Down below here is the result of the Q&A done with the band in May 1999.

Apologies to those whose questions weren't asked, but there's never enough time.....

You can also see an older interview, with Wayne, here...

S: No, no-one - it's the three of us and we're pretty satisfied with the way things are holding up.

W: No, it doesn't seem like we're gonna get anyone and, in a way, our new guitarist really is Steven.

S: We were worried about these shows and stuff, but people seem to be buying the idea that we're not gonna have another guitar player. It'll be like this for a while, we want to progress but we'll probably not have any more musicians in the regular shows like tonight.

S: No.. he can't even get his own thing going. I've been dying to hear what he's doing for the ten years since his last record came out.

W: We wouldn't be opposed to it, but I don't think Kevin is remotely interested and neither are we!

S: Everything - more everything than ever.

W: Everything that we can. We've got the new Pondlife cover of Led Zeppelin's 'Misty Mountain Hop' and I've got the new Cher CD here. You know, we have no standards any more at all - we listen to anything, good or bad.

W: I really like their show, but I don't find their records as interesting as their shows. But I haven't heard their last of years worth of stuff - I'm mostly judging it from when we were on Lollapalooza. I liked them and I think they have a big range of talents in the band. They have some people who are skilled excellent musicians and then they have some people who are freaky art sort of people. And that, to me is always a good combination for a restless bunch of stuff. The fact that they stay together, being as freaky as they are, seems a good thing. They want to evolve and keep changing and there's not really an economic or stylistic reason for them to do what they do. It's not popular or trendy, and they really do seem to mean it. And they're nice people who are smart.

W: Yeah - if they'll have us. If we sell some records, then we'll hopefully do that. We like Japan and we wouldn't not go there for any reason. We loved the food, we loved the cities, so we hope to go again.

W: If invited and we could make it then we would play, yeah.

W: We did get lucky with Jelly, and that is precisely how we did it so far. It really does depend on the atmosphere in the record company. If they have ten records that sell ten million copies that year, they won't care even if we sell no records. They'll have had a phenomenal year, all be billionaires and everybody will be happy.

But if they have a year or two like the last couple of years, when they didn't sell as many records as they wanted, then they'll start to say, "We didn't make money here... boom, boom, boom." They just trim the label. And that doesn't have anything to do with those bands' music or anything - it's just simply, "We spent this much money, and we didn't make it back. Now we're done with you."

We don't take any of that personally - they don't keep us because they like us, they keep us cos we can make money and they'd drop us because we didn't make money. So we'll see. I hope that they have a good year and we sell records at the same time. That would be the best way for us to stay on the label. We certainly don't want to leave Warner Brothers. They have billions of dollars, and when we ask for thousands of dollars they give it to us. So it's a good working relationship - they want to be billionaires and we just want to be millionaires......

But in the end I guess it's mostly just sheer luck - when the axe was coming down this last time, we ran where it wasn't going to fall.

W: That happens a lot. Promoters sometimes do lose a lot of money when not many people come to a show and they're already giving you a bunch of money to play. But then that's the business of a promoter - if they don't make money, that's their problem. We do shows to entertain people, but we also do it to make money. We have to.

But the music business is like that - it's a risk for promoters, the record label, and it's even a risk for the band. But these are risks worth taking and the industry makes a lot of money for these people. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. So we don't feel bad if a promoter loses money it just goes that way sometimes.

S: It's not hard to get the label to go with stuff at all - they're totally cool about it.

W: I think Ronald went to his bedroom to play guitar, which is where he always wanted to be anyway. Yes, he is still alive and I think he's a lot happier now. I haven't heard from him, but then I shouldn't. He's doing his own things now. We see him at shows once in a while but I think he's shy so he wouldn't approach me. I wouldn't approach him either because I don't want to get into anything that felt confrontational to him. I've been confrontational with a lot of people but I'd never do that with Ronald because it would make him uncomfortable.

