Apple Music’s Zane Lowe joins blink-182 for an exclusive conversation about reuniting to release their highly anticipated new album ‘ONE MORE TIME…’ due out this Friday — the first album to feature the group’s classic lineup of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker since 2011.
In the extensive and emotional conversation, the band opens up about how the reunion started with rekindling friendships, how Mark’s cancer diagnosis restored his faith in humanity, Tom’s decision to leave the band and the spiritual moment that brought him back, why Travis never lost faith in the band, and deciding to do things on their own terms. The trio also reflects on their early beginnings and being united by music, carrying the pop-punk torch, gratitude, what’s next, and why blink-182 is at its best when it’s Mark, Tom, and Travis.
Mark Hoppus on How the blink-182 Reunion Started with Rekindling Friendships…
We came back together as friends and we were talking and texting and hanging out long before we talked about getting back together as a band. It was a while. I think it was always in the back of everyone’s head once we all started connecting again. But when Tom and I started talking, I was sick. So, that’s kind of where it all started, at least as far as me and Tom reconnecting. I mean, Travis and I have been connecting for a long time.
Mark Hoppus on Becoming Closed Off Upon Being Diagnosed with Cancer and Having His Faith Restored in Humanity Following an Outpouring of Support…
I was afraid to accept anybody’s support, really, aside from my closest and dearest. My world shrunk down really small. When I found out that I got sick, I just really brought everything in to a tight-knit close group of people. My wife, my son, my dearest friends. I didn’t say anything online. I thought for sure that the second that people found out that I was sick, that’d be all the haters online being like, “You fucking asshole. You deserve to die.” …the outpouring of love and support and people, random people I thought hated my guts, old people that I’ve been friends with and fallen out with, people that I’ve never met ever, so much love and support. It was really awesome. I wish that I would’ve said it sooner because I think it would’ve helped me through some really awful times, but I was really, restored my faith in humanity and kindness in people.
Tom DeLonge on Leaving The Band, Being Replaced by Matt Skiba, and The Spiritual Moment That Brought Him Back to the Group…
…super honest, number one, I think Matt is epic. I’ve always loved Matt as a songwriter. Alkaline Trio is a fucking great band and he’s a really rad guy, so I was never bummed on it. I really wanted these guys to be happy and be successful. I had a lot of things for myself that I was trying to conquer. A lot of personal stuff going on that I had to get through that was difficult. I had a lot of stuff with the government I was doing that I found myself in these weird oceans that I didn’t know really how to navigate, that I was doing my best. I had other works of art that I wanted to do with film and so on, so I felt really busy. I definitely didn’t want to hold these guys back in any kind of way. I just want to be happy because I still loved them. And like Mark said, I wasn’t sure if we were going to play together again or not. I remember telling my wife now, I told her, “I don’t think I’m ever going to play music again. I’ll keep making records and put them out, whatever.” I literally said, “I don’t think I’m ever going to tour again,” until Mark told me he was sick. And then I was like, that was the only thing I wanted to do. And it’s funny how when those things happen… So sometimes you need these big spiritual moments in your life that really chop you down to ground zero and you rebuild, lose the ego, lose all the weird stuff and go, “Whos the human I want to be? Whos the best version of myself that I can be?” And find the joy and kindness to others, and kindness to yourself. And when we got back together I was like, “Fuck yeah, I want to do this. I do. I do. Nothing seems as important and can we find our way again?”
Tom DeLonge on Friendship, First Learning About Mark’s Cancer Diagnosis, and Making The Creation of New Music The Band’s North Star…
Well, Mark got sick. It was similar when Travis had his accident back in the day. Nothing matters, really. Everything that’s just dumb, peripheral, it’s all petty when you have real human things happen. So, it feels like it’s an instant thing. I feel like there’s a real sense of brotherhood with us. And like any brothers, you have your little spats over the years and you grow apart. You come back together. But you’ve always got a foundation that you’re connected. You’re still inseparable energetically. So sitting with them, I think the friendship is the easy part. Work was always, kind of had its harder parts in some ways, but that wasn’t even hard when we realized someone’s sick. The first thing I wanted to do was work with these guys in both cases where we went apart and came back together. At least for me, it’s just the human part of it is so important to me, and I know it is to them too, but I think once that is front and center, everything else becomes really easy. The issues are never mountains. They’re just pebbles. I remember sitting with Mark at his house and it was just very much like, “You’re sick. We’re going to get you through this and we’re going to make the best music we ever made. Let’s do it. Let’s have a North Star.” I wanted him to have a North Star. I didn’t want him to be, not that it’s up to me, but just, “Hey, I’m here and we’re going to go and kick ass. So let’s just get you through this fucking thing that you’re in right now and let’s get you healed. Let’s move through it and let’s build a better path.”
