What Does Success Look Like? with Wayne Coyne

Summary

Podcast Summary: Alive with Steve Burns

Episode: What Does Success Look Like? with Wayne Coyne
Date: October 8, 2025
Host: Steve Burns (Lemonada Media)
Guest: Wayne Coyne (Frontman, The Flaming Lips)

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Overview

In this candid, funny, and thoughtful episode, Steve Burns delves into the elusive concept of “success” with Wayne Coyne, the famously weird, sincere, and creative heart of The Flaming Lips. Through stories, vulnerable admissions, and wisdom accumulated from years in music and life, Burns and Coyne explore how success is defined, measured, and experienced—moving far beyond trophies or accolades and into the messier, more meaningful territory of belief, failure, luck, and joy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

What Is Success, Really?

• Steve’s Framing ([00:17])
  Steve opens by questioning what success means: “Is it money? Is it family? Is it power?... Is it a trophy? Is it something you earn?... What is success?”
• The duo agree it’s a hard, constantly moving target—one that’s easy to reduce to external markers, but much harder to define internally.

The Power of Sincerity and Imperfection

• Wayne’s Voice and Vulnerability ([05:34])
  Steve credits Wayne’s singing—its human, vulnerable, and imperfect quality—as the heart of the Flaming Lips’ emotional power.
• Wayne Coyne ([07:15]):
  “It’s a humanness... There’s a thing that you love to do, and if you’re lucky, the world loves it too. But it’s just sheer luck and trying... I think there’s something in that voice that says, ‘Hey, man, he’s trying.’”

Steve’s Crisis After Blues Clues ([10:51])

• Steve describes leaving his hit children’s show as “objectively a success,” but privately feeling “pretty lost” and “desperate to prove oneself,” not knowing how to define his own success outside of that work.
• Experiencing a Flaming Lips concert reorganized his “inner guts and soul,” shifting his notion of artistic success to something more heartfelt and visceral.

The Hammersmith Apollo Story: Stage, Belief, and Failure

• Steve’s First Big Gig ([16:08]):
  Steve recounts his debut opening for the Flaming Lips in the UK:
  “I start playing my song and I’m like, I’m a mighty little man... And by the end of the song, everybody went to the bar.”
• Wayne’s Brutal Kindness ([17:19]):
  “Well, that didn’t work... It was kind of bad. People come to rock shows... to watch human beings believe in themselves in ways they cannot. And you don’t have that third part. Not yet.”

Memorable quote ([19:53]), Steve:
“You weren’t being a dick. You were being quite the opposite... It was such a kind bit of honesty, because that kind of redefined to me what success might look like, or what might be necessary to be successful.”

Luck, Hard Work, and the Mysterious Alchemy of Success

• Wayne Coyne ([21:39]):
  “I always say, you know, luck has to find you working hard... I love creating stuff... I feel certain I would do it anyway. There’s a certain amount of what we call success in just that you just create it.”
• Wayne describes songcraft as the result of “the gods of music” rewarding visible effort:
  “They’re working so hard, let’s throw them one... And hope he doesn’t mess this one up.”

Defining Success on Your Own Terms

• Wayne Coyne ([22:52]):
  “If I was a billionaire, which I’m not, I’d still be living the way I am now... I’m living the absolute weirdo artist dream to the maximum.”
• He reflects on choosing adventure over comfort, emphasizing that “if you get to have an adventure when you’re young, you’ve succeeded.”

Failure as Kin to Success

• Steve ([24:03]):
  “What do you think the relationship is between success and failure? I used to think they were opposites, but I'm not so sure anymore.”
• Wayne Coyne ([24:21]):
  “Anytime you’re doing a creative endeavor... it probably is not going to work that well... But maybe five years from now it does work.”
• The Flaming Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly” and albums like The Soft Bulletin took years to find success—reminding them that outside validation is unpredictable.

Major Labels, Individualism, and Not Chasing the Mainstream

• Wayne points out that the Flaming Lips never conformed to industry expectations, focusing on making “cool records” rather than stadium-size success.
• Wayne ([27:51]):
  “We just want to make cool records and, you know, try hard.”

Family, Roots, and True Motivation

• Wayne was inspired early by wanting his brothers and mother to “like” what he made, not just impress an audience ([32:47]).
• Punk rock and DIY culture made artistic self-definition possible for him, making “hard work and determination” more important than raw talent ([34:24]).

The Myth and Trap of the North Star Dream

• Steve ([38:41]):
  “I, like so many people, had a prescribed idea of what success was going to look like... If you don’t obtain that dream, that means you didn’t work hard enough, and it’s your fault.”
• He admits that by focusing on a pre-set notion of what success should be, he nearly missed the joy of an unexpected win (“the dream-adjacent scenario”).

Sincerity, Presence, and Success in the Present

• Steve recalls improvising sincerity in his Blue’s Clues audition, making the iconic “Will you help me?” moment feel genuinely vulnerable (“I made it almost uncomfortably sincere and real... I felt something. I felt a thing. Right. I felt a thing that felt very true to me in that moment.” — [42:04]).
• Wayne suggests stress and pressure always come with real achievement, but fighting through them to find “that freedom of, like, I’m doing that thing and I feel it inside here,” is what it’s all about ([45:07]).

