for some reason. The other one was an odd Beck track called 'Ship in a Bottle' which is off the Japanese version of his Sea Change record. We didn't get clearance on that one either.

You couldn't ring Beck up yourself? The Flaming Lips were his backing band a couple of tours back.
No, man, not at this point. There was a whole feud with him and Wayne - I don't know if people know that much about it but I've seen a couple of jabs here and there in the press. We did that tour with him back in 2002 and this guy from Esquire magazine travelled with us for like four days on the Lips travel bus and was just there the whole time and saw the day in and day out for four days. Well the article that came out cast Beck in not the most appealing light. It made him seem like a diva and a rock star and all that. And Beck didn't think it was too nice and there were a couple of quotes from Wayne that were kind of disparaging. So, I don't know - the relationship has been tested and it's been shaky. But about the song getting clearance that might not have had anything to do with Beck. I can tell you're waiting for me to say more about this debacle thing but that's all I'm going to say. Wayne said a couple of things that I don't think Beck took to kindly to and that sort of severed our friendship with him.

So it's like a gang mentality with the Flaming Lips. Wayne falls out and you have to back him up?
Not necessarily but on that I had to agree because we were waiting for Beck to show up for sound check one day and like every day he was a couple of hours late and we were pissed off because he we were playing our set and then we're playing with him as his backing band so the days were brutal because we'd have the sound check with him, scramble to get our gear set up after that to do our sound check then we'd play, tear our stuff down and then play with him. So the days sucked because they were long, brutal days. Then one day we were waiting and just to break the monotony Wayne screamed to the interviewer 'Well, Tommy's late because he's probably waiting for his helper to show up to put on his pants. Goddamn it Beck put your own pants on!' The interviewer printed that as a quote in the article and that's when the fall out occurred.

What's a song you would've loved to have put on but it would've taken too much explaining - maybe a loss of cool? Your ultimate guilty pleasure.
Ooh, there's so many. There were a couple of Yes tracks that I thought about for a while but then I thought that's not much of a shock anymore. Prog rock doesn't have the distain that it did from people ten years ago. I could've easily thrown on an Air Supply song on there. That wouldn't have bothered me too much. Or people still don't know how cool the Bee Gees were in the 60s. That might've been something I should've done. I could've easily thrown a Barbra Streisand track on there. That might've actually caused some trouble with the rest of the group.

You've mentioned Air Supply and the Bee Gees who we consider Australian - any other of our artists tickle your fancy?
I do love Olivia Newton-John's 'Have you Never Been Mellow'. I love that song. We could easily do just an all-Australian one. That would be no problem. We could easily do that. We could have 'Ship Song' by Nick Cave, we could have 'Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You' by the Bee Gees, 'Have you Never Been Mellow' by Olivia Newton-John. 'Over Kill' by Men at Work, Let's see 'To Look At You' off Shabooh Shoobah by INXS. Oh, one song I was going to put on there and I'm not just saying this because it's Australian but it was actually on my list but I thought it would be way too New Wave if I included all these tracks was 'Myrrh' by the Church off Heyday which I think is an incredible track. I don't really like much AC/DC. I do like 'Let There Be Rock' but that's not as mellow as the other ones you know. Oh, the Moles. You can't forget the Moles, man. 'What's the New Mary Jane' by the Moles would be on there. Or the Richard Davies solo stuff - either one would be fine. Split Enz 'I Got You', 'Friday on My Mind' the Easybeats. That's shaping up to be a pretty good compilation.

What's a Flaming Lips record or EP that you feel has been neglected? Worthy of more attention?
I always thought Hit to Death in the Future Head - the first record they did for Warner Brothers which was the record they did before I joined. The record before that In a Priest Driven Ambulance got a lot of attention on that indie, underground level but I really thought when they made that jump and they put that first record out for Warners Brothers - I mean the record was fucked from the beginning anyway because it was supposed to come out in March, 1992 and all the press reviews had come out and the record got stalled and didn't come out till September, 1992 and no one ever heard that. I just think it's underrated. It's psychedelic and weird in a whole different way to what we did after that. Of course there was different guys in there too - it was when Jonathan Donahue from Mercury Rev was still in the band. And Nathan Roberts played drums on that record. It's a shame more people haven't heard it.

When was the last time you were proud to be American?
Wow. That is a fuckin' really good question. No time in my 30s I can tell you that much. Man, that is a really good question. I mean honestly I couldn't tell you. Sometime before 2000 before George Bush got elected.

©2005 Christopher Hollow

 

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What a long, strange trip it's been for the Flaming Lips. Over the past 20 years they've gone from chart stars to star charters, from hard slogging scuzz-rockers to the world's most successful purveyors of cinemascope psychedelia. One hit wonders on Billboard to releasing arguably the most experimental pop record ever on a major label - Zaireeka.
They've also became part of pop-culture when they appeared in the Peach Pit on Beverley Hills 90210, and they inspired Steve Sanders (aka Ian Ziering) to utter the immortal words, "you know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house!"

What were you doing the day Andy Gibb died?
I think we were on tour if memory serves me right. We were just driving around on the way to some gig and we heard that he died. It was actually a pretty big deal 'cos we had been under the spell of the Bee Gees for a while - just understanding what it was all about. That they weren't just a joke band that everyone here in the States thought they were because of 'Saturday Night Fever' and the big disco versus rock thing that happened. I'm sure we were just as guilty of thinking that at the time but during the early 80s we went back and listened to the songs before hand and realising that a lot of them were really dark about death and depression and despair couched in these happy melodies and we had a breakthrough. We could listen to anything from the Butthole Surfers to Led Zeppelin and have the Bee Gees on right in the middle of that. Embracing the Bee Gees was a big deal for us.