S: I saw Ronald about a month ago now - I think he's doing well now. He's happy and he's not as freaked out anymore. I dunno what he's gonna do musically. I always cared about Ronald but then I always got the feeling he hated me and stuff.

I have heard that The Soft Bulletin is/has been going through a lot of development and that it will be "more mainstream" and "more accessible". I'm completely confident that it will retain the fun Lips spirit, but will this lead to maybe a single release or music video in order to get more airplay?

W: Well, releasing singles and videos doesn't make you more popular. Actually, when you become more popular then you release singles, and then you make videos. But when you're an obscure band like us, you keep the money for yourself. So there you go, Mr Kite..

W: I don't know what to say - I don't think we ever sounded one way so it's hard to think how things would be different. There are some songs that would be different if Ronald was still here, but I'm not sure exactly how. It was the same when Jonathan left - there were some things that you thought should be different. But we would definitely have changed anyway, so I'm not sure how his going has affected things overall, although we all liked the way he played.

What was the thinking behind the release of two different versions of 'The Soft Bulletin' , do you like the Mokran versions? Was it a record company thing?

S: We had so many songs and we didn't wanna put all of them on the record. An hour and a half is too much. If you get the English version, you get this extra weird stuff. So we thought we'd give a variety.. and we've got a bunch of stuff left for the B-sides too.

W: It's not that big a deal - it's only one song different, and that happens all the time with UK albums. We were kind of torn too - it was an easier way out than having to make a final choice about which songs to use. As for the Mokran remixes, honestly - I don't really like them. But I'm not opposed to them. We wanted to do it, and the record company wanted us to do it. We pursued it and they helped us.

S: Overall...... Animals actually. I love all of them up to The Wall, but Animals is so.... you know?

W: It would always depend on which one you hadn't listened to in a long time, but actually none of the last three. Probably any of the pre-"Wall" stuff is great really. Except for maybe the soundtrack stuff. It's like trying to choose your favourite Beatles record really......

M: I have to say that it changes. Right now it would probably be ‘Wish You Were Here’. I do like ‘The Wall’ – I think that people malign that record a little too much, As times keeps going by it seems better. It’s like with the Rolling Stones and people going, "Oh, now what are they doing?" When the ‘Miss You’ record came out, it was like, "Oh it’s crap." Then five years later, "Oh wow, what a great record." And ‘Emotional Rescue’ – it was, "Oh no.. what have they done?" and then it worked it’s way up too. So for Pink Floyd it’s now worked it’s way up to whatever that record in ’84 was..

W: I think you (Drew) would be testament that it is insanely fun. It really is – the gong and the puppets… I don’t know if we’ve ever been ‘spontaneous’ as a band. Sometimes when bands are really spontaneous, it’s fun for them but it’s horrible for the audience. I always assume that the audience hasn’t seen us play a thousand times - they may only see us once and they’ll probably prefer to hear the songs done the way that we’re used to doing them.

S: No, we're not losing any spontaneity - although we're stuck with certain things, like the arrangement, there's still stuff we're changing every night. Like tonight we made up the end of When You Smile on the spot, and we hadn't done it like that before at all. There's still enough freedom to do what you wanna do - if you're thinking enough, you can always switch things up.

W: I think in this way it does make it more rigid but it’s ‘correct’. I’d rather people hear a song, like we talked about earlier, that if it’s serious or funny then it presents that way. I think that sometimes in the past we would get bored and interpret the songs a different way every night. Now I don’t wanna do that. I would rather interpret the songs the same way – the right way – every night.

And I can discipline myself to not be bored, and know that I have to do this and I should do this. I should be able to do this, and I want to be able to present the songs to the same quality every night.

