The last time they toured England to promote their amazing 'The Soft Bulletin' album, singer Wayne Coyne would perform in front of a giant screen with blood running down his forehead, using glove puppets, megaphones, balloons, glitter and tinsel to illustrate his achingly beautiful songs of love, death, insanity and the universe. Playing behind him would be footage of the Wizard Of Oz mixed with executions, nuclear explosions, micro-organisms and robots. People were often reduced to tears by the gigs.
As well as releasing a brilliant new album called 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots', The Flips are also in the middle of making a film called 'Christmas On Mars' and are preparing a compilation of their first five albums. That's how we arrived on the subject of LSD.....
Wayne Coyne: "I was actually writing some liner notes that are going with this compilation of our first five records, starting in 1983. Instead of writing a bunch of 'we recorded this song on this date' kina junk, I'm collecting these horrible acid stories where people took acid and had these horrible death-tripping freak outs like I did.
"The one I talk about in this piece is the worst one I took. I can't remember what kind. It was something ridiculous like pink dragons or blue unicorns. I was 17.
"It was typical stuff, you listen to music and you think 'Oh I'm tripping out' and then after about ten hours of it you've just had about enough and that's really when the acid starts to do its worst damage, when you start to get fatigued. I had gone to get some cheeseburgers at one of these places that has the drive-thru open all night.
"So it's like 7 o'clock in the morning, and I pull up into this drive-thru and order food on one side and then pull around to the other.
"Thing is, someone had just tried to rob them, moments before I pulled up, and there was a cash register sitting right inside the window. Someone had broken through this glass and tried to steal it and in the meantime they've broken through this window and they've cut the shit out of their arms. So I've pulled up, I'm fried out on this LSD, already scared shitless - I was like 'if I get some food I'll feel better' - I pull up and there's...fucking.. flesh...blood smeared all over this fucking thing. The glass is broke and the blood is still dripping!
"I'm tripping in a bad way, thinking I'm dead and all this junk, and the guy on the counter has got a rag and he's wiping up the blood, the rag is filled with the blood. He acts like nothing has happened and gives me my fucking food, and I say 'what the fuck happened?' and he tells me the story and in these moments of me getting my food with all this blood and everything, I just exploded into oblivion!
What did you make of it all?
"I think that's the trouble with LSD, you try to make something of it but your mind doesn't work the way it should. The machine is not functioning right and every time you take it, it reveals too much about the inner workings of your mind and it's horrible. I remember pulling off, looking down at my food, hoping there wasn't any blood on it. But then the food would be moving and I wouldn't feel like eating anymore. So I went home, tried to go to sleep and ended up having endless bad hallucinations until it wore off, and I woke up cheering and jumping for joy that my mind wasn't destroyed. I vowed that I would never do it again. Well, I did it once after that but I didn't enjoy it.
I had been under the impression that you all did tonnes of it...
"Before he joined the band, Steven (Drozd, keyboards) and some of his friends took some LSD and listened to like, our first five records all in one sitting, and they recorded themselves talking about it while they were listening to it. Now, by some bizarre, cosmic accident he's in the band and we're talking about taking LSD and he's like, 'Well let me tell you this story'."
Have you heard the tapes?
"We tried to find them but we couldn't. The guys have moved around too many band flophouses since then."
I always thought that to tape yourself during a big session and then to listen to it would stop yourself doing drugs for life...
"Well once you listen to it and hear what an idiot you sound like..."
...and you may even kill yourself...
"Well, I think most of your life would be an embarrassment to you if you had to watch yourself, in any sort of way. Even doing this, me doing this with you. The first couple of years of doing interviews I wouldn't do anything for the fear of being humiliated. But now I don't care, I want to be humiliated."
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