The public discussion between Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne and former drummer Kliph Scurlock’s continues as the singer gets back to Scurlock after making public that he was fired for standing up to racist comments.
Long time Lips’ drummer Kliph Scurlock left the band on March, no explanations were given until Scurlock made public that he was fired from the band after criticizing Oklahoma’s governor daughter Christina Fallin (Coyne’s close friend) for what he believed were racist behaviors. On March she posted on instagram a picture of her wearing a Native American headdress which wasn’t well received by the general public and Scurlock.
The story keeps developing as now the frontman gave his side of the story on a recent interview with Rolling Stone. Coyne calls the drummer a “compulsive pathological liar” to which the singer added.
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.
Regarding that, he made public that Scurlock leaving the band was a decision based mainly on musical reasons. He said “as time went on, he got to be a lazier and more close-minded musician”. Personal differences are clear too:
Anybody who knows him knows what kind of a hateful person he is. I mean, anybody that looks at his stuff could see that most of the bands that we would play with, he despised them. To their face, he would say, “You guys were great” and then 20 minutes later he’d get online and say, “These people are a bunch of fakes. They suck.” That would be almost every band we ever played with. The more that time went on, people would pay more attention to him because of his connection to the Flaming Lips.
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. That’s what he would do all the time. We would play a show with some bands and the next day, he would say how stupid they are and how much they suck. But after the Christina thing, people brought it to my attention, and it’s like, “Dude, he says bad shit about all of our friends”
Coyne also addressed the future of the band; he talked about how they are planing to replace Kliph with two drummers and how they’re moving forward to focus on unfinished projects and new music. “I don’t even like talking about our ex-drummer, because it just uses up this space that we could be talking bout this cool shit we’re doing with Sean Lennon and My Morning Jacket and Miley [Cyrus], and I don’t want any of that tainted.”
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