Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne talks about 'records that changed everything' ahead of Zoo shows
After four decades of putting on shows, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne isn't nervous about playing his Grammy-winning band's two-night "Summer Freak Out" in Oklahoma City.
But he is keenly aware of the importance of the eagerly awaited hometown concerts, where thousands of fans from around the world are expected to flock to the venerable Zoo Amphitheatre.
"For us, it always starts off like, 'Oh, this is going to be amazing.' Then, as it gets closer to the show, it's just a lot of stress. It's a lot of 'get ready.' It's a lot of rehearsing. It's a lot of, 'Oh, yeah, we got to make this a big show.' Then, it starts being not-so-fun ... but little by little, that's going to leave us," Coyne told The Oklahoman by phone earlier this month.
"You look at it, you think, 'Oh, I want to be a perfect summer night.' ... But it's always a possibility playing outside that it could storm or it could bad enough that you could cancel or maybe that it might just be bad but you can still play. There's lots of dilemmas with that, but at some point, you just sort of be like, 'Oh, well, it is what it is.'"
Formed in OKC in 1983, the Lips are marking their 40th anniversary as a band and celebrating the enduring influence of two of their seminal albums at the OKC Labor Day weekend shows.
"We have a lot of history to live up to as far as cool shows that the Lips have played here in this city," multi-instrumentalist Derek Brown told The Oklahoman in a spring interview.
The Flaming Lips' latest shows at OKC's Zoo Amphitheatre will be recorded live
The Lips announced in May plans to play their "Summer Freak Out" at OKC's Zoo Amphitheatre, which is under new management and has undergone infrastructure updates.
"I've seen some really great shows there, when we were teenagers and stuff. I saw Frank Zappa there. I saw The Pretenders there, saw Santana there. I think I saw Elvis Costello there. It's just a cool venue," Coyne said.
"It's a big, big show for us, and I don't think we could do it every summer. It's an event. It's not just a concert, and it's amazing. They've kind of redone the Zoo Amphitheatre out there, and I think they're looking to ... let everybody see how how much better it is."
General admission to the Lips' hometown shows is free with RSVP, but all the free tickets have been claimed. Fans can join the waiting list for free tickets at https://okczooamp.com.
The "Fearless Freaks" previously recorded their first live concert film, "UFOs at the Zoo: The Legendary Concert in Oklahoma City," at the OKC Zoo's venerable venue in September 2006. When they announced the October 2012 encore, dubbed “Freak Night," Coyne told The Oklahoman that the original Zoo Amp concert "might still stand as our greatest show that we've ever done."
"We're going to be recording live. We record our stuff a lot anyway ... but we're attempting to record these two shows live and probably put out the live recording of it later in the year," Coyne said. "So, you want it to sound great. You want the audience to be loud and for them to really enjoy it."
At Friday's concert, the alt-rockers will perform in its entirety their trailblazing 2002 album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," track by track, including the Grammy-nominated opener "Fight Test," the Grammy-winning instrumental "Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)" and the emotional anthem "Do You Realize??," which in 2009 was named Oklahoma's official state rock song.
For their Saturday show at the newly upgraded OKC venue, the experimental rockers will play their 1999 masterwork "The Soft Bulletin," which features beloved songs like "Race for the Prize," "Waitin' for a Superman" and "The Spark That Bled." Ranked No. 3 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, "The Soft Bulletin" also is getting a 25th anniversary limited edition two-LP vinyl release out Sept. 6 via Warner/Rhino Records.
"These are two records that changed everything for us. And we've played some of those songs virtually every night since we've made those records," said Coyne, the band's sole remaining original member.
"There's a lot of mystery in music-making that is amazing. But when you go to play the stuff live, you kind of have to crack that code again and be like, 'Why is that working?' It's not like a mathematical problem that you can just solve ... but you can analyze it, spend a lot of time working on it and making it sound good."
What can people expect from The Flaming Lips' hometown Labor Day weekend concerts?
Last year, the Lips embarked on a 20th anniversary tour for their "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," they're on the road with the album again this spring and summer, and they recently announced a series of 2025 European shows.
"These shows that we play now, they're long. We do 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,' then we take a short break, and then come back out ... and play some more. We're definitely making an effort for a good third of that second set to be stuff that we haven't played in a long time," Coyne said. "It's almost three hours. ... So, if you're not up for it, that's a long time. But when it's good, it can be exceptionally good."
In contrast, the psychedelic rockers have rarely played "The Soft Bulletin" live and in full prior to Saturday's OKC concert.
"Having done it a couple times, I think, has helped us sort out the troublesome areas. And this current trend, I guess is what you'd call it, where bands go out and play specific albums, we like that," Coyne said, adding that the set lists for the two shows will have some song overlaps among the fan favorites in the second halves.
"Since it's the 25th anniversary, we'll probably say, 'Let's do some of those around the country' ... It could end up being a great, great show as well. You never know."
Even 25 years later, Brown still recalls the day the Lips released "The Soft Bulletin."
"I remember driving around listening to it all day, and my mind was just blown. So, I'm in the band. But I also love the band," Brown, who joined the lineup 15 years ago.
"There's so much happened in this band before I even got here, and I was such a huge fan."
When the Lips play their 1999 mainstream breakthrough or its gold-certified 2002 follow-up live, Coyne, 63, said they want to capture that same feeling for the fans in the audience.
"We've spent time making sure that they're what you think they're supposed to be. ... Some groups will play a song, and it's gone through a lot of mutations and a lot of things have happened to it since they recorded it a long time ago. But ours isn't like that. We want it to sound like what you think it's supposed to sound like," he said.
"We want you to have that evocative nostalgia — or whatever it is that you would call that — when you hear us play the song, like when you'd listen to it in your car."
Flaming Lips' OKC 'Summer Freak Out'
When: Aug. 30-31.
Where: Zoo Amphitheatre, 2101 NE 50, OKC.
General admission: Free with RSVP, but all the free tickets have been claimed. Fans can join the waiting list for free tickets at https://okczooamp.com.
Seating: First come, first served.
Information:https://www.facebook.com/okczooamp.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne returning home for OKC Zoo concerts