Success Beyond Creativity: Family and Perspective

• Having children shifted Wayne’s priorities, helping him focus less on ego and more on caring for others:
  “There’s a part of every man’s mind that’s not there until you have these kids... It gives you this amazing priority of, this is important. And this other stuff... is not as important as them.” ([46:00])
• Wayne insists he already makes music for the “child in all of us,” and points out that for young children, everything is already fantastic and new ([47:21]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Wayne Coyne ([21:39]):
  “Luck has to find you working hard.”
• Steve Burns ([16:45]):
  “By the end of the song, everybody went to the bar. And they kind of never came back.”
• Wayne Coyne ([22:52]):
  “If I was a billionaire... I’d still be living the way I am now.”
• Wayne Coyne ([47:21]):
  “Kids don’t need records like the Flaming Lips because everything in their world is like Flaming Lips music to begin with.”
• Steve Burns ([48:24]):
  “They say, don’t meet your heroes. I did, and it was awesome.”
• Wayne Coyne ([48:36]):
  “Meet your heroes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:17] Steve introduces the theme: questioning what success really means.
• [05:34] Discussion on voice, vulnerability, and authenticity in art.
• [10:51] Steve’s “lost” feeling after leaving Blue’s Clues; the impact of seeing the Flaming Lips live.
• [16:08] Steve’s disastrous first rock gig and Wayne’s honest, encouraging feedback.
• [19:53] The role of honest feedback and redefining success.
• [21:39] Wayne on luck, work ethic, and creativity (“Luck has to find you working hard.”)
• [22:52] Wayne reflects on his “weirdo artist dream.”
• [24:21] Wayne on the true relationship between success and failure.
• [38:41] Steve discusses the trap of chasing a “North Star” dream at the expense of unexpected opportunities.
• [42:04] Steve’s moment of genuine sincerity on Blue’s Clues.
• [45:07] Embracing struggle and finding meaning in persistence.
• [46:00] How parenthood shifts priorities and deepens the concept of success.
• [48:24] The warmth and affirmation of creative friendship (“I did [meet my hero], and it was awesome.”)

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Final Reflections

Steve closes by distilling the big ideas Wayne shared:

"Success is really a matter of working super hard at something you totally believe in, whether anyone notices or not…sometimes the grass under your feet is all the success that you need." ([48:49])

He encourages listeners to consider what success might look like if it had nothing to do with money, power, or prestige—and to recognize, as Wayne’s kids do, the joy already present in simple moments.

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Takeaways

• Success is less about external recognition than about sincerely engaging in work and life you believe in.
• Luck matters, but you have to be “found” working.
• The line between success and failure is blurry; today’s flop might be tomorrow’s classic.
• True adventure and presence mean more than trophies.
• Sometimes, the moments and choices that don’t fit your original “dream” plan are exactly where genuine success is found.

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Alive with Steve Burns continues to be a refreshingly honest, warm, and slightly weird invitation to rethink the big questions of being alive—reminding listeners that sincerity, kindness, creativity, and friendship are successes in their own right.

Transcript

[Wayne Coyne]

Lemonade.

[Steve Burns]

Hey, there you are. Good to see you. Come on in. Welcome to Alive. Okay, here's a question. Do you consider yourself a success? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a tricky question. I mean, I know for a fact I've considered myself a failure before. I mean, that seems easy, but success seems trickier, like a moving target or something. I made tea. Do you want tea? It's kind of tough to define, but at the same time, I mean, I know it's something I'm supposed to want or something I'm supposed to strive for or pursue and then someday have. Here you go. But what is it, right? Like, what does it mean? Is it. Is it. Is it money? Is it family? Is it power? Is it prestige? Is it. Is it a hit kids TV show? Is it a trophy? Is it something you earn? Is it something you build? I guess my question is, what is success? Okay. All right, let's go. Okay. All right. So Wayne Coyne is a pretty rare guy, actually. He is someone who has essentially turned a lot of the messy, heartbreaking, beautiful parts of what it is to be an alive human person into weird music, into space bubbles, into rock concerts that feel sort of like cosmic birthday parties or an NASA launches. He's actually a pretty hard guy to explain, but he is the frontman of the Flaming Lips for, like, decades. I think they've formed, like, in the early 80s, I think 83. But he kind of blurs the lines, right between concert, cosmic ritual, pop, profound spectacle. It's. But it's all, like, crazy sincere.

[Wayne Coyne]

Like, I've.

[Steve Burns]

Full disclosure, I have known Wayne for decades, and he literally is like my musical hero, right? And when I was 25 years old, if you asked me what success looked like, I would have said, like, that guy. Like, that's the thing that I think is what success would be. And the deal is he gave me this opportunity that I didn't deserve, right? Like we were talking about before he put me on stage, like, at the Hammersmith Apollo where Bowie debuted the Spiders from Mars, right? And. And lifted me up basically in front of. In front of thousands of. Of people and eventually explain to me how important it is to believe in someone. But more than anything, he's just a dude that I think is completely amazing. He's the hardest working person that I've ever met. And he is. He is here.

[Wayne Coyne]

Okay.

[Steve Burns]

Wayne Coyne.

[Wayne Coyne]

All right.

[Steve Burns]

Thanks for coming by my window, man.

[Wayne Coyne]

All right.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Wayne Coyne]

That was better than I thought it was going to be. I. It seemed like. Yeah, was I. I could hear you talking about me?

[Steve Burns]

Well, you're right outside my window. Of course you can hear me talking. I didn't know you were standing there until you knocked at the window.

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah, but you. You still have an amazing voice, Steve Burns.

[Steve Burns]

Oh, thank you.

[Wayne Coyne]

You know, when I'm talking to you in real life, it slips in between, like, I'm just a dude, and then suddenly you've got this amazing. This. This amazing voice. You're made for this.

[Steve Burns]

Oh, thanks, Dud. You should have heard my father speak, man. His voice was down here, and he was a. He was a lector at church. He would read passages from the Bible at church into, like, you know, an SM58 microphone in. In a. In a vaulted room. He sounded like the Lord. Oh, well, you know, I mean, it was. It was just amazing.

[Wayne Coyne]

Well, I mean, yours is. Yours is not as. Is overpowering. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's gentle, you know, It's a gentle. I'm a friend, you know, and I'm not here to intimidate you. Your voice is very like, don't worry. This is going to be fine.

