Wayne Coyne Regrets Beef With Arcade Fire

Posted on Jun 25th 2009 5:00PM by Steve Baltin
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One of the great things about Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne is his candor. But after his recent public disagreement with Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler, Coyne is trying to learn his lesson. "I wouldn't want to even speculate or talk about the people who are just horrible humans in general. There are plenty of them out there, sure. [But] I don't want to get in any trouble," he tells Spinner.

Coyne feels very bad about the public war of words. "I'm not saying I was taken out of context, [but] the things I said about the Arcade Fire I never said them in a sort of statement that everybody should take serious," he says. "And I really do regret that it got so blown out of proportion. I almost thought it was started by us as a joke in a way. I went, 'What is this?' It was just a dumb comment."

Has he spoken to them since the beef? "No, but again, I didn't give it that much weight that anything should even be said," he says. "To me, everybody gets blogged about a hundred million times a day [and] anything that has to do with gossip and fighting always hangs around a lot longer than good optimistic stories do. I know I told people I like the Arcade Fire's music. I like their first one more than their second one. They're great, and I hope they have fun."

Sadly, Coyne may be right that the negative always gets a lot more play than positive stories, but when Coyne talked with us for a Spinner Interview he spoke about some of those artists that have been the most inspiring to him personally and there are some pretty big names he's gotten to hang with. "We did a thing with the Who, Pearl Jam, Tenacious D last summer, this Who tribute at Pauley Pavilion. That was wonderful," he says. "If you're lucky, you gravitate towards people who go about their day the same way you do. When you're around people like Eddie Vedder and Pete Townshend, you see they're not insecure, they find it very easy to be a normal person."

Read Full Wayne Coyne Interview