Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd Albums Earn Raves From the Flaming Lips

Wayne Coyne, singer for psych-rock band The Flaming Lips, who are currently competing with Radiohead for the "best new music to listen to on headphones" title, recently cited Led Zeppelin, The Who and Pink Floyd among a list of his favorite albums of all time.

Coyne, obviously a huge classic rock fan, also offered up dissertation-sized descriptions to The Quietus about how 'Led Zeppelin IV,' 'Live at Leeds' and 'Dark Side of the Moon' impacted his world.

'Led Zeppelin IV' may have come out when Coyne, now 50, was only 10, but his pot-smoking brothers introduced him to earlier Zep tunes during his formative years. The band ceased being background music when he heard 'IV.' "I guess that's where I discovered that idea of a rock group," Coyne explains, "so for me, Led Zeppelin never really evokes anything other than these dudes playing this bad ass music."

Of course, after 25 years and about a dozen albums under his belt, Coyne now has a musician's appreciation of the album: "They're a total fabrication of sounds and moods and little arranging techniques, little quirks. Jimmy Page is a master of that...when you listen to ['IV'], which we do quite often, I don't see how anyone who loves music could listen to that and not think, 'F---, that's cool'. Such cool drumming, such cool effects on the guitars."

Seeing The Who in 1977 was another definitive, altering moment for Coyne. "That was really a moment that changed music for me; it was no longer music, it was like a deeply religious power to me," he recalled. "They were still doing these songs from 'Tommy,' in a sense like they were on 'Live at Leeds,' where it was just utter chaos, [and] utter release... That was a life-changing, f---ing devastating couple of hours of music. I walked out of there like I'd changed heads."

Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon,' which the Lips covered in its entirety back in 2009, is one of the most popular albums of all time. As Coyne astutely observes, this oddly enough leads many people now to dismiss the impact of the record. He puts the work in a new perspective, saying, "if they heard pieces of it they would think it's some freaked out indie group, with these great old synthesizers. It's just so well done. There are these strange, jazz elements to Pink Floyd that I think musicians notice. I don't think the audience cares - these neat little things they do that make it their own trip."

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