[Steve Burns]

Well, dude, thank you. And you have one of my favorite voices in. In. In all of music. I have to say, I promise this is not going to be just me blowing smoke up this man's ass for the entire interview, but you have to understand that this is my favorite band. Right? But no, speaking of voices, we'll. We'll just start right there, I guess. Your voice is the first thing I noticed about the Flaming Lips. Right? It's. It's so unique and it's so human and vulnerable and often imperfect. And it's. It's. It's those moments that are the emotional center, right, of. Of the Flaming Lips. And. And you're often singing about some. So many things that are. That would be difficult to relate to.

[Wayne Coyne]

Otherwise I would be the least aware of those being qualities other than, you know, when I would sing a song, you know, to Dave Redman or Stephen or whoever and say, what do you think? You know, luckily, those qualities are there. It's not just in the melodies and in the lyrics. It's in a little bit of the, you know, the presentation that you're always. The performance that you're always kind of doing in front of people, as, you know. You know, um, and so luckily, I'm not really doing that. You know, it's. It's some affliction for the better or for the worse that I'm kind of powerless to. And then I hopefully with everybody around me saying, well, do that thing. Because that makes the song.

[Steve Burns]

Makes the song.

[Wayne Coyne]

Makes the song better. Makes it more, like you say, vulnerable. Makes it more, you know, expressionist. You know, it makes it more. Yeah. You know, so I'm very lucky in that way that it's a. I can't really sing, but there's an element of that that breaks through. It being just about notes and talent or whatever that is. It's a humanness. But I'm just lucky. That would be my main thing, I think, that you and I talked about the most. It's like there's a thing that you love to do, and if you're lucky, the world loves it, too. And you say, oh, look at me, I'm doing it. I'm able to do it. But it's just sheer L and trying, you know, I think that there's something in that. That voice that says, hey, man, he's trying. And so.

[Steve Burns]

Wait a minute. Let's back up a little bit.

[Wayne Coyne]

For I've known you. I mean, like, it's almost like, is it a third of your life or longer than that?

[Steve Burns]

Now it's half of my life, man.

[Wayne Coyne]

There you go.

[Steve Burns]

How is that possible? Doesn't that seem inappropriate and. And not okay, that we just seem.

[Wayne Coyne]

Like we knew each other? I. I don't even remember in the beginning how I got to know you. I engineer that I'm working with here today, Taylor, he's quite a bit younger than me, and he remembers, you know, going home from school and watching the first Blues Clues, you know, and I. So I don't know you from Blues Clues?

[Steve Burns]

No.

[Wayne Coyne]

I wasn't young watching you. I wish I was. I wish I was, you know, but. Yeah, I. I don't know. I've just known you forever.

[Steve Burns]

I've just always been there. I've always been there. I've been. I was your stalker, Wayne, for a while, and then you just adopted me.

[Wayne Coyne]

No, I'd gladly do it again. Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

What. The way I remember it was, I was. I was leaving Blue's Clues. I was leaving the kids show, and I was screwing around with music, right? I was messing around with Pro Tools and messing around with producing music. And I was at a party and somebody put on the soft bulletin Flaming lips record from 1999. And my inner guts and soul were immediately reorganized within about 45 seconds of hearing the first song on that record. I left the party and bought the CD. This is when there were CDs. And I went. And I went home and listened to it about four times in a row and kind of just broke out. You know, I, I hadn't heard music that did that, but I lost my mind and I, I found your next show, which was, which was in Chicago and I flew to Chicago and I saw you guys play and I did not expect the live show. I did not expect to see a man on the stage, on a stage with a megaphone pouring blood on his head. Right, Yeah.

[Wayne Coyne]

I didn't know where you were going, but. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Beating a gong as though he had invent joy, you know, and, and the hopefulness of it, the whole thing just kind of blew my mind. And I thought, well, I have to do this now, you know?

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah, well, I knew, I knew a little bit of that about you. Yeah. I mean, I didn't, I didn't know the state of mind so much that you listened to the, the soft bulletin in and just, But I mean, in a sense, you know, when you're, when you're, did you think you were searching then like you didn't know what you were going to do or you, so you, you felt like you knew what you were going to do and then this changed your mind or.

[Steve Burns]

No, I mean, when I left Blue's Clues, I mean, what we're talking about, what I want to talk to you about mostly is, is these concepts that we have of success. Right, right. And I had left a project, I had left Blue's Clues that was objectively a success. But when I left that show, I, I, I can't say that I felt successful necessarily. I felt pretty lost, you know, because I didn't, I had never anticipated being on a kid show. I felt like this was something that happened to me, you know what I mean? And, and I was kind of in, like that, that desperate to prove oneself. I wanted to be anything else, you know, when I, when I left Blue's Clues and I thought I'd always wanted to be a musician, but when I saw you guys play, I thought, oh, that's what success is. If I can, if I can stand on a stage and move people and make people feel the way I just felt, sure, yeah, yeah, I would be a success. And so I flung myself at this endeavor and I made a demo tape.

[Wayne Coyne]

Your voice just went to this great. Ah, you know, Tell me your story. Tell me your story, Steve. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Burns]

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[Wayne Coyne]

Those were great times. I mean, I never looked at it like, he's got to launch his career. I looked at like, we're all having fun and you're.

[Steve Burns]

Well, I did.

[Wayne Coyne]

You're working your ass off. And we did. We were working hard, too. Everybody was like, let's just do this thing. And it's great doing things with friends. And you were, you know, you were. You were going for it and I was, I was. I didn't feel like we helped you that much. It was just like, yeah, come with us. You're going to do all the work, you know.

[Steve Burns]

You took me on tour in the UK to support Yoshimi. It was. You were helping me a lot. But the deal is, I was working so hard and I got up on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo and it was like my first show ever, in a way. And I'm sitting there with a guitar and you come out and you're like, everybody come to the stage, right? Come to the stage. And like 5,000 people rush the stage. And I start playing my song and I'm like, I'm. I'm a mighty little man I'm the awesomest. I am so great. And by the end of the song, everybody went to the bar.

