Michael Ivins started to play bass because he thought, "wouldn't that be cool, to be in a rock band" (he tried guitar, but it "had too many strings on it"). Of course, he never actually thought he would be in a rock band, and he definitely never planned on devoting his life to music and making a career out of it. However, as a member of the Flaming Lips for the past twenty years, that is exactly what he has done.
In the early '80s Michael attended University of Oklahoma,
in Norman planning to major
in linguistics. One day in class he "looked around at the ten people who were there and thought, 'Oh my God, these are going to be my colleagues.'" So he switched his major from linguistics to computer science. After a couple of semesters of flow charts and punch cards, he realized he was "about a hundred years behind." So he switched his major from computer science to history, thinking maybe he could be a "professor or something."
Around that time, Wayne Coyne, who also lived in Oklahoma, found out Michael
had a bass and asked him to play in the band he was putting together. Michael's decision to join a rock band was "accidental in the fact that [he] didn't have to put an ad out in the paper saying talentless bass player looking for equally talentless musicians to form punk rock band that has no idea what they're doing" -- the band came to him (despite his lack of musical training). They called themselves the Flaming Lips, and in 1983, not really certain of what he wanted to do in school, Michael decided to leave University of Oklahoma, get a job at a restaurant and see where the whole music thing would take him.
Today Michael and Wayne are still together as the Flaming Lips, along with Steven Drozd, who joined the band shortly after they signed to Warner Brothers Records ten years ago. They released their 10th full-length album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, back in July and spent the second half of the summer touring the U.S. with Cake, De La Soul and others in the Unlimited Sunshine Tour. Both Yoshimi and their previous album, The Soft Bulletin, earned the Flaming Lips critical praise and wide coverage in the press. Yoshimi recently made the Shortlist, a list of the year's best albums (selling under 500,000 copies) nominated by and voted on by a panel of accomplished musicians; the best album will be announced on October 29 in Los Angeles. This fall the Lips will go on tour again, this time as the opening and backing band for Beck (Chicago Theater, October 18).
When not working on Yoshimi, or touring, the Flaming Lips have been filming and scoring Christmas on Mars, a full-length feature film written and directed by Wayne. They have also recently scored Bradley Beesley's newest documentary, Okie Noodling, about a backwoods fisherman in Oklahoma.
Michael, 39, currently lives in western New York State, and when not working with the Flaming Lips he helps engineer other bands (such as Luna) at Dave Fridmann's Tarbox Road Studios in Fredonia. Through his work with the Flaming Lips he has discovered an affinity for working on the technical side of things in the studio, doing everything from recording to editing to picking which microphones to use.
"What to somebody else might seem really tedious, you know sitting in front of a computer for maybe eight hours, I find really enjoyable," Michael says.
At 36 he began to seriously consider taking up engineering, so, he went and did it. And that's how he, and the rest of the Lips, have approached their whole career. They are not held back by regrets, they are not afraid to explore new ideas -- they just go out and do what they really enjoy doing.
The Flaming Lips "started off in sort of a whole punk rock aesthetic." They couldn't play very well, and they really had no idea what they were doing, but they said, "Hey, we can write songs just like the Sex Pistols or Ramones," so they "had a go at it." Though their roles in the beginning seem to be clear cut (Michael on bass, Wayne on guitar and singing, etc.), the Flaming Lips have never been a traditional band.
Michael says, "Early on ... we decided not to limit ourselves to 'Oh, you're a three piece so you can only have bass, drums, guitar and singing' ... if somebody had an idea we'd take it in there, try it, see what happens."
After years of working with various ideas, and members, the Lips' "accidental career" began to really take shape when it became just Michael, Wayne and Steven. By that time they had put out a couple of "alternative rock" albums on Warner Brothers Records and felt they had "gone about as far as [they] could go with it without getting bored." But, instead of giving up and moving on, they began to explore all these other ideas they had. They came out with Zaireeka, a four disc set meant to be listened to simultaneously, and then moved on to The Soft Bulletin, which in turn led to Yoshimi. With Steven's ability to play "nearly any instrument under the sun," Michael's growing interest and skill in the technical side of things, and Wayne's continuous flow of ideas, the Flaming Lips have become a collaborative team capable of making their ideas reality.
