40 years of weird: The unexpected love between The Flaming Lips and their hometown

When he first started a band with his brother Mark in their hometown of Oklahoma City in 1983, Wayne Coyne wasn't thinking about encasing music inside edible gummy skulls, crowd-surfing in a giant space bubble or even having that band last for 40 years.

"When we started ... the musicians that I knew were just the freaks that my brothers knew. And they had bands and they played cover music, and they took drugs. It was a freak show. So, I was just doing what they were doing. I didn't know how to play guitar; I didn't know how to write songs. But I like to create things," recalled Coyne, a founding member, as well as the longtime frontman and creative force, of The Flaming Lips.

Four decades later — arguably against the odds and through a continual exploration of creativity in a myriad of forms and even flavors — The Flaming Lips continue to tour the globe, revisit their previous albums and make new music.

Let's be clear: With their otherworldly psychedelic art-rock, their collectible vinyl records filled with pink beer and pressed with bodily fluids and their live shows that call to mind an especially festive UFO landing, The Flaming Lips would be weird anywhere this side of Mars.

But that they're from Oklahoma — the Bible Belt home of heartland farms, conservative politics and many a country music superstar — makes them even weirder.

"The very first review that we got, it said, 'This is amazing. This is the weirdest (expletive) ever, and you'll never believe where they come from. They live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. What the (expletive)!' I think that just told us exactly what we wanted to hear," Coyne said.

"We were just a weirdo punk-rock group, and it suited us that we could come from someplace that nobody else would come from. We would say, 'Santa Claus comes from the North Pole, and The Beatles were from Liverpool. And, of course, The Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma City.'"

To celebrate their four decades of making music, the Lips will play this summer a free, two-night hometown series at a storied OKC venue where they've previously performed at least one legendary concert.

How are The Flaming Lips celebrating their 40th anniversary with two free hometown concerts?

When the three-time Grammy Award winners return to OKC's Zoo Amphitheatre in concert Aug. 30-31, general admission will be free.

At 10 a.m. May 20, premium pit tickets will be available to purchase, and general admission lawn tickets will be free to reserve online at www.okczooamp.com. An online reservation for free tickets is required, but will not guarantee entry, as the event is first come, first served. Lips fans should plan to arrive early for the shows at the 90-year-old outdoor stage, which is undergoing infrastructure updates.

More: Look back on 40 years of OKC's own 'Fearless Freaks' The Flaming Lips

"We have a lot of history to live up to as far as cool shows that the Lips have played here in this city," said multi-instrumentalist Derek Brown. "There has to be a situation that feels special to play Oklahoma City ... so for it be mostly free, to be back at the zoo, that's where two great shows have happened before for the Lips."

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."

This summer's OKC shows will not only commemorate the Lips' 40th anniversary but also celebrate the enduring influence of two of the band's seminal albums. At the Aug. 30 concert, the alt-rockers will perform in its entirety their trailblazing 2002 album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," which includes 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.

"It's probably going to end the 'Yoshimi' tour cycle, at least in the States," said Brown, who was a Lips fan before joining the lineup 15 years ago. "It's just cool to celebrate the catalog."

Last year, the Lips embarked on a 20th anniversary tour for their first gold-certified album, and they're on the road with "Yoshimi" again this spring and summer.

For their Aug. 31 show at the newly upgraded OKC venue, the experimental rockers will play their 1999 masterwork "The Soft Bulletin" track by track. Ranked No. 3 on Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, it features beloved songs like "Race for the Prize," "Waitin' for a Superman" and Brown's favorite Lips tune, "The Spark That Bled."

"I think it's just one of the all-time greatest songs ... and we haven't played it in a while," Brown told The Oklahoman in April. "But we're about to go back out on the road ... and we're going to play a song called 'With You' that Steven (Drozd, a longtime Lips member) didn't even ever play. It hasn't been played since '89."

How did The Flaming Lips start out as OKC's football-loving Fearless Freaks?

The punkish ballad "With You" originated on the Lips' first full-length album, 1986's "Hear It Is," which marked Wayne Coyne's debut as the band's lead singer. One of his brothers, Mark Coyne, started out as the frontman when they first formed the group in 1983 alongside bassist Michael Ivins and drummer Richard English and released their self-titled EP the following year.

"Once we get into it, it's not what it looks like: You really have to love music, and you have to love to be creative and all that. And he wasn't really any of that: He liked the idea of getting drunk and singing and going places," Coyne said of his brother's departure.

"Bands in the beginning are like a gang. As long as you've got your guys with you, you can do anything. And that was very true for us."

