Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne Ponders Broadway Version of 'Yoshimi'

With Green Day's 'American Idiot' hitting the Broadway stage it's no wonder that the Flaming Lips have jumped on the rock-album-turned-musical bandwagon. Frontman Wayne Coyne, who recently discussed turning their 2002 album 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' into a Broadway musical, says he's not surprised that rock music has found a second home on the Great White Way.

"I knew some of the songs from that Green Day record because they were so popular and maybe it was a concept record and maybe that's why it's so easy to translate to the stage," he tells Spinner. "I mean they did it with Billy Joel ['Movin' Out' on Broadway] and Queen ['We Will Rock You' on the West End in London] and there's been a lot of rock-ish stuff that has been turned into fairly successful, sometimes mega-successful Broadway shows."

Starting out in 1983, the Flaming Lips have maintained a certain philosophy about rock 'n' roll that Coyne feels may not always be interpreted as such in a Broadway musical. "I was born in 1961 and I'm not young like the guys in Green Day, so, to me, I always viewed Broadway as being kind of the enemy of rock 'n' roll," he says. "The idea that rock 'n' roll is about spontaneity and being loud and freaky, it's not a bunch of lines that people are reciting or a bunch of cues that the lighting director is turning on. But then again -- this is not a putdown -- but if you go see Radiohead, it's about lighting cues and singing your lines and being dynamic."

Coyne admits he likes Broadway musicals, but he's somewhat of a reluctant fan. "I've only seen a couple of Broadway musicals in my entire life," he says. "I've seen 'Jersey Boys,' which I thought was stunning. Those are great songs and I didn't know the story of the Four Seasons. Then I saw 'Wicked' but that felt like a more stuffy Broadway thing. It was long and I didn't like the music."