The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne – HuffPost 4.15.11

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Wayne Coyne: Well, I would say, you cannot wait, and you cannot be lazy, and you cannot be afraid that you’re not going to be a big rock star — you kind of just have to pursue all these things. The things we’re doing now are very much like the things we were doing when we started. When we started, we made our own record — I sent it out to a record plant to have it made, and I made my own album cover on my kitchen table; and now we’ve been on Warner Bros. for twenty years, and we’re now working with Warner Bros. almost as an independent label, but we’re not. This is the way that us and Warner Bros. want to work because they want us to try new ways of doing things. We’re doing these things now, where we’re making our own records — there is a record plant three hours away from me, where I literally go myself and make the vinyl. I put the vinyl into the machine and it comes out the other side pressed into a record. I’m working with a pressing plant here that makes album covers, and I have a guy that is in my house working on computer graphics, video, web design, and all that. We do it all, really, ourselves, and we want to. We want to make our art be… like you keep saying, “It is an expression of who we are.” That comes down to making these giant, life-sized gummy-skulls that are going to have a USB drive in them. That will be a vehicle where you can have this thing that carries our music in it. It’s an object that we made, it’s an object that you can have, and it’s an object that you can even eat.