[Wayne Coyne]

Oh, is that. Oh, I don't know if I saw it that way. Did you see it that way?

[Steve Burns]

That. Yeah, man. And. And they kind of never came back.

[Wayne Coyne]

You know, metaphorically, or you just mean for that moment in the. In the, in the night.

[Steve Burns]

No, I mean for the tour, you know?

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

And there was a sense that it wasn't going very well, despite having great musicians behind me. And there was a sense that I wasn't really holding the stage and that. And that it. It just wasn't really working. And I remember after the tour, you said, well, God, Damn, Steve Burns, come on over. We'll have coffee, right?

[Wayne Coyne]

And.

[Steve Burns]

And you poured me a ridiculously strong cup of coffee. And you said, well, that didn't work. You know. I said, I know. And you're like, it was kind of bad.

[Wayne Coyne]

I don't remember it being, like, as bluntly as that was it.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah. And. And I'm. I'm grateful, actually, because then you went on to say, you know, essentially, people come to rock shows for just a handful of reasons, right? They. They. They come to get drunk, they come to possibly get laid, but they're really there to watch human beings believe in themselves in ways that they cannot. And you said to me, you don't have that third part. Not yet. You know, And I was like, well, God damn. I mean, just imagine that, you know, I'm sitting at a table.

[Wayne Coyne]

I mean, I think for the most part, it's hard for people to say, I don't know this guy's music, but I'm gonna like him anyway. I mean, that's why I probably said, well, come up to the stage and you'll listen to this guy and see if you like him. And you have to remember, you know, ZZ Top opened up for the Rolling Stones in the late 70s, and even though, you know, the night before, they played to, you know, 4,000 people, and everybody loved them opening up for the Rolling Stones, everybody there hated them, you know, and when you come to see a certain thing, the thing that happens before is sometimes is it just doesn't matter about if it's good or what it is. It's like, we're not here to see this. We're here to see this other thing. So I'm sure I would have explained that to you. And, you know, that as well. It's. They're there to get excited for that. That music and that. That scene or whatever. And it's. It's difficult spot, you know, I mean, we've opened up for lots of people. You know, we were opening up for Eva Weezer just, you know, just at the end last summer and stuff, you know, and. Yeah, yeah, it's difficult to win people over. But, I mean, you know, the way we sort of look at it now, it's like, it's great to have this challenge, and we oftentimes will just play for. If the audience doesn't like it. It kind of empowers you to be like, I'm not playing for you anyway. I'm just playing for me, you know, And. But that's difficult when you've gone To a lot of trouble to be like, I want this presentation to. To make a difference here. I want them to like it. I want them to be entertained. And then when they're not, you know, it's. That's a. It's. I mean, I don't care who you are. That's.

[Steve Burns]

It's just.

[Wayne Coyne]

It's tough. It's tough to take.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah. I mean, and to be clear, I mean, you weren't. You weren't being a dick. You were being quite the opposite. You know, you. You were saying, well, that didn't work, and here's why, you know, And. And I think you were right. And obviously I had my musical hero across from me with a cup of coffee saying, well, shit, that didn't work. So that was, you know, that was hard to hear, but it was such. It was such a kind bit of honesty, because that kind of redefined to me what success might look like or what might be necessary to be successful. Because that's true, Wayne. You know, like, I didn't. I hadn't been a musician, I just, like, skipped all the steps and stepped onto a stage I didn't like. You know what I mean?

[Wayne Coyne]

And that unusual. I mean, there's lots of. Lots of people that, you know, go up there and try it and they get lucky. And they could say, well, I never did this before, and. And people think I'm great. And there's tons of people out there that do it for 50 years and no one ever likes it. You know, I mean, there's a lot of. Of luck involved in. You know, I always say, you know, it's. It's luck. Has to find you working hard. You know, that's the best. Because you're already like, I don't care. I don't care if this succeeds or not, because I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm going for it, you know, But I just love creating stuff. I love creating music. I love creating the live show. And I'm lucky that people will come and watch it and give us money to do it all, you know, But I feel certain I would do it anyway. You know, there's a certain amount of what we. Success in just that you just create it. You just do it, you know, and when. When people show up and when people like it and when they give you money and when it, you know, that all is like, yes, that. That's all great too. But, you know, it's kind of like I'm. I know I would. I would be doing it anyway, you.

[Steve Burns]

Know, you said luck has to find you working hard.

[Wayne Coyne]

Well, yeah. You know what I mean?

[Steve Burns]

That's good. Yeah.

[Wayne Coyne]

Especially songwriting, you know, it's like, what is that? How do these things come to you? And I always say, like, you know, the gods of music. And. And I always use this. So voice is like, well, look, there they are. They're working hard down there, you know.

[Steve Burns]

Oh, I say, look at Wayne. Wayne's certainly working hard today. He Woke up at 5am I say.

[Wayne Coyne]

They'Re working so hard to just throw them one. Would we. It's like, okay, let's throw them one. And then they throw you a. Do you realize? And then they're like, hope he doesn't mess this one up. You know, and then they look at you five years later. So he really did good with that one. Maybe we'll throw him another one. And that's. That's everybody who writes songs. It's like you just have to be doing your thing to explain, you know, what's the magic of a song that communicates and all that. Be like, if any. If, if anybody knew, we would all make it a formula and we just do it every time. But nobody knows. It's just such a strange combination of the song, the person, events that happen, and you have to be doing your thing and. Yeah. Hope you get, you know, lucky.

[Steve Burns]

Do you feel successful? Do you feel like you.