Growing up in a rowdy family of six children in OKC gave the future frontman, who was born in Pittsburgh, a sense of security and fearlessness: The five Coyne brothers and their friends were famous in their Classen-10-Penn neighborhood for playing no-rules sandlot football games as the team the "Fearless Freaks."

"I'm not really hanging around piano players and people playing flutes and violins. We were just into rock and drugs and motorcycles. It wasn't really about music, but as soon as we started to make music ... I really loved it," the singer-songwriter said.

As the band played its first shows at OKC's long-standing Blue Note Lounge, Coyne said the idea of leaving for New York, Los Angeles or another music industry hot spot never occurred to him.

"We didn't have any money, anyway. We would visit groups that would be similar to us who had gone. ... It'd be like 12 dudes working at McDonald's and Kinko's to pay to live in New York City. We'd be sleeping in their kitchen; there'd be rats crawling on you. It was horrible. Same thing in L.A.," he recalled.

"We'd have a house with bedrooms and kitchens and back yards and dogs and lawn mowers, just normal Oklahoma living. ... We had a place to rehearse, and we had our own equipment."

How did meeting longtime manager Scott Booker set The Flaming Lips on a major-label path?

If Coyne and his cohorts hadn't stayed in OKC, they might have never met Scott Booker. A record store clerk who eventually became the Lips' manager and helped them sign a major-label deal, Booker became a fan of the band the first time he saw them perform, at an unofficial after-party following Sting's 1985 Halloween show at Norman's Lloyd Noble Center.

"They were playing a punk version of 'If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,' and I immediately thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And all of my friends thought it was horrible, and they all left," Booker recalled.

"I would go see shows all the time, but I never saw anything like them."

Through his job at Rainbow Records, Booker got to know Coyne, and he eventually became neighbors to his bandmates, including the Lips' guitarist at the time, Jonathan Donahue.

"The phone rings, and I'm sitting there. But it wasn't at my house, so I didn't pick it up. ... Jonathan picked up the phone, and he hung it up really quick. Then, the phone rang again, and Jonathan was like, 'You pick it up,' and I picked up the phone. And it was like, 'Hey, don't hang up. This is Warner Bros. Records. We have an A&R person that's going to come out to Oklahoma and really wants to see the band. Can you arrange for a show?'" said Booker, adding that Donahue was big on making prank calls and was concerned he might be in trouble.

"I'd been promoting some shows like Superchunk; I did a Nirvana show where they didn't show up, and I lost my whole life savings. ... But I said, 'Look, yeah, of course, I'll help set this up.' So, I set up the show."

He even personally picked up at the airport the A&R executive, Roberta Petersen, who not only signed the Lips to Warner Records but also suggested that Booker become the band's manager.

How have The Flaming Lips evolved over the decades?

For Ryan LaCroix, director of content and audience development at KOSU, it's fairly straightforward to track the changing seasons of The Flaming Lips' music: from the punk-rock days of the 1980s, into their early 1990s MTV era when the unlikely hit "She Don't Use Jelly" landed them a guest spot on "Beverly Hills, 90210," into an experimental and otherworldly era of the late '90s and early 2000s that earned them critical acclaim, and then into an almost frenzied 2010s phase of collaborations and creative ventures, not just in sound but in form.

Through it all, he noted, the Lips have stayed weird.

Over the past four decades, they have garnered a Tony nomination for their work on the "SpongeBob SquarePants" musical, landed on Q Magazine's “50 Bands to See Before You Die" and made music with Miley Cyrus, Kacey Musgraves, The Chemical Brothers and more.

"Getting to play 'Happy Xmas' with Yoko (Ono) and Sean Lennon, those kinds of moments are like, 'Is this really happening?' Playing Carnegie Hall with Philip Glass on piano with Lou Reed in the audience, you're just like, 'Is this really my life?'" Brown said.

"To play 'SNL' with Miley dressed as a pink bunny, it's gonna make a good highlight reel at the end of my life. ... There's just not that many bands like The Flaming Lips that combine this really top-notch artistry with this wacky entertainment."

How have The Flaming Lips lasted for 40 years?

Of course, it hasn't all been quirky highlights, as the rockers have weathered an array of upheavals, from drug addiction and divorce to lineup changes and music industry shifts. Nowadays, the band members are facing work-life balance challenges as they're raising children and making music.

Still, the Lips play on: Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Steven Drozd, who joined the band in 1991, said he and Coyne are working on new music after their longest break from composing to date, while playing for some of their biggest crowds yet on the "Yoshimi" tour.

