Flaming Lips Frontman Speaks Out for Obama, Yard Work

Posted on Nov 4th 2008 2:00PM by Benjy Eisen

When Spinner caught up with Flaming Lips' frontman Wayne Coyne recently to discuss all things Lips, we asked him his thoughts on the presidential election. An outspoken foe of the Bush administration, Coyne is decidedly voting for Barack Obama. No surprise there. Always the loquacious spokesperson, Coyne then delivered the following monologue:

"Let's say the worst thing in the world happens and Obama doesn't win. Well, on a local level, on my level that I'm working with here in Oklahoma City, I still have high hopes that my senator that lives in my district wins, even if we don't win the bigger election. These little elections, I tell people all the time, have more influence on your life than the presidential election. And you can never give up. You can never say, 'I don't care anymore' because someone is going to care, so either you care or they care. In my case, I hope that Obama wins. And I hope that my senator, my guy from my area, has more say in what goes on, not just in Washington, but in my own little neighborhood here.

"With that being said, if you give these politicians all the power, they'll have all the power. Whereas you really have the power to change things in your community, regardless of who the f---ing president is. And, you know, we all get caught up in 'What are the issues?' but sometimes those aren't really the issues that matter in your neighborhood. You do have to live for your own little part of the world and if everybody lived for their own little part of the world, there wouldn't be any place in the world that needed this giant hand of government to change it.

"So let's vote for Obama because he's a cool guy, and let's f---ing keep working in our own little communities because that's what we have to do. It doesn't matter who the president is. We all have to work in our own little backyard. That would be my statement."

Knowing Coyne, he does indeed do lots of work in his own little backyard. We just can't imagine what it might look like -- space bubbles and Christmas trees and torches, oh my!