Mark Hoppus on Thinking blink-182 Would Never Get Back Together, Reuniting, and Deciding To Do Things on Their Own Terms…
I didn’t know that Blink would ever get back together or that I would ever share a stage with Tom. And I told management, I told Travis, I told everybody, I’m like, “I’m not setting foot on stage again with that dude. Not a chance.” That’s the truth. But I’ve always thought Tom was one of the best songwriters in the world and one of my favorite songwriters, but there was a lot of bad blood and there was a lot of stuff in the press and feelings and all this stuff. And then honestly, I got sick… But Tom was always like, “We’re going to get you through this.” And healing through the band, once I was clear of the cancer diagnosis and got the all clear, I was still a fucking hollow, just shell. Shitty, weak brain eaten with the chemotherapy and pain and everything else. And then getting back in the studio to make this record was like learning how to play bass again, learning how to… The chemotherapy wrecked my vocal cords. I had to go to work with a vocal coach. I had to rebuild my throat. I had all this stuff had to rebuild to get to the point where we could go and walk on stage at Coachella and have one of the biggest shows of our career and have this album, which touch wood is one of the best albums we’ve ever written. The thing is, it’s all through the healing of this band and this music and this record and us coming back together. And we sat down the very beginning and we said, “The only way that we’re going to do Blink 182 again is if it’s fucking fun. If we can do it our own way and not have people over our shoulders telling us, ‘You need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this.’ And so really, our mission statement with this whole thing was, imagine if Blink were the fucking Beastie Boys. That’s our call to arms. Would the fucking Beastie Boys do it? Would the Ramones do it? Would any of the bands that we… Would Fugazi do this shit? If we’re not down with it, and if we don’t want to do it, then fuck everybody, we’re going to do it our way. And now, touch wood, it feels like the best time in the band in forever. We own it. It’s our creative vision. It’s us three.
Travis Barker on Never Losing Faith in blink-182…
It was always on for me. There was never a time where I was like, “I don’t want to play with Blink or Mark and Tom.”…it was a no-brainer for me that of course we would do it again. And it was always my first priority and my first love. Music. I always knew that the brotherhood wouldn’t ever deteriorate or wouldn’t be there. It was just a matter of finding the right time for it all to happen. And it’s kind of crazy on the album. One More Time is kind of written about that. It’s written about, why does it take these catastrophes like me being in a plane crash or Mark being sick for our band to get back together?
Mark Hoppus on Why Travis Barker is the X-Factor in blink-182 and How His Role in the Group Has Evolved…
Travis is the X factor in Blink. So the general way that Blink works is Tom and I’ll write some songs. It’s changed over the years. Travis is bringing in a lot of songs that he starts now, but generally in the past, Tom and I would bring in a song and then we’d show it to Travis, I’d show him a drumbeat. I go, ” Maybe it goes like this.” And Travis would go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And then he’d go into the live room and do something completely different that elevates the song to a brand new level. And Tom and I write, Tom calls it nursery rhyme punk, where it’s kind of singalong songs that are really catchy and kind of simple. Travis takes that and makes it intelligent and interesting and does all these different rhythms on top of it. And he’s done that since the first time that we played with him and the first songs we wrote with him. And watching Travis grow from a drummer who is really interested in music into being a drummer whos also a producer and songwriter himself has been awesome.
Tom DeLonge on Not Phoning It In On blink-182’s New Album ‘ONE MORE TIME’…
I hate it when bands feel complacent when they put out records late in their career. You just feel like they’re phoning it in. No one phoned it in on this album. No one did… all that I care about right now is writing something that feels important to me, and it is authentic to my experience and to us, and what I would want to stand on in front of 15,000 people and sing about. I don’t want to waste. I almost fucking lost it all, so I don’t want to put out anything shitty.
Tom DeLonge on Naming the Album ‘ONE MORE TIME’…
That is the sentiment. We talked about it as a band. It’s like naming it that, coming out with these words one more time. It’s like, “Hey, are people going to think we’re just doing this?? No. From us, it’s very much like, “This is the last time we’re going to fuck this up, and we’re going to cherish this and we’re going to nurture it, and we’re going to take care of it, and we’re going to be thankful for it. And we’re going to try and be the best we can be within it.
