Some latecomers to the Flaming Lips probably primarily associate the Oklahoma eccentrics with the grand psychedelic orch-pop of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, or with their crazy concert spectacles featuring dancing furries, puppets, fake blood, and frontman Wayne Coyne rolling around in a clear plastic Habitrail ball. Younger, more recent fans likely know them from their odd but awesome Dead Petz alliance with Miley Cyrus. However, many longtime Lips followers adamantly hail the more guitar-oriented 1995 album Clouds Taste Metallic as the band’s greatest work.

Those diehard fans are in for a treat – and new fans are in for a serious ‘90s rock history lesson – because that landmark release is getting a deluxe reissue treatment this month, as Heady Nuggs 20 Years After Clouds Taste Metallic 1994-1997. The collection comes out digitally and as a triple-CD set on Nov. 27, with a vinyl version slated for Dec. 18, but you can listen to the entire epic release – all 40 tracks, including rarities, B-sides, and various “ephemera”– exclusively on Yahoo Music now.

“I think we’d all agree that Clouds Taste Metallic was whatever we would call our heyday of being in one way this very punk-rock, very loud rock group, and in another way being very freaky, prog-rock, experimental,” Coyne tells Yahoo Music. “I think that was probably the peak of that. After that, I still think that we made rock music, but we didn’t overly embrace it so obviously anymore.”

 

A major reason for the Lips’ post-Metallic, late-’90s artistic shift was the departure of a key member: elusive, reclusive guitarist Ronald Jones, who joined the group in the early ’90s, left in 1996, and has barely been heard or seen from since.

“I think a lot of [fans’ fondness for Clouds Taste Metallic] has to do with the legendary status and mystery of Ronald Jones. That’s the big masterwork/masterpiece that ended our time with him. And so I think that part of it just forever grows – you know, what happened to him? What is he doing now? What could’ve been? I think that colors it a little bit,” Coyne admits.

Even Coyne isn’t all that sure about what happened to Jones, who left the Lips either due to his severe agoraphobia, fatigue after four years of almost nonstop touring, or band member Steven Drozd’s drug use at the time, depending on which account you believe.

“He recorded with Richard Davies… but he didn’t do very much… I think he made an effort not to be known by anyone that would know him from the Flaming Lips,” says Coyne. “That helped it become secret. The Internet was beginning and it wasn’t like it is now, when f—ing anyone can find something [about someone] out there.

“We don’t really know that much about him or anybody that knows anything. I think he still lives in his house, but I’m not trying to go by there or anything. I think I might, though, as time goes by.”

As for fans that were hoping the Clouds reissue might inspire a reunion with Jones, even for just a one-off show, Coyne says, “If it was at all possible, we would do it for sure. I just don’t think he would want to.” (The Lips did play Clouds in its entirety for the first time ever – sans Jones, of course – at Minneapolis’s First Avenue club this past February.)

Coyne recalls Jones’s time in the group – a time when the Lips were riding the momentum of their 1993 breakthrough single, the 90210-approved alt-rock radio staple “She Don’t Use Jelly” – as troubled. “He would be paranoid and he would be kind of more alone and more not wanting to be interrupted by all this touring, and it’d become more difficult to do stuff working as a group. At the time, I don’t know if we thought of it as being anything other than, ‘What the f—? We’re all struggling here!’ But I think we could see there was some mental break that was overcoming him.

“The dilemma he was having was the attention. You know, the more records we’d do, the more shows we’d play, and then people would want to come up and talk to him. You could see him not liking it. Not not liking it as in ‘F— you,’ but more like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t handle this.’

“Up until then, we were getting little by little, but I think that success sort of jumped it up a bit. We would just be playing and playing and traveling and traveling, and I think that you have to weigh in your mind to make these things enjoyable, otherwise it’s certain torture, you know? And I think Ronald was very much an intense introvert. We were all at the time introverts, really, but I think he was very much an introvert that was not ever wanting to be an extrovert, you know? I was still probably pretty introverted back then, but I would say, ‘Well, we gotta play in front of people, what the f—,’ and we’d start to embrace it. But I don’t think he was ever really able to make that crossover to be the entertainer and just go out there. I don’t think he was ever going to do that.”

The Lips have enjoyed an interesting, mostly underground, and definitely unique career ever since their brief brush with ’90s fame. While it’s questionable if Jones would have wanted to collaborate with Miley Cyrus, it seems his fears that the band was becoming too big and too mainstream were unfounded.

“I think that was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to us – that we went from being obscure weirdos to suddenly this big popular thing, and then back again,” says Coyne. “Hardly anybody gets out of that [unscathed], and I think [the Lips’ success] kind of caused Ronald to leave, or at least accelerated his understanding of what the future might be like.

“We’ve been around lots and lots of rock groups that are having some success, and it’s a very difficult thing to keep all of that together. I think we’ve been really lucky that for us it’s been little by little by little, and it’s not changed our values. We still love being around each other and love to make music and all this stuff, and we love the freedom of not thinking, ‘Oh my God, if we don’t sell 10 million records, what’s going to happen?’ And now we’re doing records with Miley Cyrus. Jesus Christ!”

The full track listing for Heady Nuggs 20 Years After Clouds Taste Metallic 1994-1997 is:

Disc 1: Clouds Taste Metallic

1. The Abandoned Hospital Ship

2. Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles

3. Placebo Headwound

4. This Here Giraffe

5. Brainville

6. Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World

7. When You Smile

8. Kim’s Watermelon Gun

9. They Punctured My Yolk

10. Lightning Strikes the Postman

11. Christmas at the Zoo

12. Evil Will Prevail

13. Bad Days (aurally excited version)

Disc 2: Due to High Expectations the Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles for Your Balloons/ The King Bug Laughs (Oddities and Rarities)

1. Bad Days

2. Jets Part 2 (My Two Days as an Ambulance Driver)

3. Ice Drummer

4. Put the Waterbug in the Policeman’s Ear

5. Chewin’ the Apple of Yer Eye

6. Chosen One

7. Little Drummer Boy

8. Slow Nerve Action

9. It Was a Very Good Year

10. Sun Arise

11. Life on Mars

12. Ballrooms of Mars

13. Hot Day

14. Nobody Told Me

15. Magician Vs. the Headache

16. She Don’t Use Jelly (Live @KJ103)

Disc 3: Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles (Live in Seattle 1996)

1. The Abandoned Hospital Ship

2. Unconsciously Screamin’

3. Take Meta Mars

4. Moth in the Incubator

5. Put the Waterbug in the Policeman’s Ear

6. Lightning Strikes the Postman

7. Bad Days

8. She Don’t Use Jelly

9. Chewin’ the Apple of Yer Eye

10. When You Smile

11. Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles

12. Love Yer Brain

13. Placebo Headwound

This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.