Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne on Gummy Bear Skulls and Jimmy Page Collaboration

Posted on Apr 6th 2011 11:15AM by Jenny Charlesworth
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Helen Boast, Redferns

The Flaming Lips have never played it safe. From confetti cannons and lasers to their giant "space bubble" and recent blood painting venture, Wayne Coyne and his indie rock merrymakers have pulled off more unbelievable feats than most. So when Coyne let it slip earlier this year that the band was now in the business of gummy bear skulls, though outrageous, it seemed par for the course.

"We have a couple of the prototypes at my house already working, so it's just a matter of ... getting the factory squishing out those candy skulls," Coyne tells Spinner so causally you'd assume he was talking about humdrum 12" vinyl.

And as long as fans aren't after a serious sugar rush when the skulls are released next week, everything should go as planned with the candy concoction containing a USB flash drive filled with Flaming Lips music.

"I would think gummy bear isn't all that dangerous unless you're eating, you know, five pounds of it," says Coyne.

"With this, you have to eat your way inside the skull, through the brain, to retrieve the UBS flash drive that has the music on it. But that is a lot of gummy bear sitting in your gut overnight, so what you have to do is get some friends to help you."

But what of the tunes contained within this chewy treasure?

"We're trying to do music of the moment, you know, what our schedule will allow," says Coyne. "It wouldn't be easy but it would be simpler to just record a bunch of music, and then pick and choose and then put out an album. But we don't really want to do that. We kind of want to make the music that's coming out as it's happening. That's sort of our agenda."

Watch the Flaming Lips Perform at Lollapalooza
The Flaming Lips' "agenda" also appears to include collaborating with, well, pretty much the entire music industry.

"You know, you come in with this half-baked, caffeinated idea, and, if you're lucky, there are some other people around that are making records at the same time. So for our last record, we got a hold of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and MGMT. You just never know ... the serendipity that's going to come.

"I was talking about Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin to do one of these tracks with us, and, you know, if he's not available next month then we'll keep trying, maybe the next month or maybe six months. Because I have this lax timetable I'm working with, I feel like anybody that's interested in doing something, we should be able to do it with them."

So now that the Flaming Lips can knock Neon Indian off their wish list -- their joint EP with the Texas chillwave band just dropped -- who is Coyne eyeing up?

"I've talked to James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem, I've talked to Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth. So as long as I'm pursing it then I don't feel like it wouldn't work."