Though each member has a
role he enjoys the most and is best at, Michael says it's not a "Ooh, hey, shine the spotlight down over here kind of thing." He sees it more as "we are producers and we're producing this band the Flaming Lips that we happen to be." They work well together because they share a "grand vision of what it's all about -- exploring weird ideas, seeing where they can go and what can happen and basically making it happen." With the support of Warner Brothers ("for some reason they love us there and we love them"), the Flaming Lips are able to pursue their "grand vision" and make a career out of what they genuinely love -- music.
Michael says there is "something about music... that it moves in time and that it doesn't actually have visuals but it makes you visualize things in your head" that draws him to it over other art forms. He remembers hearing Tom Jones around the house as a kid and has always enjoyed Motown. His first album was Elton John's Greatest Hits (he likes Elton up until 1977) and Echo and the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain album has always been very inspiring."
Michael's favorite bands include Basement 3 and Led Zepplin, along with the Who, the Beatles and Pink Floyd. He has a "soft spot for Britney Spears," likes a lot of Pink's stuff, and thinks Andrew W. K. is "damn entertaining." He is more influenced by the "pop oriented" stuff, but generally likes to listen to anything. Though the specifics may be different, Wayne and Steven have similar tastes -- all three of the Flaming Lips really enjoy listening to music and are open to almost anything, mainstream or indie.
"People come down on 'Ooh, that's not cool, you can't be listening to that stuff,' and we think 'Hey, if it's a good song, and hey, you like it -- that's great,'" Michael says.
As far as the Flaming Lips placement within popular culture, Michael says, "on one hand, we are sometimes so far outside mainstream that we're down in the dungeon. And then sometimes people still come up [to me and say], 'Man, I saw you on Beverly Hills 90210,' or, 'I heard your song in Batman,' [so] how much more mainstream popular culture does it get [from there]? And I think we really like doing that kind of thing, where we can actually sneak in there and be, as you start looking back, part of this weird thread in popular culture."
How did the Lips get to a point where they are capable of appealing to both underground and mainstream culture? By experimenting, doing what they like, and not feeling sorry for it. And for that reason Michael says, "I can get away with saying we're artists and not feel too pretentious about it."
"But," he adds, "I don't think we do art for its own sake. It becomes art because we do this stuff and it actually mirrors or actually is just a part of our lives, or something that we've seen, or something that somebody else has experienced, or someone in the band has experienced. [It becomes art because we are] able to put it into three minute or five minute format and [are] able to distill it and come up with something that's a little more universal than saying 'I was walking down the street yesterday and I stubbed my toe.' But, we [can] actually take something like that and actually be able to elevate it, which I think is what good art should do and can do." If you listen to any of the Flaming Lips songs, especially those off The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi (when things really started to "just work out"), you will realize that the Lips are indeed capable of "good art." And, if you go see the Flaming Lips play a show, you will realize that they are fully capable of entertainment as well. As Michael says, "There's records, which are forever, and then there's live entertainment ... and we try to make it as entertaining as possible." Their tour with Yoshimi includes video projection, smoke machines, disco balls, confetti filled balloons, fake blood, roadies dressed up in animal costumes, and Michael and Steven in rabbit suits. The Lips figured "Why should we go up and be cool?" If they go to a show "it's all about having a good time." They want to be entertained, so, when they're the ones on stage they want to entertain people. As Michael says, "It goes back to doing what we like ... we genuinely like this sort of stuff ... we are genuinely interested in entertaining people."
Entertaining people is an important part of "the whole pop record-making process," and Michael, along with Wayne and Steven, will continue to tour and entertain people, work in the studio making records, and enjoy their "accidental career" as the Flaming Lips as long as they are "given an avenue to explore ideas" because, "well, [they] really like it."
For more information on the Lips, check out www.flaminglips.com.
