Steven Drozd on The Flaming Lips, Addiction, and Solo Debut

9:36 AM EDT on May 6, 2026

Wayne Coyne's longtime musical partner on his decades in the Lips, his ouster from the band during addiction treatment, and his upcoming solo debut album

For 33 years — as they evolved from underground noise freaks to ’90s alternative darlings to symphonic auteurs to bubble-surfing festival spectacle to elder statesmen of weird — the Flaming Lips had one consistent secret weapon: Steven Drozd. Though he joined as a drummer, bringing a Bonham-esque intensity to 1993’s Transmissions From The Satellite Heart , Drozd soon expanded to other instruments, particularly after the departure of guitarist Ronald Jones, and played a crucial role in crafting the wide-eyed orchestral grandeur of landmark albums The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots .

The multi-instrumentalist’s skewed psych-pop sensibility, melodic instincts, and airy falsetto are embedded in the soul of the Lips’ discography. However much turmoil the Lips have weathered, Wayne Coyne could always count on Drozd to help bring his zaniest ideas to musical life.

Suddenly, everything has changed. Last year, Drozd was conspicuously absent from Lips concerts, and in December, he confirmed that he was out of the band after deciding not to tour anymore . What initially seemed like an amicable parting of ways took a messier turn when Coyne weighed in with a cryptic post of his own. “The reason he left is sad and infuriating,” the frontman posted on Instagram before Christmas. “It is HIS responsibility to tell everyone what happened.” (Through a representative, Coyne declined to comment for this article.)

I reached out to Drozd in February, and a month later he wrote back and graciously agreed to speak. These days, he’s holed up at home in Oklahoma City, working on his first-ever solo album, which he hopes to release in the fall. He looks at the Lips’ tour dates and feels a sense of relief that he doesn’t have to hop a plane to Greece or Jakarta. The touring life is behind him.

When I interviewed Drozd, in mid-April, we talked for an hour and he seemed to still be processing the strange way his Lips tenure had ended. I will let him tell that story, and many others, in his own words. The chat begins… now-now-now-now-now-now-now-now-now .

It’s been about four months now since you sort of announced that you’d left the Flaming Lips. How are you doing?

STEVEN DROZD: They’re touring probably more now than at any time in the recent past. So it’s good for them. But when I see all those tour dates, all I think is I’m just glad I’m not touring. I think maybe I had got to the end of the line for me being on the road. I’m glad to not be touring. So that part of it is great.

I got the sense that over the last few years, you were pretty burnt out on being on the road.

DROZD: Definitely. I think for whatever reasons — some personal reasons and some family stuff — touring was getting harder and harder for me. Everything reached a climax when my daughter went missing in Seattle towards the end of that Weezer tour back in 2024.

I remember reading about that at the time. That was obviously a very upsetting incident.

DROZD: Yeah. It’s hard to get back into it because it really was traumatic. She was missing for three days. We didn’t know what was going on.

That’s a horrible situation to go through. Was that when you were just like, “I need to stop touring”?

DROZD: Yeah. It was at the end of that run. I actually went to treatment for drinking after that happened. I came home, and I went to treatment for a couple of months. Got out of treatment, and then I relapsed around the holidays. And then I went back to treatment, and then Wayne just stopped communicating with me then. So the way it ended is really sad because it didn’t have to end that way. I went back to treatment, and he just stopped communicating with me. I haven’t heard from him since January 3, 2025. That’s been weird, you know.

That is very sad. You and Wayne had a close musical partnership for 33 years. I know you’ve been pretty public about your experiences with addiction and drug issues in the past…

DROZD: Yeah. I have to consider my family. I try to be honest, but I can’t be too brutally honest because it’s just too much for my family, you know what I mean?

I understand. So, 2025 is when the Flaming Lips were on tour and you were not on tour with them. You were just kinda doing your own thing.

DROZD: Yeah, so what happened was, I went back to treatment and like I said, Wayne didn’t communicate with me. They decided to go ahead and do some shows in Australia without me. And they found a person to play my parts and make that a show together. I think it went well enough where they thought, “Well, Steven’s not here with us now and maybe he’s not coming back.”

But no one really told me anything forever. I just assumed that maybe after some time that Wayne and I would communicate again. But that didn’t happen. So, by the summer of last year — summer going into fall — I knew. Between you and me, I knew it was over and that was it and I just wasn’t gonna be back in the Flaming Lips and I kinda accepted it. And just been working on my own stuff and accepting that’s my new reality. It has been hard in a lot of ways, though. It’s weird not being on the road. I’m glad I’m not on the road. But it’s still weird not being on the road. I’m just so used to it.

I’ve noticed a shift that’s happened in the Flaming Lips over the past five years. It feels like Wayne has kinda steered the band towards being more of a nostalgia act, with all the Yoshimi 20th anniversary shows. It’s been quite a while since the Lips put out a new album. I think it was 2020 that American Head came out?

DROZD: Yeah. That was supposed to come out in June of 2020. I think it ended up coming out in September.

So it’s been five and a half years. That’s a pretty significant span of time since the last album. It just seems like the Lips are more of a touring attraction rather than a band that’s putting out new material and evolving. Was that something you had noticed?

