Interview by Holly Day
Nobody has more fun putting records together than The Flaming Lips. Over the past 20 years, the band - composed formally of Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivins, and Steven Drozd since 1993, with Coyne and Ivins together since 1983 - have managed to release some of the strangest, most experimental and comedic albums on the Warner Bothers label, somehow managing to stay on the major recording label despite such works as 1997's "Zairuka," which required the listener to play four CDs simultaneously in order to truly experience the recording.
Their newest album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, is both a collection of brilliant, computer-blip-filled songs that stand alone as well as an achingly-beautiful concept album about the plight of a doomed humanity and one girl's stand against an invading force of giant pink robots. I talked to multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd about the making of the album, as well as other pressing things.
Cosmik: How has the record been received in Japan?
Steven: Um, I mean, it's great. About the same as it's been received here or in England. There's not a lot of people that buy it, but the people who do buy it seem to really enjoy it. We just did a couple of shows there in Japan, and - crap, my phone's going out again. All I've got is a busy signal. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Maybe we can make this whole interview about how we actually never talked because of problems with my cell phone. But anyway, we played a few shows in Osaka and Tokyo - we've been there before, too, and the audiences have been just great. I think just about any Western rock band, they love there, so playing shows in Japan is just a lot of fun.
Cosmik: Any chance of having a Haim Saban cartoon based on this album?
Steven: Actually, we thought about that. This guy kind of made a video for the song "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1," kind of threw it together, and that could easily turn into some sort of Saturday morning cartoon. I know they're especially into that kind of stuff over in Japan. The cool thing for the record is that we actually did a Japanese-language version of that song where Wayne actually sings the song in Japanese, and so if you buy the record over in Japan, it's got that bonus track on it. We did the song regularly while we were playing in Japan, and we added an extra chorus at the end and all sang it in Japanese, and people loved that.
Cosmik: Where did the idea for the record come about?
Steven: It wasn't really one thing. We just started recording stuff, and started putting songs together, and after four or five songs, it started to seem like it was turning into a record. Really, it's only towards the end where you have all those songs that start to actually piece together some big concept, where it makes sense as a record. Wayne was toying with the idea of calling it "Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots" after we came up with the song itself, but the album itself was only put together after the course of a long time, during which we had no idea what we were going to end up with or even what we were doing, except writing new songs and going to the studio to record them. We didn't have any real plan in mind when we were putting the album together, either - it just seemed like certain songs we had already recorded really worked well with certain other songs, and those became the record.
Cosmik: On the record cover, there's this line of Japanese characters written above the title. What do those characters mean?
Steven: I can't remember. Something like, "Have a nice life," or "The Flaming Lips hope you enjoy your life and enjoy this record" - something like that. It's a positive message, whatever it is. It's definitely nothing sinister.
Cosmik: So why pink robots?
Steven: I don't know. That's a good question. I just think it sounds good, anyway. "Pink robots" sounds better than "blue robots" or "red robots."
Cosmik: Is pink a benign or ominous color?
Steven: Well, you see, that's the thing. You always think of pink as a benign color, but if you thought about it further, maybe that's why the robots are pink, so people are tricked into thinking they're benign robots, when they're actually evil in nature. It's a camouflage thing. You think, "Oh, look at these nice, friendly robots," and then-grrr! they crush you, and kill you.
Cosmik: So what are your own feelings towards technology? Are you a great embracer of new gadgets?
Steven: I'm slowly, slowly coming around to it. I just got a cell phone in January, so I've been pretty slow to join the rest of the world. But I bought an IMac this year, and I'm planning on getting an actual laptop in the next couple of months or something. It's not like I've refused to buy these things in the past - I've just never gotten around to investigating it enough. I was never against new technology. I just take a little longer than everyone else to catch up with it.
Cosmik: But you don't hang out at the Sharper Image and shop around for vacuum cleaner robots.
Steven: Not so much. Do they have those? I know they have the robot lawnmowers, the bot-mowers. Wow. We'd all better look out for those, the evil-natured household appliance robots. Maybe our next record could be about those, kind of a public service/warning album about household cleaning robots that go haywire.
Cosmik: The Attack of the Appliances?
Steven: Exactly.
Cosmik: So what kind of a relationship do you guys have with your record label? It seems like you've been allowed to try a lot of different approaches and still stay on Warner.
Steven: Yeah. I'm not sure how that happened, you know, especially after we put out Zairuka, like five years ago - you'd think that'd be the last thing they'd want to do, because the record before that didn't really sell much at all. But it's always been - I guess, number one, we don't ask for a lot of money to make our records, you know, and it's almost like they don't expect anything unrealistic from us. We'd got this kind of comfortable, "You guys make a record that you want to make that you like, and we'll put it out." It's that simple. I mean, this last record, I think they've been really trying to kick it out there, really trying to push it, like with all this press we're doing - it seems like Warner's really trying to kick it up a notch, so we can actually sell some records this time (laughs). But, yeah, they kind of let us make the music we want to make, and they might suggest some adjustments here and there, but they've never made any demands on us. They've never told us we need to ditch songs and replace them with more radio-friendly material. It's never anything like that. If anything, it's more like, "Why don't you make a remix of this song and we'll put it out as a single, too." 
Yeah, Wayne was just saying that people think the record company made us put on rabbit suits this last tour, because for the Sunshine Fix show, Michael and I wore rabbit suits. But that was because we wanted to wear the rabbit suits. We're always willing to wear the rabbit suits.
Cosmik: So has touring and playing together and basically being around each other for so many years put any strain on your friendships with each other?
Steven: No. I mean, really, it's the same as it was ten years ago, I guess. Michael and Wayne have been playing together for almost 20 years now, and I've been in the band ten years, and somehow, we still find things to talk about on a daily basis. No one hates each other too blatantly yet. I can see how that would happen, you know. You're traveling together, and stuck in a van with each other every day. But we still get along together pretty well.
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