See Flaming Lips Give Tour of ‘Space Bubble Concerts’ on ‘CBS Sunday Morning’

Wayne Coyne provided a behind-the-scenes tour of the Flaming Lips’ “space bubble concerts” on the latest episode of CBS Sunday Morning.

After giving an overview of the Flaming Lips’ “prolific and delightfully weird” career, the morning show took viewers backstage and in preproduction of the concerts, held in March 2021 — the second in a series of the unique shows, after January 2021’s debut performances — at Oklahoma City’s Criterion venue.

As Coyne revealed to CBS Sunday Morning’s Luke Burbank, the idea first came to him — in 2019, prior to the pandemic — while sitting in traffic, and he sketched what a bubble concert would look like on a sheet of paper. He then developed the idea during the lockdown,

Of the logistics involved in holding a “space bubble concert,” Coyne admitted, “It’s worse than I even thought.”

“It sounds hokey but I say you have to do this stuff with love,” he added. “You can’t do it with the ego reasons or the money reasons; you have to do everything with love.”

In December 2020, after the initial run of “space bubble concerts” were postponed due to a spike in Covid-19 cases, Coyne told Rolling Stone, “I don’t want anybody to think this is some kind of fucking freak party. It’s a very restricted, weird event. But the weirdness is so we can enjoy a concert before putting our families and everybody at risk. And I think it can actually work, but just not when it’s this serious here. I think it’s a bit of a new normal — you might go to a show, you might not, but I think we’re going to be able to work it out.”