Wayne Coyne and The Flaming Lips have survived nearly 30 years by hacking conventional music wisdom.

From iPhone symphonies to telescope concerts, Oklahoma art-rock band The Flaming Lips is getting weirder as it gets older.

“There are no rules anymore,” said Lips front man and enthusiastic imagineer Wayne Coyne, who celebrated his 50th birthday in January, by phone to Wired.com. “There’s always this dread as groups get old and set in their ways. But to me, it’s the opposite. To be able to do anything, and think that anything is possible, is more a part of us now than ever.”

Since January, the unorthodox band — which includes veteran multi-instrumentalists Michael Ivins and
Steven Drozd as well as drummer Kliph Scurlock — has been releasing songs monthly online and in strange packages like limited-edition, $150 gummy skulls. Coyne said the group, which celebrates its 30th birthday in two years, will continue to release tunes all year long, and collate them next February in another cool project. Perhaps even an edible life-size gummy doll of … Wayne Coyne.

Such weirdo physical products might counter music industry wisdom, but they don’t call The Flaming Lips the fearless freaks for nothing. Even the American leg of The Flaming Lips’ global tour, kicking off Friday in Detroit, isn’t really the American leg of the Lips’ global tour. The band’s itinerary is continually interrupted so it can stage patently interactive concerts near England’s Jodrell Bank Observatory and the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Wired.com talked with the amiable Coyne about his globe-hopping band’s perennial cool, communal performances, candy packaging, technology hacking and much more in the interview below. Do you realize how much fun we had? You will.

The Flaming Lips' life-size gummy skull: The sweet future of rock packaging?

Wired.com: Your tour itinerary is nonlinear, just like the band.

Wayne Coyne: Yeah, totally! (Laughs) That’s kind of how we are now. We don’t really have a specific tour that we’re on. We’re always recording, playing and touring simultaneously. It doesn’t really make any sense at all.

Wired.com: But that fits the band’s unorthodoxy perfectly.

Coyne: I agree! There are no rules anymore. If we want to go to Alaska one day and the next day go to Brazil, fuck it. Let’s do it! So I agree. That’s a lot more interesting than thinking that we have to have a route. Who cares what makes sense? Let’s live some life, and go where it’s interesting. That’s part of the joy of being in a group as long as we have. You get opportunities to play everywhere in the world, but you don’t have time to do it all. And I’m not saying it’s like this for all groups, but there is an idea that you play so often that it becomes torture. So we try to make every show we play and everything that we do an adventure.

Wired.com: That seems to run counter to the dominant rock narrative, which argues that you break less rules the older you get.

Coyne: There’s always this dread as groups get old and set in their ways. They need to have their routine, where one day is very much like the next. And I’m not really like that. I’m 50 years old, so I may very well become like that. But to me, it’s the opposite. There are so many things that we’re able to do now. That doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of work; it’s a big responsibility. But to be able to do anything, and think that anything is possible, is more a part of us now than ever.

Wired.com: I heard the band is playing at the Jodrell observatory.

Coyne: I believe that’s true, but I don’t know if we’re playing specifically at the observatory or close to it. We’re also playing at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. Places like these are looking for groups who don’t want to do the standard show, and we’re like that. They usually call us, and if we can do it, we will.

Wired.com: Is that impulse to do something different what led to the gummy skulls?

Coyne: It’s not just to do something different, but to do something that we like ourselves. If another group decided to do something like that I’d go, “Fuck, that’s cool!” It isn’t really to say, “Hey, look at us! We’re doing something different!” It’s more to say, “Look, anything is possible.” And why not? I think every group should be trying to present their music not just as sound, but in ways that we’re able to get the music. I want our audience to be able to get anything they can have.

‘A lot of our audience will be unable to buy a gummy skull.’

A lot of our audience will be unable to buy a gummy skull, because they’re going to be $150. They’re expensive to make and there is not going to be a lot of them. But that’s part of a major range of ways you can experience what it is that the Flaming Lips do.

Some of it requires that you have some money, and some of it doesn’t. And you can always see us at our shows. We don’t go everywhere, but we go enough places that we’ll be near you in some way. But part of it is that it’s an experience attached to the idea of our music, sound and identity. But it isn’t to say, “Look at us! We do shit nobody else does.” It’s more like, “Dude, if I could do anything I wanted, this is what I would do.” And that’s what I think The Flaming Lips audience would want me to do. They’ve given me this great life and all these great opportunities, so that’s what I do.

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