So I think it’s more fun – it’s no the same spontaneity of the past, but I think it’s a better spontaneity. And the headphones thing that we’re doing, I just think it makes it…. People are so used to hearing Hi-fi these days, so now Hi-fi is becoming normal-fi. Things are hardly ever Lo-fi – even typical radios and stereos in cars sound really great. Typical sound systems in clubs sound better than most bands, I’m sad to say. I feel some responsibility that our band should sound at least as good as your sound system at home, or else why go to a show? When the audience puts on our headphones that we give them, it should make our concerts sound that much better. So I feel like that’s our responsibility and so we wanna do that. And if you wanna wear the headphones, I think it makes the concert sound better, and if you don’t, that’s fine with me….

But I don’t consider the concerts to actually be multimedia. Multimedia, to me, is an old term used to imply that there was gonna be visuals and there was gonna be sound. These days I think people almost expect that there should be something besides some guy standing up there looking at the floor.

M: I think that to say what we’re doing now is less exciting than before is crap. You see plenty of bands that are supposed to ‘rock’ and it’s the most boring stuff on planet Earth, you know?

W: Like our recordings but arranged slightly differently. It's rhythm tracks and orchestral tracks and some other sounds and things. We think these are essential to the songs but at the same time would be impossible to reproduce in front of you with any less than 100 hundred people up there being whipped to death by me saying, "You've got it wrong again."

M: Well, to make simple changes to the set, we can start the tape at a different place or decide to drop songs and then fast forward. People might say "that’s weird" but really it is no different than waiting for the drummer to adjust his snare drum or waiting for band to get their shit together or whatever. But I do think once we get home, especially for the US tour where we’re planning to do forty minute sets, we’ll make 5 different tapes or something. Then we’ll say, "Oh we’ll do this set tonight." Just like a band would do anyway.

M: It’s no different to me. For example, take when we played with Stone Temple Pilots. They’re just like most bands: you’ve been on the road, you get a really good set that you think flows really well and you just play it for five weeks. We’ve been with bands, here and there, where that’s literally what they did. It would be the same set every night, they’d just change the city in their banter, "Hello.. Cleveland."

That isn’t bad or good or whatever, because it makes everything run smoothly for the band so they know what’s going on, and the audience gets a better show in one way. So what we’re doing is really not any different than anything else. People attach more to these things than maybe is really there.

S: I don't think so - maybe we'll do a video documentary - but you wouldn't get the whole scope of what it's all about on a normal format - it wouldn't do it justice. But parts of Realizing The Speed Of Life are in a song we did called 1000ft Hands, which I hope will come out, cos I love that bit of music. That's when we were on our Orff trip..

S: Because a live album wouldn't do us justice - none of our live recordings would do us justice. It's a dated idea anyway.

Would you consider a telephone concert perhaps? It would be interesting maybe. Of course I prefer to witness you guys fully at a theatre.

S: You buy 100 phones and bring em to the venue and we'll work something out.....

S: No, I guess people think that we're always trying to shoot ourselves in the foot or something. Making Zaireeka was a situation where all these circumstances happened - Ronald had quit the band and we decided to see what we could do to entertain ourselves, as we had planned to change things anyway. I don't think we'll ever do that again - we've done it now.

All of this multimedia stuff sounds interesting. I've seen a couple of boombox shows and had a blast playing with Zaireeka (and sometimes adding Metal Machine Music or Maggot Brain to the mix). I was wondering you thought about putting some of these multimedia experiments or coming up with some new ones using DVD?

W: A lot of people look at DVD and don’t see the possibilities of that itself. They just look at it as six speakers they can put all over the house and stuff, "Oh, it’s just a lot of speakers." With Zaireeka and DVD, the ideas are connected in there but I don’t know if, just because we want to do more, people necessarily want to hear more… That’s kind of where the evolution of technology is at the moment. Technology says, "We can do more," and the audience says, "I don’t know if we need more." I can understand that – we’ve entered a time where there’s a lot of great stuff out there and I don’t know if people really want to just sit in their rooms and listen to music all day. I think they want to have a lot of other things – if you’re a normal person with a family and a job and things, then music is just a small part of your life, among all your other interests.

