The idea behind the PBS series, Blank on Blank, is to take old or disregarded interviews with cultural icons and turn them into five-minute comics that illustrate what the artist is saying. In the most recent clip, Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips talks about a near-death experience before tying it into music.
Patrick Smith animates the series while illustrations from Coyne's personal comic books serve as the background for this episode of Blank on Blank, titled "Wayne Coyne: Living with Death." Coyne explains that he and his bandmates made a pact early on that if they could make more money working at a fast food restaurant than playing music, then they would give up on the band. "Only because that's what would be left for us if we weren't doing this," he says in the video below. "That's the kind of skill level of any contribution to society that we would have. Simply because we've spent our whole adult lives pursuing this."
He then describes working at a Long John Silver's from the age of 16 to 27 while chasing his dream. The singer worked nights, and there were a fair amount of robberies. The first incident involved some angry men with a gun, and Coyne thought he had reached the end of the line. Luckily the men took the money and left, putting life into perspective for Coyne and the staff. "We all cried. We couldn't stop crying and laughing and jumping up and down," he says. "We were celebrating like we had just won a million dollars. The idea of we are alive and isn't it a f*cking great thing? I think it changed me."
Coyne goes on to credit music for being a mechanism to help cope with some of life's great mysteries, like death. "I'm not just simply pouring my guts out," he says about writing a song. "I'm pouring my guts out so they can feel like your guts at the same time."
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