[Wayne Coyne]

Yes.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Wayne Coyne]

I mean, I mean, for me, I mean, I say it all the time. It's like, if I was a billionaire, which I'm not, you know, if I was a billionaire, I would. I'd still be living the way I am now. There's not. Not another level that I'd be like, only if, you know, I mean, I'm living the absolute weirdo artist dream to the, to the maximum.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, you're pretty weird. You're pretty weird.

[Wayne Coyne]

But I like doing stuff, you know, I don't. I don't want to ever, you know, get to where I take five years off and have a bunch of people doing everything for me. I mean, I like doing the stuff, you know, I mean, like when we were first starting off, you know, it really was like an adventure. There's the adventure of it, which, if you get to have an adventure when you're young, you've succeeded. Yeah, you want to do crazy shit. You don't really care. You just don't want to be stuck, you know, at home with the same job for 20 years saying, Gosh, I wish I would have like, gone out into the world and had an adventure. And so as soon as we could, you know, we saw being in a band as a way of being like, we can go anywhere now and have an adventure and meet people and things could happen, you know.

[Steve Burns]

What do you think the relationship is between success and failure? I used to think they were opposites, but I'm not so sure anymore. I think that they're. There's like a weird sibling kind of relationship there. You know what I mean? Like, they are very much related. What do you think?

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah, I mean, I think anytime you're doing a creative endeavor, whatever it is, it probably is not going to work that well. And you have to take a chance to say, I know, but I want to, I want to do this. I want to learn from this. I want to make this in the world, you know, and maybe it won't work now, but maybe five years from now it does work. I mean, you know, we were talking, you were talking about the soft bulletin coming out in 1980, 1999. You know, it wasn't successful in, in the beginning and, you know, it took about a year or really, I mean, and you know, our one hit wonder song, she Don't Use Jelly, was not a. Not a hit at all, even in the first year, you know, and you know, as time goes by, all these things get compressed and to be like, they recorded the record, then they put it out and it was a smash, a smashing. I say, but, but we knew because, I mean, you know, we had made the song, we put it out. It wasn't like we had a bunch of people doing all this stuff for us. And you could see where it started to take off. The very first thing that we put out, our record that we made ourselves, that came out in 1984, we recorded it ourselves and it got reviewed in these hipster magazines and they absolutely loved it. Very luckily, they absolutely loved us and these friends that seriously, just a week earlier we were like, yeah, your band sucks. We don't care. But, you know, whatever, I'm cooler than you or whatever. You know, read the review and to our face was like, now you guys are great.

[Steve Burns]

I love you guys.

[Wayne Coyne]

You guys are amazing. And you're like, but I thought last week you said that we sucked and you just, you thought we were nothing. But now you read a review that said we're great and now you think we're great just because the review said we're great. So we had a choice even then to say, you guys are idiots. Why, why are you following along with this? And we didn't we just said, oh, well, good.

[Steve Burns]

I'm glad you did that review. Change how you felt about your band.

[Wayne Coyne]

I mean, for us, anytime we've had that type of success where it's like, you make something, people like it. Oh, it, it. It gives you more. I don't know, what's the word? It gives you more freedom, gives you more energy, gives you more power. Yeah, we go and just do the thing that we absolutely want to do.

[Steve Burns]

You know, Every time, though, right?

[Wayne Coyne]

Well, if you're sort of struggling to. To find out what, you know, what's going to work or whatever, you, you know, I think the soft bulletin when we made that, you know, we were in the state of mind, like, we don't care what people think. We're going to make this record. And we assumed that we would get dropped from the label, Warner Brothers, and that would possibly be the last record we made, especially with those elaborate budgets that Warner Brothers would give you back then, you know, $300,000 to record a record, you know.

[Steve Burns]

Well, that's kind of what I wanted to. It's kind of. It's kind of where I was going to go, like. Yeah, you. You don't seem to care about the expectation of what might be successful, you know, I mean, because it is. It is kind of a world, especially a major label world, right. Where. Where they, they. They want to kind of polish out all of the weird edges and sort of make everything a little bit. The expectation of some kind of conformity around success, you would think. And yet you've been on a major record label for like 40 years. Being the weirdest human being.

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Around, you know, But I think it.

[Wayne Coyne]

Depends on the group as well. I think some groups, they want that success too. They want to get with producers and they want to get with marketing people to be like you. We want to be a success. We want to be playing stadiums. And if we don't, that's your fault. So we're just going to. We'll play along with whatever we feel like will get us to play stadiums and make. Make us famous and make us the most, you know, make us look as cool as we can. Whereas our record label, they knew we weren't really playing that game with them. You know, we were saying, you give us money, we'll make these records as best we can, make them as cool as we can, make them do our own thing as best as we can. And we'll work hard to see if we can sell some of them afterwards. We'll just keep trying. We made Our own videos we make. We didn't need tour support. All these things that would be like, it's, if you guys help us make these records, we'll, we'll create something and hope it works. And we got a lot of opportunities back then, you know, opening up for Tool, opening up for Butthole Surfers and, and Stone Temple Pilots, all these things because all those people liked our records and stuff. You know, they weren't, they weren't, they weren't putting us on the tour to think, well, they'll, they'll make us all more successful. They just thought opening up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers or they were like, we just, we like your records. Play with us. We're like, okay, cool. You know, so. Oh yeah. You know, I think they could see that we weren't being like, we need to be a big, successful, famous band. We just want to make cool records and, you know, try hard.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

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[Steve Burns]

Hey, it's me, Steve Burns. And I'm so glad you're here because you and I go way back, right? Yeah. And look at us now, like we're all grown up. We've got this new podcast where we talk about all this grown up stuff. And there's special guests like Jamie Lee Curtis and Bill Nye, but for the most part, it's about you. I mean, it's always been about you. From Lemonada Media Alive with Steve burns is coming September 17th. Wherever you get your podcasts or you can watch every episode on YouTube. Interesting. So, you know, I mean. Yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, you were never really gunning for an idea of success that wasn't inclusive of your own personal instincts and your own personal sense of direction and your own personal belief. Right. Which I was doing. Which was the mistake I was making, you know, when I was on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo. But we all sort of, like, pattern our notion of success. We kind of model it on people we've seen on. On successes we've seen. So who were your, like, early heroes? Who. Because we all have that band. Right.