Tom DeLonge on Finding Mark in Suburbia and Never Growing Up…
…honestly, we were fitting the band in around the nights we weren’t skateboarding. I think rock and roll has a service of being authentic, and I think that pop music is amazing and huge, but I think with rock and roll specifically, it really does its best work when you know who the members are and what they’re about. Because it can change. As a kid, you dress like them, you hang out with people that like them. It’s an identity thing. And I think that we’ve done a pretty good job unashamedly being ourselves. But growing up in suburbia, it still has its troubles, like broken families and heartbreak and not knowing where your life path takes you. But on the off nights, a lot of dick jokes and getting into trouble, breaking laws here and there, fucking with people because you’re bored because nothing to do out there. So we would be up all night long just doing crazy shit. So you have this crazy cultural symbiotic relationship of Southern California. And I always thought it would be a tragedy for us to lose that. And the cool thing is, in a band, you get all this crazy maturity and latitude and scope with business and accountability, whatever, but you don’t have to grow up. You actually get rewarded.
Tom DeLonge on How blink-182 Emerged as a Vehicle For Countering Their Troubled Upbringings…
…what you need to understand about Blink 182, is that we didn’t come out of joyous homes. We didn’t come out of just this crazy, everything’s happy. We came from a lot of heartbreak, broken families and a lot of fistfights, and domestic violence and crazy shit. And so Blink was always a way to force happiness. Play as fast as you can. Have as much edge as you can. And you just attack, you attack and force the happiness in the room. And it was angst. It was pure angst. And I think that the fans that really understand Blink understood that. We just weren’t just writing catchy songs. We were trying to fix and make up for the troubled youth. But that’s what great rock, that’s what great punk rock does. It’s a vehicle for emotion. And that’s the emotion we were trying to force upon ourselves and everyone around us.
Mark Hoppus on “Adam’s Song”…
That was a hard song. That was a song that I wrote when I was really depressed, and that’s a song that’s resonated with me for the rest of my life, and one that I hope to take with me forever. But yeah, I was nervous to show that song to Travis and Tom when I first wrote it, and I thought it was maybe too off kilter with the rest of the record, because the rest of the record is really anthemic and youthful, and go out and let’s have a great time, and here’s this song about feeling really down. And they loved it. They took that idea and made it the song that it is.
Tom DeLonge on His Inclinations To Explore Other Styles of Music Outside of blink-182…
I was curious if I could explore other sides of punk rock without the backstop with these guys. Even though I did end up doing that with Travis for sure, but my intention really was just to discovery. Because I didn’t know if it was going to be big or not. I just wanted to try something new. Now I know Blink can do any kind of music. We literally have big heavy Box Car songs, but we also have slow Adam’s Song type songs. And we have songs that we feel we’re influenced by The Police, or something. Maybe no one else would hear it, but we understand where we get our influences from. So, we really don’t have boundaries in this band. We’ve done a lot of different styles of music. We can put out a full new wave song if we wanted to, and I don’t think anyone’s going to think that’s weird.
Tom DeLonge on Carrying The Pop Punk Torch…
We take a lot of pride in where we came from, and the bands we grew up on, and the scene that we grew up in. I feel a real strong connection to the scene we came out of, and I feel like we’re one of the very few bands holding that flag of a time period where that type of music came out and revolutionized the world in a way. The whole pop punk thing was a beautiful musical movement, and we were so fortunate to be a part of that. And I feel like we’re carrying that torch. I feel a lot of responsibility with that. We grew up with bands like The Descendants and NOFX, Fugazi, and all these fat records, Epitaph and Lookout Records and that stuff was so influential to us… and it changed the way we dressed and what we talked about and what we did on the weekends. And we can’t lose that. It’s in our DNA. We just weren’t so beholden to the rules that some of those bands built for themselves. A lot of those bands built boxes that they really wanted to stay in and they should, if that’s what they felt was right. Travis brought a lot of hip hop, rap influence, street influence to the band. But it made our band better and it made our band not in a box. And Mark and I didn’t give a fuck about, we didn’t even know what selling out meant. We were us. What we do think is that we weren’t beholden to some of those musical boxes those bands were. So we were instantly a little bit different and just did our own thing weren’t the first funny punk rock band. We weren’t the first melodic punk rock band. We were definitely not the first southern California punk rock band. But who knows, there’s a little bit of magic, there’s a little bit of timing, there’s a little bit of skill, there’s a whole lot of luck and it worked out. So we’re just thankful.
blink-182 on Realizing They’re At Their Best When It’s Mark, Tom, and Travis…
Travis Barker: I would talk to Mark and I’d be like, “I really feel like Blink is me, you and Tom. And as soon as we accept that and we just don’t settle for anything less than that, I just think that’s the future.” I love Matt…He’s a great friend. He was so talented, but I was like, “That is truly Blink and we shouldn’t exercise Blink or be out there playing unless it’s us three.”