That sort of person puts on some music and enjoys it, "Oh, that’s great," then they take the headphones off and go and do something else. But for people like me and you, we’re obsessed with sound and it’s meaning and all that. I think something like Zaireeka and DVD are things with an element of evolution that say, "Look, we can do more – not just because we can do more with new technology, but we can do more with the format than is already being done." I’m glad something like DVD exists in that way, because big companies can come in with a lot of money that they can put into it and make it seem important. And people like Warner Bros can afford to support something as crazy as Zaireeka, and they do, which gives it an importance so that people like me and you don’t look like fools. We can say, "Oh this stuff is great," and the art makes it significant.

S: That I'm gonna do everything I can to entertain other people and myself. After doing that stuff, you go through so much trouble just for such a ridiculous idea, then you find that people really like it. So then you realise that whatever idea you have you really should try it some time. Because anything is possible instead of becoming stuck in being a rock band.

To make really good travel cases for all the boomboxes; what it's like to rewind 300 tapes every day.

W: It did take a long time, and I didn't start off thinking that I was gonna do 40 either. I thought I would just do 4 or 5, but then I just kept adding more and more. So, luckily, I didn't have any idea how much work it was actually going to take. If I did, I would probably have never done it. It really did take years - I started off in the summer of 1996 and I thought, "I'll do this in a couple of weeks, taking my time." It wasn't until about 8 months later that I had really discovered how much trouble it would be. And then it built, even from there.... so it took a LONG time. Even longer than it should have, because I was so idealistic going into it - back then I was still thinking, "this is gonna be easy," and what did I know??

S: It's getting complicated now because Zaireeka came out in October 97 and we only started working on that in March 97. We spent the whole summer working our asses off. But at the same time the soft bulletin was starting to grow - we were just saving the songs that wouldn't work on 4 CDs, to work out a single mix later. It was an exciting time because Ronald had quit the band, we'd done the parking lot experiments, and we got all excited about making music together again.....

how are you able to get such a raw [drum] sound while you're recording? Steven...yer knockin' me over man!!!

S: We put one mic on the kit in a big room and record it to tape.

S: No. I'm not into psychedelic drugs. Wayne never took em really either.

W: We're not into drugs any more than the average curious person, and we don't make our records on drugs.

S: I think this is the about the time we'd flown to LA to tape the 90210 thing. Afterwards, we were supposed to fly to house of blues in New Orleans. Ricky had packed up the truck with all our gear in it and parked it in front of our house. It got broken into and a lot of our stuff got stolen and we never did get it back. The floor tom from the drum kit I had since I was eight is gone now, and I was really pissed off at the time 'cos that was the first drum set I ever had - the one I learned to play on. It doesn't matter that much now though.

S: We practice a lot. We come up with a time and Michael's usually an hour late. So Wayne and I sit around and play our favourite songs together then Michael shows up and we practice...

S: It's so weird. About half the songs on the new record I wrote the music/melodies for them and then Wayne wrote the lyrics. Then the other half then Wayne wrote the chords, melodies and lyrics together and then I helped him with the arrangement of them. Like the Observer, Coyne came to me and said "Alright Drozd, check this out. I came up with the simplest melody and I really like it but I don't know what to do with it. I just know I want it to be sci-fi or something. So we made a four track of it and then I went home and got totally pissed and I just made up the chords as I heard the song." So then you go from that to Wayne sitting there plotting for three days going, "I have to write a song about the struggle of existence and how death is..." so then we'll sit around and talk about it for days, but sometimes it just happens in 30 minutes.

W: It's the same with everybody I think. You're trying to come up with a song, and you wait for something that is reflecting what you want to do but is better than you're capable of doing. So being in pursuit of something like that, you eventually find something comes and you say, "that's good," and you try to elaborate on that good thing in order to create something finished out of it.

