The Flaming Lips Australia tour: Why Miley Cyrus and Drew Barrymore love the band
As The Flaming Lips head back to Australia, we look back at how they have inspired Drew Barrymore to dance in an animal costume, Miley Cyrus to make her trippiest music.
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There were only a handful of people who knew the infectiously enthusiastic dancer in the rabbit suit was actor Drew Barrymore.
It was 2004 and the Charlie’s Angel star was in Australia to visit her then-boyfriend, The Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti.
She had spent the day hanging out at the Big Day Out, where the Strokes were playing alongside Metallica, Jet, Kings of Leon and an American band so different to them all called The Flaming Lips.
“The Flaming Lips are so amazing and they have these big human-sized furry animals dancing on the side of the stage, and so we had a few cocktails and we were hanging out and all of a sudden we were in the animal costumes dancing on the side of the stage,” Barrymore said back then.
“It was so wild. There were thousands of people out there and at one point I fell over and we were like kissing on the floor and I thought, ‘This must look weird.’ What a fun way to spend the night.”
Fronted by an adult Willy Wonka-style figure called Wayne Coyne, the former punk rock outfit launched themselves onto the pop charts in 1999 with the dramatic reinvention of their ninth album called The Soft Bulletin.
That record also marked the bold reimagination of what a rock concert could be and still is, as the Flaming Lips celebrate the 20th anniversary of that seminal album.
Back in 2004, that involved about a dozen people — fans and the famous — putting on smelly, well-worn animal suits and dancing like they just didn’t care on stage alongside Coyne, band co-founder Steven Drozd and their bandmates.
It also puts Coyne into a giant bubble — think the old Coca Cola ads — in which he walks across the top of the crowd, like a musical messiah sporting a linen suit and an Einstein hairdo.
Two decades after that album release and 15 years since the wondrous Big Day Out shows and a Flaming Lips gig remains the benchmark for having the most ridiculous fun at a concert.
Miley Cyrus clearly borrowed inspiration from her mentor Coyne — they worked together in her “wacky” music phase which created the Dead Petz record.
“People were always telling us about how (smelly) the suits were; I don’t know what they were thinking it was going to be but we would tell them to throw that s … on and just get out there,” he says, laughing.
“Things don’t smell so bad when you watch that experience back on your iPhone.”
Generally, a Flaming Lips show will start with balloons. Hundreds of them, big, small and in between, bouncing in all directions. It sets the mood for adults to behave like sugar-rushing children.
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The Flaming Lips last night at #RiotFest what a show! pic.twitter.com/V1vnzTS6QL
— Mark (@mark_a_howard) September 14, 2019
The Wayne Coyne on an electric unicorn at â¦@O2academybrixâ© for The Flaming Lips preforming The Soft Bulletin. #psychedelicart pic.twitter.com/GnMZz9McGK
— Simon Abbott (@MycroftSix) September 14, 2019
Surprisingly, almost magically, within four or five songs, the balloons, which Coyne insists don’t pop, have disappeared and your focus is restored to the music or whatever unexpected trick the band are about to unleash next.
It may sound like too many bells and whistles but the show evolved in juxtaposition to the heavy emotional weight of the songs on The Soft Bulletin.
There were songs about the death of Coyne’s father from cancer and songs about the gross and debilitating effects of Drozd’s heroin abuse and the serious car accident suffered by bassist Michael Ivins.
It was also their make-or-break album, with the band fearing they were in line to be dropped from their major label due to lack of commercial success.
“When we made The Soft Bulletin it did surprise us that people liked it so much because we thought of it as an existential bleak album,” Coyne says.
“There was optimism but that was confronted by the brutality of the world that we were facing and we were playing to 22 year-olds who were taking acid and wanted to party.”
As the years have rolled on, the emotional pull of the songs resonates as strongly as the balloon and confetti good times.
Coyne says he sees many people in the audience crying, even as they throw their arms in the air like they just don’t care.
“To me, it’s taken 20 years for people to be OK with doing both,” he says.
“We want you to come and party and laugh and not be embarassed about it; and if you want to cry, we do not want you to be embarassed about it.
“When I look into the audience and see someone overwhelmed, it overwhelms me and that is the magic thing that music can do.”
The Flaming Lips perform at the Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane on September 28, Sydney Opera House on September 30 and October 1, Melbourne Arts Centre on October 3 and 4.