Mark Hoppus: I wasn’t ready to hear it. And then Tom and I, like I said, I don’t know when we reconnected the second time, but it was just normal. It was over text and there wasn’t any animosity. Tom was very gracious. I was really angry still…. I think that there is still that, and that is what I like about being in this iteration of Blink and Travis is totally right. Blink is the three of us. I feel it when I’m in the studio. I feel it when I listen to the shit. I feel it when I’m on stage more than anything. When it’s the three of us on stage, I feel like unstoppable. I feel like invincible. We could fucking … We crush. We’re having so much fun. I walk out on stage and I see people smiling and it just gives me this … And I’m getting goosebumps thinking about it right now. Just walking out on stage and being there after living through the pandemic, living through cancer, band breaking up, plane crash, all the shit that Blink-182 has been through to get to this point. And I walk on stage and the lights go up and people are smiling and they’re laughing and they’re pointing at stuff to their friends and they’re crying together and they have signs. And Tom makes a joke about aliens and people go bananas. And it’s just so fun and healing and joyous and awesome and all the that I love about being in Blink-182 is happening right now.
Travis Barker on Being Surprised by Wife Kourtney Kardashian’s Pregnancy Announcement While Performing On-Stage with blink…
I didn’t know, so when it happens, I’m like, “Am I supposed to go down there?” And Mark’s like, “Go.” Yeah, it was pretty awesome. I didn’t know what was going on. I rarely get called out of behind my drum kit to go do something. So I was like, “Okay.” It was a beautiful moment. It was honestly weird to go back and finish playing. Yeah, but it was really cool and special.
Mark Hoppus on What He’s Learned Over The Course of 30 Years with blink…
I think that, if anything, over the past 30 years of this band’s career has taught us all, it’s that you have to enjoy the times that we’re together and having a good time, and take these blessings and support one another, and be kind, and don’t take anything for granted and just go out there and be true to ourselves. Every single time that we’ve just put our heads down and done our own thing, and write music that we love, the three of us love, that’s important to us, it has served us well.
blink-182 on Why This Is The Best Version of The Band, Gratitude, and What’s Next…
Tom DeLonge: This is the best version of it, and I think it’s like being in a band with my brothers, and it being healthy and we’re having fun, and we’re making what I consider some of the best songs we’ve made, and playing some of the best shows we’ve ever played. It doesn’t ever feel like work. I feel like that’s the definition of the best thing about Blink-182 right now.
Mark Hoppus: I was like, “Okay, get one more chance at life. You don’t have to work again. What if you had the opportunity to do whatever you wanted in your life? What would you want to do?” I would want to fucking make music with my best friends in the world. I’d want to get up in the morning and be creative, and I’d want to hang out with my family and friends and that’s it. That’s all that I fucking want to do, and that’s all that I get to do. The smiles on people’s faces and the feeling of being in this band are beyond anything. I was just hoping to get better enough that I would get to see my wife and kid, and to walk out on stage, like I said, and see the smiles and the tears and the people singing along. I literally just cry on stage every night, I feel like.
Travis Barker: I think for me, it was always heavy on my heart that our friendship wasn’t mended, and that heaviness weighs on you when you have something that’s important to you in a relationship with somebody and you don’t really fix it, it’s just kind of lingering. Having the ability to come together and fix the friendship and come back together as the brothers we are is so important to me because it allows me to be so insanely grateful for this and how it touches other people now. There isn’t this aura of toxicity that might’ve been in my heart for reasons that weren’t even really valid or maybe somewhere, it doesn’t even fucking matter. All I care about now is now I can really stand within this thing and also look outside of it, and look within, and see what it really is and what it’s doing for people and what it’s done for people. But I wasn’t able to see that when I felt like we weren’t mended as individuals. So I really love that human growth and that path, just spiritually. I just think having that weight off my heart and feeling closer to these guys really makes me able to see what this is and value it so much more and be so honestly happy for what it does for people. I’m just genuinely happy for the personal growth and then being able to see everything in a new light.
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