Just when you thought The Flaming Lips were going to deliver “just” another jaw-dropping spectacle/drug-free trippathon/joyous celebration of life itself, they go one million better.
“We’re not the White Stripes,” frontman Wayne Coyne explains helpfully to late arrivers and slow learners – the 20-odd dancers in animal suits, two giant jigging suns, skyful of balloons and general air of benevolent chaos on the smoke-and-glitter-strewn Main Stage having indicated as much already. But tonight, everything is absolutely in honour of the bi-coloured boy – and “everything” means everything, from the red and white T-shirts all the animals are wearing (hee!) to their blazing, siren-and-loudhailer-assisted cover of ‘Seven Nation Army’ (wow!) to their new tune, ‘Thank You Jack White For This Fiber Optic Jesus That You Gave Me’ (based, as explained earnestly by Wayne in technicolour detail, on a true story), to a massive, crazy ‘Happy Birthday’ for Jack (“Now, let’s all sing this with all the passion that such a beautiful song deserves”).
Well, not all of tonight is about Jack and Meg: some of it is just about pure, untrammelled joy. Wayne, we learn, has arranged with Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree – playing audibly loudly across the field on the Upstage – that the Spree will stop their gig long enough for all of us, and all of them, and all of the people in their tent, to have a big end-of-the-festival singalong – of ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’. Sadly, it’s rather crap (our fault, not theirs). But their set closer – a rendition of ‘Do You Realize??’ so overwhelmingly life-affirming you’re this close to having a lump in your throat – is given the mind-meltingly gargantuan visual accompaniment of Wayne mechanically inflating a twelve-foot red balloon, as drums roll breath-holdingly beneath, until it explodes in a shower of confetti.
“I know we could never replace Jack and Meg,” apologises Wayne for the fourth time, “but thanks, you guys, for playing along with us tonight.” Are you kidding? Thanks for the gig of a lifetime.