Just last week, Flaming Lips drummer Kliph Scurlock took to the media, claiming he was fired from the group because he expressed outrage over frontman Wayne Coyne’s support of Christina Fallin, the daughter of Oklahoma’s governor who posted an Instagram selfie wearing a Native American headdress. Scurlock also claimed Coyne subjected him to a string of “endless verbal (with threats of physical) abuse,” something that would certainly seem contradictory to Coyne’s laid-back persona.
Now Coyne has responded to Scurlock’s claims, telling Rolling Stone that his former drummer is a “hateful” person and a “compulsive pathological liar.” He also says that Scurlock’s account of what led to his firing is inaccurate, claiming that the group had “struggled” with the drummer for years. Coyne adds that he wouldn’t even say Scurlock was fired, per se. “The only thing that we would have to say about Kliph leaving is that he just was not very significant to us,” Coyne says. “He just doesn’t play drums with us anymore—that’s the way I’d put it.”
Coyne adds that Scurlock’s negativity played a large part in his not playing drums with them anymore, relating how Scurlock would often say positive things to the bands the Lips played with, then go online and say things like, “These people are a bunch of fakes. They suck.” Those comments drew undue and negative attention toward the group—and it all came to head when he went after Fallin. “He’s an asshole bully who thinks he can just call someone a ‘cunt’ on Twitter and on Facebook and think he’s changing the world,” Coyne says. “And I’m like, ‘Hey dude, that’s our friend. Why are you doing that? Why are you just being a typical cowardly Internet hater?’”
Coyne also further defends Fallin, saying “she’s young” and “trying to feel her way through social media.” Nevertheless, he apologizes to anyone who feels like he “wrongly stepped on anybody’s sacredness” by posting photos of his friends or a dog (whom Coyne calls a “famous Instagram dog”) in a Native American headdress. “I understand now that if I’m a spokesperson for any kind of behavior, I shouldn’t have done it, and I regret doing it now,” Coyne says. “I am sorry. I realize now that it goes deeply to the heart of some Native Americans. And I definitely regret it.”