As the visionary leader of the fabulously frazzled and freaky Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne has presided over 12 albums of inspired psychedelic rock, consistently punctuated by a healthy dose of the weird.

What other band could shift seamlessly from a quadruple concept album designed to be played on four separate stereo systems simultaneously (Zaireeka, 1997), to the accessible and commercially successful The Soft Bulletin, the Lips’ 1999 breakthrough album? And who else could write a song about a Japanese girl fighting robots (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots) that would end up troubling the UK Top 20? Throw in Coyne’s tendency to crowd-surf inside a giant hamster ball, and it is clear that he is a true one-off.

Not surprisingly for somebody who performs dripping in theatrical blood, uses hand puppets as part of his live show and has a penchant for dressing up his entourage in giant animal costumes, Coyne loves Hallowe’en, and before the Flaming Lips’ short UK tour, he reveals his favourite things about the annual spookfest.

...childhood

My older brothers and older sister loved everything weird and intense. When I was about 3 or 4 years old they used to set up a homemade haunted house and walk me through it in the dark, forcing my hand into what was really a bowl of spaghetti, but they’d say it was cat guts and that they had killed the cat and these were the guts. They loved it that I was so scared. As you get older, that sort of s*** doesn’t scare you. The world is scary in so many ways and your parents can’t just come in and say everything is all right.

...tricks

I live in a neighbourhood in Oklahoma City where there are a lot of kids that have a bunch of stupid parents who are addicted to crystal meth, and they simply don’t do anything with their kids. So every year I set up this elaborate Hallowe’en thing on my porch and a troop of kids would be there all day and all night watching me do it. One year I got one of these elaborate rubber moulds of a dead guy and then I put him on a table and we poured blood on him and put guts on him. But a couple of kids in the neighbourhood thought that I had a real dead person on my porch. They were telling people: “There’s a dead guy down in the hood!” I had kids pulling up at two in the morning — not in costumes and not wanting any candy — just coming up to look at this dumb rubber guy on my porch, saying: “Oh my God! It’s true!” and jumping back in their car and leaving.

...parade

Every year in Oklahoma we have this big Hallowe’en parade. It’s a two-hour-long parade that goes down one of the main streets and we do the “March of the 1,000 Flaming Skeletons” as part of it. People sign a waiver that says if their face gets burnt they are not going to sue Oklahoma City. The skeletons represent the beauty of death and how death gives light to life — or some b******* philosophical thing that lets me have people in skeleton suits carrying fire. You buy a standard skeleton suit and everyone paints their face and we give them this torch. We have a big travelling PA system that travels with us, and it’s about an hour-long walk. We do this sombre but conquering march and it is a little bit dangerous; a lot of people carrying fire, and the music is really loud and there’s a lot of smoke and things going on. We have this version of the death march that plays in the middle of our movie, Christmas on Mars, and it’s LOUD and really intense. We have a lot of sound equipment that we use, so it’s pretty easy to make it outrageous. It’s another Flaming Lips experience.

...candy

I have considered what my candy bar would be. I think it would be something made out of flesh — some flesh-coloured substance — and when you bit into it there would be some kind of blood and blue crystals. I think it would be called the Wayne bar. Like a Mars bar. The best candies don’t have much of a name.

...costumes

I think the best costume that can be worn is just people hanging around naked. When you’re with the Flaming Lips there is usually a bunch of naked freaks running around. I try to steer people to more scary things — we don’t want to see anyone walking around as a sandwich. Actually, there was this guy who made himself a giant hand and called himself “The Finger of Thor”. It was a homemade costume and he really owned this thing and his head stuck out of the palm. It was so big. I think that’s what is so great about Hallowe’en. It’s not just extroverts. People like dressing up.

The Flaming Lips UK tour runs from Nov 10 to 17; Embryonic, their new album, is out now

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