#The flaming lips albums free

I stood there looking at his ear like, Oh my God, he’s a real dude. I remember looking at his ear, and it was like everybody’s old man ear. I stood right next to him, and he had a bigger head and a stranger body than I thought he was going to have. I saw a quote a long, long time ago - it was simply, “The Beatles were humans.” The first time I met Paul McCartney, we were walking behind his giant entourage to the side of a stage to watch a Neil Young concert at some English festival. It’s so much cooler that he’s an actual man, and not a super being from outer space.Įxactly. But I always felt that did him a disservice. Bowie was already in a realm of the mythical character, like Jesus and Santa Claus - it’s hard to say if they were ever humans or not. And we even did a song the title is “Is David Bowie Dying?” It’s a strange song about how your body simply decays, and there’s nothing mystical or magical about it. And we would always get little notes back: He isn’t feeling well.

For the last five years or so, any time we played near New York City, we’d put out an invite to him. The David Bowie one probably affected us more than any of the others. Are you affected by deaths of people you’ve never met? I just like that idea.Ī number of great musicians died last year. With “Kill your rock ’n’ roll,” those types of lyrics make you say: “Why did you say that? What do you mean?” I don’t have an answer. But I have trouble with songs that are trying to say something, and then you just feel awkward about the whole thing. I mean, I sing along with Journey songs all the time, because they’re so dumb that it doesn’t matter. You can want to sing along, and sometimes they’re just - not that they’re dumb. I wanted it to feel like an emotional outburst.

#The flaming lips albums free

And that sometimes is the free ticket: Now say outrageous things. In some of these songs, we have literally just gibberish going, and we know we have emotional markers within the melody, and you could almost say anything, and it would have the same impact or be the same mood. What prompted you, in the song “How?,” to write the lyric, “Kill your rock ’n’ roll”? And “The Castle” is in our own way trying to be that pure. That to me is the whole reason I would like it. To me, I liked the idea that it really is about this kid growing up and how sad it is that he has to leave the dragon and the cave.

“The Castle,” to me, I feel like we’re doing - do you remember the Peter, Paul and Mary song, “Puff, the Magic Dragon”? All through my life, I liked the song, and when I talked to people, they’d say, “Oh, that’s meant to be a children’s song, but it’s really talking about smoking marijuana.” I never liked that part of it. Oh, thank you! “Listening to the Frogs With Demon Eyes” ends up being sinister and mystical at the same time. A lot of the music is beautiful and disturbing. There are a lot of whimsical images in the new songs, but a lot of sinister things occur.