Photo: WENN.com
Wayne Coyne has hit back at Flaming Lips' former drummer Kliph Scurlock, calling him a "hateful person", and his accusations "made-up lies."
Scurlock wrote a letter to Pitchfork last week, which claimed he was fired from the band after criticising musician Christina Fallin for wearing a Native American-style headdress. Coyne had publicly defended Fallin at the time, even posting an Instagram picture of his friends and his dog in headdresses.
In his letter, Scurlock claimed that this disagreement over Fallin's headdress photo culiminated in his ejection from the band.
The letter reads: "I put up with endless verbal (with threats of physical) abuse from Wayne because I absolutely loved the music we were making and playing (and also because I love Steven, Michael and Derek.) I turned a blind eye when he pulled several of his (what I onsider to be) tasteless publicity stunts."
Scurlock continued: "I kept my mouth shut when he threw away the track Deerhoof had sent us to work on because he had suddenly decided that song was going to be done with Kesha."
For the record, I never accused @waynecoyne of being racist. Defending a friend's racist actions isn't itself racist. Wayne is not a racist.
— Kliph Scurlock (@KliphScurlock) May 2, 2014
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Coyne has responded to the allegations, saying: "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.
He added: "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. I don't like having any hate go anywhere. I absolutely loved Kliph, but he had a lot of problems with being immature and he would just hate everything."
Coyne also said: "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 he would play with, he despised them."
In the same interview, Coyne apologised for offending Native Americans with his flippant use of their culture, saying "I regret doing it now. I am sorry."
The Flaming Lips' thirteenth album, the Terror, was released in April last year.
