Exclusive: Wayne Coyne on Teeshirtgate

Coyne, bloodied by unbowed: "Then, I double-checked and I was like ‘You've really gotta be kidding.'"

By Fred Mills

Coming tomorrow at BLURT: an exclusive interview with Flaming Lips mainman Wayne Coyne in which he discusses the flap that ensued this week around Lips song "Do You Realize?" being selected, then rejected, then ultimately reinstated by Oklahoma governor Brad Henry as his state's official State Rock Song.

By now everyone has heard about what went down:  The Lips had been selected for the honor following their topping an online vote last year sponsored by the Oklahoma History Center and the Oklahoma Film and Music Office. But after the Oklahoma Senate voted last month 46-0 on a resolution honoring the song, last Thursday the House voted 48-39, thereby making it fall short by three votes - this in the wake of some rather silly complaints by a few lawmakers concerning how the Lips' Michael Ivins had worn a hammer-and-sickle teeshirt to the House and the way Coyne used so-called "foul language."

Right. Nobody should use foul language. Like, what the fuck?

Then the governor, presumably sane and sober, stepped in and declared he would sign an executive order naming "Do You Realize?" as the Official State Rock Song (and nicely putting the Lips in the rarified company of Woody Guthrie and Bob Wills, whose "Oklahoma Hills" and "Faded Love" are, respectively, the official State Folk Song and State Country & Western Song. Gov. Henry signed the order on Tuesday, April 28, at the Oklahoma History Center near the capitol, in a ceremony attended by about 300 people. (Ivins, incidentally, wore a "Ghostbusters" teeshirt.)

One fun tidbit: in the middle of all this, a popular Oklahoma-based liberal blog, The Lost Ogle, published photos taken back in early March of the Lips posing with Oklahoma senators and representatives - including some who ultimately voted against them in the House. Note that Ivins is wearing the hammer and sickle tee in the photo, but apparently nobody had any problems with him at the time, when they were getting a free photo-op out of the deal; the assumption is that some hard-ass top Republican later spotted it and decided to stir up some of the troops.

"Initially," Coyne tells BLURT, "when I was told that they wanted to take it away from us, I thought ‘Well, I can kind of see. We are weirdos and there are a lot of conservative people in the legislature.' But when they said it was the T-shirt, I was like ‘You've gotta be kidding.' Then, I double-checked and I was like ‘You've really gotta be kidding.'"

But with the governor coming to the band's defense, everything is right in the world now, says Coyne. "The governor signed this proclamation making it Flaming Lips Day as well, so at about 3:30 in the afternoon, suddenly, the rest of the day was Flaming Lips Day, which was sort of absurd. I've met the governor a couple other times so it wasn't that weird but it was a big deal. People were quite overjoyed, really, and I think the opposition almost made the comeback that much grander.  Everybody really felt that they were fighting for a much bigger cause, not just their love of the Flaming Lips but this idea that hey, who are the State legislators to take this thing away from us."

You can read the complete Coyne interview tomorrow at BLURT.