[Wayne Coyne]

Like, I mean, earlier on would have been, you know, my. My brother's loving the Beatles, you know, and. And my mother loving Tom Jones, and I. Tom Jones. Tom Jones, yeah. You know, and so everything that I did musically, especially early on, I. I wanted them to like it. I wanted my brothers to like it, and I wanted my mother to like it. So it wasn't like I wasn't making music to say, hey, you, here's what I'm doing. I was making it to be like, I love music and I don't know how to make it, but whatever I make, I hope that they like it.

[Steve Burns]

I hope that's really interesting. I did not know that about you. So. So tell me about that. So you're. I know you have a bunch of brothers in Oklahoma City. So you're. Initially, you were trying to impress your family. You were trying to impress your.

[Wayne Coyne]

Not impressed. Just be like that. They. I mean, they always encouraged me, you know, when I was drawing and painting, I mean, my mother bought me my first wah wah pedal, you know, and I would be. I would be playing loud as, you know, horrible, unmusical loud, distorted guitar.

[Steve Burns]

It's an incredibly thoughtful gift from a mother to a son.

[Wayne Coyne]

It is. But, I mean, I did like those kind of effects. You know, if you're not a great technical musician, you know, having a bunch of effects that make great sounds is a great way, you know, to say, look, you know, you sound cool, you know. Yeah. You know, I. I mean, I think for me, you know, you couldn't escape how much the culture was about rock and roll when I was growing up. You know, I was born in 1961, had older brothers. They. They all embraced The Beatles. All cool music, really, but drugs, motorcycles, all this stuff. And we all did that together, you know, we lived everything together as a gang, you know, and they had tons of friends, tons of drugs, tons of motorcycles. I knew all the dudes in all the bands in Oklahoma City. I. You know, we would go to parties. Everybody would all be there together. They would all be playing house parties and stuff. Though I didn't know anything about music. I just wanted to write my own songs more than anything. I just thought, I want to write songs and just make stuff up, you know, and really, that's. That makes all the difference, you know, I just started writing songs. Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Did you have a particular musical hero? Do you like that is. That's what I'm patterning off of, or.

[Wayne Coyne]

Sure. The Beatles. But then as it got to be more realistic, you know, as punk rock came along, 1977, 1978, you know, I could see real life, real musicians, like, doing it. It wasn't rock stars, you know. I guess that's the difference between, like, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin and the who, these types of bands. That music is really untouchable. But when I would see punk rock bands, I'd be like, like, well, that's. That's. I could do that. I wanted that, you know, And I didn't care that I didn't have any musical ability. You know. What I didn't have as musical ability, I made up with, with just working hard and determination, which you can do. Which you can do. Because then I would meet musicians and stuff that, you know, liked that quality that I had and that I would write songs, you know, writing songs and having your own. I don't know, is it Leonard Cohen that says, you know, I always thought it was about just telling your own truth, telling your own story, and that's all you're doing, you know, it's not. It's not. It's not about music, and it's not about a career. It's not about anything. It's just you're up there telling your own story, your own version of the truth. So it's hard to say what, you know, what is the success and what's the failure. Because, you know, it's like you just try things and some things succeed, and you don't want them to be something you have to do all the time. It's like, you know, you know, and some things fail, but it's something you want to keep doing. And you just are always deciding within you, like, you know, that thing failed. I didn't like it that much. Anyway, who cares, you know? And. And I mean, you know, you always worry. I mean, like with you and Blue's Clues. I mean, when Blue's Clues was succeeding, did you feel like, if I keep doing this, I'm going to be trapped and I don't want to keep doing this? Or was your contract up and they were getting rid of you anyway? What. What was the. What led you to leave? That. That thing that seemed to be working for you so.

[Steve Burns]

Well, all of those things, you know, I didn't necessarily feel trapped. I. I wouldn't say that I felt trapped in that role. I felt miscast in that role. I felt like, dear God, they have the wrong man. You know, this is not. I mean, you know me. Can you. Can you.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

You.

[Steve Burns]

You're an interesting person to ask this question to because. Because you don't really know Blue's Clues. Not really.

[Wayne Coyne]

I mean, I know I. I mean, I. I get it, but. Yeah, I didn't.

[Steve Burns]

Right. But it's not like you were watching it, so you're not super familiar with it. Can you imagine me on a kid show? Yeah.

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah. I mean, I can't.

[Steve Burns]

I still can't, you know, and. And I couldn't then. And so I really felt like. Like I was sort of leading someone else's life. Like I had taken a wrong turn and that this was almost a cosmic mistake. And I had a good thing going, you know, but I didn't feel qualified. I guess they call it imposter syndrome or whatever, but I really felt as though this should be a child development specialist or this should be an educator doing these weird things. I was just afraid I was gonna be found out as a fraud, as someone who should. Who was never qualified to be doing kids tv.

[Wayne Coyne]

Well, do you still feel that way now? I mean, I would.

[Steve Burns]

No. No, I don't.

[Wayne Coyne]

Most things in the world are like that, especially things that succeed without. It's like, hey, this is working. I don't know why it's working, but now it's working. And it seems to be, you know, it seems like it appears that we know what we're doing, but we don't really know what we're doing. But there's so many things in the world that are just like that. You know, Airplane travel isn't like that. You know, I always sort of feel like they know what they're doing.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

You.

[Wayne Coyne]

Know, But I mean, entertainment, you know, in what we're doing, you really cannot have any idea what you're doing. But you can be Very appealing to an audience.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, that's 100 true.

