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And Finally Artist News
Wayne Coyne hits back at “hateful” former Flaming Lips drummer
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 12 May 2014
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has labelled his band’s former drummer Kliph Spurlock a “hateful person” and “compulsive pathological liar” in response to Spurlock’s account of his departure from the outfit, recently published by Pitchfork.
Spurlock claimed that he had been fired from the band back in March because he had taken a stand against what he saw as a racist Facebook post by a friend of Coyne’s, Christina Fallin, in which she wore a Native American headdress.
He told Pitchfork that Coyne sent him a series of angry text messages about the incident, but that he had assumed it would blow over, as he had “become used to [Coyne’s] lightning quick temper”. But, he says, the matter escalated to the point where he was fired from the band. He also claimed that a later Instagram post by Coyne featuring a dog wearing a headdress was directly intended to mock him.
However, fellow Flaming Lips member Steven Drozd then denied that any of this had anything to do with Spurlock leaving the band, blaming instead “the usual band musical differences”.
Meanwhile in an interview with Rolling Stone last week, Coyne said: “The only thing that we would have to say about Kliph leaving is that he just was not very significant to us. And all the things he’s saying about the reason he was fired, it’s all just made-up lies. He knows we struggled with him for years and it didn’t occur to us that it seemed that significant. I don’t even use the word ‘fired’. He just doesn’t play drums with us anymore – that’s the way I’d put it”.
Addressing the situation with Fallin directly, Coyne said: “The reason that it’s connected to the Fallin thing, it’s like, ‘If you’re going to be that hateful, you can’t be associated with the Flaming Lips’. And that was one of a thousand things that he would go on his Twitter or Instagram or the fake ones that he’s created … But Christina is our friend. She’s young, and she’s trying to feel her way through social media and I don’t think she’s very good at it. And Kliph is an online bully”.
You can read Spurlock’s original statement to Pitchfork in full here, and Coyne Rolling Stone interview here.