Some of the stories aren't obvious from just listening to the song, and that's why sometimes I elaborate the story so much. In a way it's just music and you can interpret it whatever way that you want, but I like people to interpret it the way I want it to be. So I go to a lot of trouble to say, "Here's what I was trying to get at...." but most of the time I don't think it's very successful! I will have been trying to get at something, and we got something slightly different so that maybe the two are only really connected because I connect them. I say, "Those chords, and that music mean this," when in reality anybody could claim that they mean something completely different.

When we do songs that lyrically guide people along, that's when you can be so precise - by using words and music together. And maybe we did that a bit more successfully this time - both musically and lyrically we honed it down. Like on 'Feeling Yourself Disintegrate', what we're saying and what you're feeling may be closer. In the past we maybe said something that we thought was utterly weird and stupid, and someone would hear it and think it was something normal. That's good as well, but it's better when the audience feels sad while you're trying to make them feel sad. Sometimes we're trying to make them feel sad and they're laughing and you have to think, "We're not doing something right here..." It's good that they're entertained, but it is better when the right idea is communicated. So you keep on honing down the craft and getting more precise.

Does steven drozd have any plans to piano-play on any future chainsaw kittens ventures (provided, of course, that there will be future chainsaw kitten ventures)?

S: If they make another one they'll probably ask me to do it. I get a lot of bands ask me to play on their stuff now and if I like the band I'm gonna do it you know. If I can help them make better music that I and other people would like to hear then I'm gonna do it.

S: When it doesn't rock anymore.

W: Somewhere about the time you've seen your hundredth show - your standards either totally disintegrate or they get higher. If it's your first show, it can be exciting but if it's your thousandth, then you end up with two totally different experiences of the same show. It's kind of like sex in a way - if you've never had it, you're probably dying to experience it, but once you have had it you kind of have to keep adding elements to it to make sure it's still interesting.

M: Yeah, every now and again...

W: Only if Drew makes me.

S: Sometimes. And I've accepted sex, money and drugs from fans.....

W: It still seems like it's gonna come out some time. Now that he's dead it probably has a little more relevance too. Personally, I didn't care for the Skip Spence stuff that much, and I do think that the tribute record thing has just been so overdone now.

We don't actually have anything to do with it anymore. Robert Plant couldn't work his vocal magic over the track that we had done for it, so he decided he would just record it with his own band. So, entirely by accident, we kind of washed our hands of the whole thing. And we honestly had nothing to do with his death.

W: When Sonic Youth played their first show in Norman, we played with 'em. Of course, we really did love Sonic Youth, but then we lost interest after them doing the same thing for a long time. We like them as people and we love some of the music they've made.

W: Zy-REEK-uh

How's Gibby?

Hargeruk

I am just curious to find out the inspiration behind any or all of the new songs on The Soft Bulletin. If you can only ask about one, make it 'The Spark that Bled'.

Rocky

Where are the 1st 4 Jesus songs? Do they exist? I'd really like to know. Also, how many are there?

Ross Howard, Boston

I have read and heard rumors about various recording techniques that you guys used on "In a Priest Driven Ambulance". What were some of the craziest ideas you used and did they work or not?

What album did you learn most from as far as technical, recording, and self-involvement?

Jason Faubel

Is it true that Mike's hair is kept on display somewhere in OKC

John David Box

What do you think America would be like now if Franklin D Roosevelt had never instituted the New Deal in the 30's.

Johnathan Quickly

Have you guys gotten to meet any of your musical heroes? Do you actively seek them out?

John David Box

When was the last time you were naked in open air?

TL8021

Can pop music be art?

What happens when we die?

Ben Paul Coleman

What is their favorite Hostess snack food? SUch as Twinkies, Ho Hos, Fruit Pies etc.

Andrew Johnson

How do you feel about being involved with the Mercury Rev UK tour in May after previous problems with the Spiritualized's "Electric Mainline" tour in 1994, which I understand Jonathan vetoeed your place on?

Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips have always been kindred spirits and certainly my two favourite bands, do you all get on now and are there any future plans to collaborate?

Jon Jacques

what is their favourite flaming lips song, and if the answer is not 'there you are' ask them why not

Sam Forrest