DROZD: I do know that they’re working on new stuff. I’m not exactly sure what state it’s in or how far along they are. But I do know they’re working on stuff because a friend of mine is actually working with Wayne. A guy who runs a studio here in Oklahoma City — he’s great. So I know they’re doing new music. But I think right now they’re just focused on, like, “How much touring can we do while people will care about this show?” As far as a new album, I can’t really say.

Were you all in on doing the Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots 20th anniversary tour stuff?

DROZD: It’s fun sometimes, but after a while it got to be kind of a grind, you know. You’re doing this show and you know the show really well, so you can do the show and not have to think about it too much. But it’s not as fun as doing a different set every night, by any means.

When I first fell in love with the Lips 20 years ago, the exciting thing was that there was always something new. There was always new material that was exciting. There was always a new album on the horizon, and it was always gonna be very different from the last album. That was part of what attracted me to the band.

DROZD: Yeah. Well, things change over time. Nothing can stay the same. So whatever it is now, it’ll change from what it is now. It is weird for me. I haven’t really talked to a lot of people about any of this, really. So it is strange to be talking about the Flaming Lips in the past tense for me. But that’s where we are.

I mean, it’s weird for me, too. A lot of fans, myself included, regarded you as the musical heart and soul of the group for many years. Especially after Ronald Jones left and you expanded to other instruments besides drums. You took such an enormous role in the band and you orchestrated so much of the incredible music on The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi .

DROZD: Yeah…

You were a huge part of the Lips for so many years. So it’s a big deal that you’re not in the band anymore.

DROZD: Yeah, it really is. I guess my ego told me it would be an even bigger fracture than it was. But it feels like people are just kinda moving on. And you know, what can you do? I just have to say that I’m working on my own new music and hoping to have a record out in the fall. I was saying summer, but now summer doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen. I got like four or five songs now, and I’m just working away, trying to get together a whole record. As much as people care about a new album by anybody, I hope there’s people that care to hear what I’m doing.

I think a lot of Flaming Lips fans have been waiting a long time wondering what a Steven Drozd solo album would sound like. This is your first solo album under your own name?

DROZD: Yeah. I did a soundtrack called The Heart Is A Drum Machine for a documentary — this was a long time ago — but I did original music for that. As far as my own official record that I’m claiming to be my own record, this will be the first one, yes.

How does that feel?

DROZD: I’m excited about it. I think a lot of people will think it just sounds like the Flaming Lips, probably. Because all the shit that I did in the Flaming Lips, that’s just me, you know what I mean? I would say it’s like psychedelic pop music. It’s like Flaming Lips music, except I’m singing all of it.

And you’re producing it yourself and playing every instrument yourself?

DROZD: Yeah. I’m working with a friend of mine down in Norman, Oklahoma, at Trent Bell Labs. I’m playing all the instruments and doing all the singing and writing all the stuff. It’s all me, so it’ll be just me. I might try to get a couple of guest vocals on a couple of things. Talking to Micah Nelson — he’s gonna do a cover of a Willie Nelson song with me. We’re trading tracks back and forth. I put out a couple of covers over a couple of months. I did a Codeine cover on New Year’s that I released. And then I did a cover of “Let There Be Rock” by AC/DC. I’m not sure if you’re aware of any of that stuff.

I’ve seen little snippets of music that you’ve posted on Instagram. It always sounds very intriguing. It’s always like a little tease of what’s to come.

DROZD: Yeah, the idea is to get people interested. I’m really terrible with Instagram. I’m trying to get better. But even in the next week or two, I’m trying to post some more content that’s actually some original music that I’m doing. More than, like, just five seconds. I don’t have a label yet. I know people are interested. I know there’s a few labels I can talk to. People are asking me, “Are you gonna tour?” My head’s not there yet. I can imagine getting a band together. I know there’s some people that would be interested in playing live music with me. But I don’t know exactly if I’m ready to jump into that part of music again.

Do you have songs that you wrote when you were in the Lips that feel like they’re more suitable to your solo record that you were saving?

DROZD: No. I mean, anything I ever wrote for the Lips, I wrote for the Lips. A song like “Race For The Prize” — that took me like five tries before Wayne was interested in that. Usually I ended up, at some point, selling Wayne on whatever idea it was that I had, you know what I mean? So I don’t have any leftover material…

What was different about the fifth try versus the first four?

DROZD: Well, the first try, it sounded like Dinosaur Jr.

Really? Like a specific Dinosaur Jr. song? Or just them in general?

DROZD: Just the J Mascis “wah” sound [ imitates high-pitched guitar noise: waaaaaaaaooooooohhhh ]. I can hear them doing a cover of it. That was my first version. And then the second version, I think at one point he said it sounded like a car commercial. So I had to keep trying. The demo I did, where the one part was really heavy, big drums and distorted strings and the next part was like the car commercial part, I think finally he saw some appeal and he started getting involve

_Originally reported by [Stereogum](https://stereogum.com/2497927/its-strange-to-be-talking-about-the-flaming-lips-in-the-past-tense-an-interview-with-steven-drozd/interviews/qa/)._