Quotations

«If SANTA CLAUS came down the chimney in a f**king jogging suit, you wouldn't even know it was him.»

«We really attempted it in a full-force Flaming Lips behemoth production style. We recorded 100 tracks of our beloved pedal steel guitar and 100 guitar overdubs for the music, and for the vocals we stacked all these crazy harmonies. We wanted to add different layers that people might expect from us, but we tried hard not to change the fundamental nature of the song.»

«I remember playing CBGB and thinking that no one had cleaned the toilets in there for at least six or seven years. Now maybe the women's bathroom is different but in the men's bathroom, you literally wouldn't want to stand there, let alone sit there. I mean, it's horrible.»

«I don't think you could be making any art in the atmosphere that we're in now ? with the war and the different ways people feel about the Bush administration and all that ? without having some things that sort of, not address that specifically, but address this whole idea of what you do with power. When is the time to have mercy? And when is the time to be aggressive? I think we have some things on the record that I hope will stand the test of time long after this war is over and all these young guys have come home.»

«We remixed them in 5.1, which doesn't sound like much, but let me tell you ? it's really a crazy, complicated thing to take these things that you did almost 15 years ago and revisit 'em in this format that only became available a couple years ago. A lot of bands can't do that because they don't have their own recordings. But we've always recorded ourselves, so it's a matter of me just going to the back room and grabbing the tapes and sort of putting them back on the reel. It's a weird treat.»

«The way that I work is [not] that much different from the way I would do a painting or even the way that we record our music a lot of the time. We go in and we have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for things that we want to happen and sort of try to shape them up. But if we're lucky, something emerges that's really better than what we intended and we'll go with that. If we're lucky, 'Christmas on Mars' will continue to do that. We'll have built the sets and have actors there, and of course there'll be things for them to say and all that, but something marvelous will happen and we'll be able to incorporate that into the idea of what we wanted to do and it will be better and more expressive and more communicative and more emotional - all those things that I think all artists intend to do.»

«People think its more high-tech than it really is with all the video and all that. It's still held together with duct tape.»

«They'd say, 'The Flaming Lips! And you won't believe it: They're from Oklahoma City!' as if we're from outer space, ... And we thought, 'That's a good thing.'»

«To try to please people is an endless chasing of one's own tail. That's not very satisfying, so we do what we like and that satisfies us. When it does work out, its a bonus, really.»

«It's good that we have the potential in the marketplace to reach bigger audiences, ... We're three people who are interested in music as art, but most of it won't ever be marketed as popular stuff.»