[Wayne Coyne]

And be true as well. I mean, you can be the most studied, the most, practice the most, you know what, Straight A, whatever. And no one can like you. And it can be completely unfair the other way, too. So I don't know. No, I mean, to me, I always sort of feel like, look, if they like you, you, that's just. You're just lucky. Let's go. You know, that. That's not. That's not a punishment. That's not a. You know, it's nothing to regret, you know.

[Steve Burns]

You know what I think it is, Wayne? I think. I think I, like so many people, had a prescribed idea of what success was going to look like. Right?

[Wayne Coyne]

Right.

[Steve Burns]

I'm going to move to New York City. I'm going to be Al Pacino. I'm going to be a dangerous, short guy actor who smokes cigarettes and does plays that no one ever sees, but that critics love. Right. That's what I am destined to do. And, and, and when those things happen, I will have succeeded. I will be a success. Instead, something else happened, and because it didn't meet my expectation, I refused to invest in the success of it. Does that make sense?

[Wayne Coyne]

And.

[Steve Burns]

And that is kind of a recipe for disaster.

[Wayne Coyne]

What you're saying is you went to pursue this other thing, and then that part of it didn't satisfy you, or it didn't happen, or it wasn't. It wasn't what you thought it was.

[Steve Burns]

Something else happened, you know, and something very different happened. And it. And it wasn't. It wasn't what I told myself, because we. When you're 14 years old. Sure. It seems they ask you, like, all right, what are you. What's your dream? Dream? What is your dream? Identify that dream. Yeah, Right. And place it in the sky like the North Star. And then follow that. You're 14, you have no idea. And, and you're like. And like, now take all these classes and get into debt in pursuit of this dream. And work hard. And if. And if you work hard enough, you will succeed and you will obtain that dream. And if you don't obtain that dream, that means you didn't work hard enough, and it's your fault. And it's just sort of a prescription that we're sold that. I felt that that's what I was doing. I thought, okay, well, I have a dream. It's important to have this dream.

[Wayne Coyne]

Right? Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

And I will pursue the hell out of it. And what I missed was the joy of the dream. Adjacent scenario that was going on in my life.

[Wayne Coyne]

When you took the job at Blue's Clues, I mean, that didn't look like. Like Al Pacino smoking cigarettes.

[Steve Burns]

I needed the money, man. Like, I story.

[Wayne Coyne]

And I mean, end of. That's. I mean, to me, that's a better story. That's a better story. Because if you would have.

[Steve Burns]

Agree.

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah. You know, I mean. Yeah. I mean, the things that happen to us is. Really. Is really us. It's not the. It's not the notions that we had. Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

I will say this, and I'm realizing this just in talking to you is I almost didn't go to the audition because I thought it was just to be like, the voice of a cartoon, you know? And when I got there, there was a camera in the room, and I said, oh, shit, I don't want to be on a kid show, you know? But it was. It was kind of too late. So I just kind of did the audition, and I kind of just pulled this character out of my butt, and I did. And I did that part where I. There was a part on Blue's Clues because Wayne doesn't know Blue's Clues, but there was a part on Blue's Clues where I. I, like. I look really close into the camera and I just ask a question and I just say, like, will you help me? Right? And I. And I. And I made it. I made it almost uncomfortably sincere and like. And real. And I got way too close to the camera.

[Wayne Coyne]

You know, I got like this in the audition.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah. Like, I got, like, weirdly close to.

[Wayne Coyne]

The camera, and this wasn't this. They didn't direct you to do this.

[Steve Burns]

No, no, no, no. But in that weird silence of me just asking, will you help me? I felt something. I felt a thing. Right. I felt a thing that felt very true to me in that moment. And that's kind of what I made that whole show out of it, from my perspective, was that feeling in that moment. And that's the feeling. A moment I never had, ever. Not one time, standing on a stage with a guitar, you know, it was that.

[Wayne Coyne]

That.

[Steve Burns]

It was that. That true centeredness of your belief, I guess.

[Wayne Coyne]

I mean, I always tell people, like, you know, when you have a dream when you're 14 years old, it doesn't matter what it is, you know, it being a rock star going up to outer space, any of that. You don't have the stress in the dream. In the dream, you feel absolutely great and everything is happy and it all works out. And it's very Simple. But in real life, as you get there, it's stressful. To be on stage is stressful, and you gotta just work, work, work, work to the point where it's not stressful and you get to, you know, you get to enjoy all that stuff. I think you doing this audition, assuming I'm not gonna get this and I don't really want it, I'll do this weird thing and I'll get away with as much as I can. You probably weren't that stressed out about it. You probably were just like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna have fun. And part of you was free, you.

[Steve Burns]

Know, that's exactly what it was. You know, I mean, the script that I looked at read like is right, sort of like, which one is the triangle? Do you know? And I was like, well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that, you know, But I. I thought, oh, it's cool that he's talking to the camera. So I made it something that I enjoyed. I made it like this really personal. Like, I have no idea which one is triangle. Do you have any idea? Like, I don't know, maybe. Maybe you could help me out here.

[Wayne Coyne]

I like it right now.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah.

[Wayne Coyne]

But, you know, it's like. But in real life, as you. As you go and do things, it's stressful. You know, you have expectations and there's a lot of. There's a lot of things to organize. There's lots of money involved, there's lots of egos involved, and it becomes stressful. You know, it's not as simple as that. But you fight through that stuff.

[Steve Burns]

Yeah, exactly. And. And that's something that comes up in your music all the time that I love. And one thing you said to me once, I. I came off stage in the UK somewhere, Portsmouth or something, and it was particularly bad. Like, it was particularly bad. And I came off stage and you just went, well, it's a struggle. And that's true. And that is true. It is a struggle. And it's going to be a struggle. I don't care who you are, it's gonna be. The struggle's not optional. And I've come to believe that it's. You meet the struggle that defines who you are, really, and. And what. And what you're going to do.

