Earlier this year, the Flaming Lips successfully pulled off space bubble concerts in their hometown of Oklahoma City. Now, Wayne Coyne’s giving fans that were unable to attend a behind the scenes look at how the pandemic-safe shows came to be in the latest episode of CBS Sunday Morning.
Interestingly (but maybe not surprisingly), Coyne initially came up with the idea in 2019, before the pandemic. While sitting in traffic, the singer sketched out his idea, which was meant to correspond with the release of the band’s latest album American Head. When the pandemic hit, it gave him time to really flesh out the idea and work out the daunting logistics that he admits were “worse than I even thought.”
“It sounds hokey but I say you have to do this stuff with love,” Coyne said. “You can’t do it with the ego reasons or the money reasons; you have to do everything with love.”
Watch everything from Coyne’s initial sketches and getting the setup just right to fans getting fit in bubbles and the band performing “Do You Realize??” below.
Coyne initially revealed the bubble idea to us in an interview back in September, which you can read here.