"By the time I joined The Flaming Lips, they were one of my favorite groups. ... With Wayne, he's really encouraging and is always up for new ideas, new anything. We just hit it off writing songs together. It feels like we hit our stride on 'The Soft Bulletin' and just kept going from there. He feels like an older brother," Drozd said.

"But I really think it's a combination of Scott and Wayne. I actually call them 'the elders' ... and Scott has been the steward of keeping the ship on course."

Along with his relentless creativity, Booker said Coyne boasts some quintessentially Oklahoman traits that have helped the band endure over the decades.

"There's so many things that probably shouldn't have worked for us that did, just because we had the right attitude about it and would make it work," Booker said.

"Ultimately, I think, it's a very Oklahoma thing. ... I've worked with bands from all over the world, and I haven't seen that same kind of work ethic that Wayne has very many other times."

How have The Flaming Lips and Oklahoma City grown up together?

Mayor David Holt was working as then-Mayor Mick Cornett's chief of staff when he attended Coldplay's 2006 Oklahoma City concert, where frontman Chris Martin praised Coyne as one of four great American voices, along with Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan.

"He told the crowd they should feel so fortunate to live in the same city as Wayne Coyne ... so I became obsessed with this idea that we were not appreciating The Flaming Lips like we clearly should be," Holt said. "Part of it really resonated with an idea I've had in my whole adult life ... that we had this long list of things that were from Oklahoma City that Oklahoma City didn't appreciate."

So, he helped Cornett craft a proposal to name three Bricktown streets after famed OKC musicians: The Lips, Charlie Christian and Vince Gill. The idea for Flaming Lips Alley stirred a local controversy that gained national and even global attention.

"It's a great shorthand way to communicate that Oklahoma City is not the stereotype that you have in your mind: That it's a place that can be the home of Wayne Coyne and Ed Ruscha and Ralph Ellison and Kelli O'Hara, and all these fascinating and interesting people from different fields who have created great art," Holt said.

"It was definitely a passion project for me personally, and then, of course, we had the dedication. The Lips went all out. They had a stage, and they had all their characters. Wayne cursed, and it was great. ... Now, they're old friends. It's been a long journey. I've grown up with them."

In many ways, the Lips and their hometown have grown up together, too. As the band's music was bringing it mainstream acclaim and Grammys success, the OKC alley wasn't the only recognition they were getting in the Sooner State. Coyne was honored at the OKC Public Schools Foundation's 2007 Wall of Fame Humanitarian Awards, and later that year, his band was featured at the Oklahoma Centennial Spectacular alongside Gill, Patti Page, Reba McEntire and more.

The efforts to honor the Lips were sometimes controversial, as when Gov. Brad Henry signed an executive order honoring "Do You Realize??" as the fan-voted state rock song, after the state House of Representatives failed to pass the resolution by three votes. The poignant anthem lost that status in 2013, when Gov. Mary Fallin let her predecessor's executive order lapse.

Despite the occasional dispute, the band showed their love for OKC with a series of hometown New Year's Eve Freakout shows and March of 1,000 Flaming Skeletons Halloween parades. The Womb art gallery Coyne opened in 2011 transitioned in 2019 into the headquarters of the OKC artist collective Factory Obscura and its popular "Mix-Tape" attraction.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lips rounded up worldwide attention when they staged 10 unusually social distanced Space Bubble Concerts at OKC's Criterion. By early 2022, when Holt and Coyne revealed that a splashy 18-foot-by-18-foot spin painting the singer created with iconic visual artist Damien Hirst had been installed inside the OKC Convention Center, the band's weirdness no longer seemed to cause contention.

"I'm glad that it's been a mutual admiration society these last 15 years. ... It really aligns nicely with Oklahoma City's awakening on so many levels and becoming a city that more openly appreciates art, culture, food," Holt said. "I think it's not a coincidence that The Flaming Lips' rise in profile in our city coincided with a deeper appreciation of any number of things."

For Coyne, making music as The Flaming Lips has granted him the luxury of traveling around the world, which has only deepened his appreciation of OKC.

"You don't have to be living in a place that someone said is cool. The place you're living in is probably cool; you just don't realize it," he said. "The way I live is amazing. ... I'm living in a place that allows me to live the way I want and do the stuff I like to do. That's good enough for me."

Flaming Lips' 40th anniversary shows

• When: Aug. 30-31.

• Where: Zoo Amphitheatre, 2101 NE 50, OKC.

• General admission: Free, with required online registration.

• Seating: First come, first served.

• Online reservations and premium pit ticket sale: Begin 10 a.m. May 20.

• Information, reservations and tickets: www.okczooamp.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: The Flaming Lips at 40: What the rockers mean to OKC and vice versa