[Wayne Coyne]

It is. It's a struggle. And that stress is. Is. Is hard. You know, it takes. It takes all the fun and all the excitement and all the. All the things that you like about it. It can take it away. That's why. It's. It's just. You just got to keep fighting and fighting and fighting and fight through that to get back to that freedom of, like, I'm doing that thing and I feel it inside here.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

I.

[Steve Burns]

And, yeah, you know, I'm doing that thing and I feel it inside here, and. Yeah, I like that. What about. We talked an awful lot about creative success, right?

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

What about the other sides of it? What about. I mean, you. You. You have kids now. You have a family.

[Wayne Coyne]

Yeah. Yeah. Best thing ever.

[Steve Burns]

Has having children changed how you. How you view the concept of success?

[Wayne Coyne]

Well, I don't know. I mean, you know, I mean, the. The way I work, you know, the way I'm doing the thing that I get to include. I get to really. I'm working with all my friends. You know, they don't see me working. Like, I hate this job. They've never seen me, like, hate my job or anything like that. But having kids, I think it just. There's a. I think there's a part of every man's mind that is not there until you have these kids. And then you realize a lot of time that you spend worrying about yourself, am I cool? Am I right? Am I. You know, does. What is this? That is now used up. Just trying to keep them alive. Every minute you think, like, are they gonna. We put. We have a pool, and the pool. We only have a little bit of water in there. They can both stand up in there. But do you still worry every second, like, it gives you this amazing priority of, this is important. And this other stuff, though, it's important. It's not as important as them. And all that, I think, works itself out amazingly, you know, I think any artist would. Would benefit from having children. As long as you love them, want to take care of them, you know.

[Steve Burns]

Please make a kid's record. Wayne Coyne. I have thought this. I have thought that you needed to do this for 25 years. 25 years.

[Wayne Coyne]

I thought, well, I. I think I'm making records that, you know, appeal to the. The child that's remains in all of us that. That individualistic person. I don't think my records. I don't think kids. Kids don't need records like the Flaming Lips because everything in their world is like Flaming Lips music to begin with. You don't know that this is weird or this is. This is not the ordinary till you're older. You know, when you're young. Everything is utterly fantastic. I try to remind, you know, we'll be walking to the park, you know, with the kids, and they get out of the car and there's grass and sand right there. And they just start to play right there. And they're like, why do we have to walk over there when we could just be playing here? And I go, you're right.

[Steve Burns]

It's.

[Wayne Coyne]

They call that a park, and this is a parking lot. And they're like, we have grass and sand right here. Why can't we play here? And I'm like, like, I know there's.

[Steve Burns]

Grass and sand right here. Success. This is already success. Success is right here in front of us.

[Wayne Coyne]

It's already fantastic. Yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Wayne, I love talking to you. I could do this for, for about four more hours. But listen, man, they, they say, don't meet your heroes. I did, and it was awesome.

[Wayne Coyne]

Well, you're one of my heroes, too. Yeah, I, I, I totally disagree with that. Meet your heroes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Burns]

Anyway, man, I love you, dude. And thanks for coming by, Wayne.

[Wayne Coyne]

Bye, Steve. Thank you for having me. Bye, Steve.

[Steve Burns]

Bye, Wayne. Bye. Yeah, he's the best, right? What a cool guy. He's awesome. And I actually feel like I learned some stuff that I didn't know. I loved. I loved some of the stuff he said. I loved when he said, said if I was a billionaire, I would still be doing exactly what I'm doing right now. Because, Dwayne, success is really a matter of working super hard at something you totally believe in, whether anyone notices or not. Oh, and I absolutely loved when he said success has to find you working hard. Because I love the idea that success is out there, like, looking for people to find, and if it comes knocking and you happen to be, like, a very slothful, lazy person, it's just gonna walk away. I like that. And of course, I loved the story of his kids getting out of the car and just wanting to play in the sand and the grass right in front of them, because sometimes the grass under your feet is all the success that you need. Let's go outside. All right. Well, that definitely helps me think of success a little differently, you know.

[Wayne Coyne]

Oh.

[Steve Burns]

I mean, just sitting here in a hammock, that feels pretty successful. What would success look like to you if it had nothing to do with money or power or prestige? It. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming by. It's great to see you always. You look great. Alive with Steve Burns is a Lemonade Media original. If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now's the perfect time. Time you can listen to the show completely ad free. Plus you'll unlock exclusive bonus content from me as I reflect on this episode. Just press subscribe on Apple podcasts head to lemonadapremium.com to subscribe on any other app or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. That's lemonadapremium.com Alive is hosted by me, Steve Burns and produced by Jeremy Slutskin. Our editor is Christopher Champion Morgan. Our Associate producer is Akshay Tharabailu, audio engineering by James Sparber. Lemonada's SVP of weekly programming is Ste Nelson. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer, Stephanie Whittles, Wax and me. We'll see you next week and you look great by the way.

[Julia Louis-Dreyfus]

Want to listen to your favorite Lemonada shows without the ads? Subscribe to Lemonada Premium on Apple Podcasts. You'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis Dreyfus, Fail Better with David Duchovny, the Sarah Silverman Podcast, and so many more. More. It's a great way to support the work we do and treat yourself to a smoother, uninterrupted listening experience. Just head to any Lemonada show, feed on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe Make Life Suck Less with Fewer Ads With Lemonada Premium, are you looking for ways to make your everyday life happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best selling author of the Happiness Project, bringing you fresh insights and practical solutions in the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co host and happiness guinea pig is my sister Elizabeth Craft. That's me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore ideas and hacks about cultivating happiness and good habits. Check out Happier with Gretchen Rubin from Lemonada Media.