Wayne Coyne says he wants Billie Eilish to cover The Flaming Lips

Wayne Coyne has said that he wants Billie Eilish to cover one of The Flaming Lips‘ albums.

• READ MORE: 11 of Wayne Coyne’s weirdest moments

The Flaming Lips singer was responding to fan questions in a new interview when he revealed his wish, also saying that in an ideal world he’d like Radiohead and The Beatles to cover some of his band’s records.

When a fan asked him what other albums he might like to cover (The Flaming Lips released a Nick Cave covers album, ‘Where the Viaduct Looms’, with a young fan last year), he responded: “Since I’ve had my own studio at my house, we’ve done The Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper…’, Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, The Stone Roses’ debut.

He went on to say in The Guardian piece that the band have considered covering Portishead and Silver Apples.

“We’ve talked about doing Portishead’s first album [‘Dummy’], and a record by the Silver Apples,” Coyne continued. “Who would I most like to cover a Flaming Lips album? Well, who wouldn’t want to hear the Beatles do ‘[The] Soft Bulletin’, Radiohead do ‘American Head’, or Billie Eilish cover ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots?’”

Elsewhere in the interview Coyne spoke about being robbed at gunpoint in Oklahoma.

A fan told Coyne that they were “robbed at Hemi’s Pizza – around the corner from Long John Silver’s seafood restaurant in Oklahoma – where three guys held you up at gunpoint as a teenager”.

The fan asked: “Did your near-death experience contribute to your desire to go avant garde?” to which Coyne answered: “I do think it made me less afraid to do things in the name of art. I now think: ‘What harm is going to happen if I make a bad record?’

“Once you’ve stood with a gun to your head and thought: ‘Well, I’m gonna die,” the petty little things don’t bother you. It definitely shaped my fierceness – if that’s the right word.

Coyne continued: “There were a lot of robberies around that time. You assumed if you got robbed, you were also going to get shot, your body would be thrown in the walk-in cooler and your mother would find out on the news.

“That pizza place was around the corner. I did get the feeling that these guys had already robbed a couple of places, but all we saw was a brief police report. Aged 16, 17, I assumed: ‘Everyone must nearly die two or three times, growing up.’ Only later in life did I realise: that’s not normal.”

Meanwhile, The Flaming Lips join Haim, The Roots, Sheryl Crow and more for The Big Climate Thing Festival, a climate-themed festival held in New York City this September.

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