blink-182 Through The Years: In Their Own Words

You think you know blink-182? Think again. If you’ve been paying attention in-between the many years of ups, downs, dramas and dick jokes, this is a band who have always had a lot more to them than they’ve possibly ever really been credited with. It might have something to do with that song about the dog.

Here, courtesy of the Kerrang! archives are a selection of some of their more memorable insights and, well, silly moments.

“It’s like we’re the same person in two different bodies”

“Mark is one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but sometimes he’s too intelligent for his own good and he will over analyse stuff.”

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“If my 1995 self could meet me now, he’d tell me to have more fun, to loosen up a bit. I take things too seriously now, I over analyse things and think about stuff too much. In 1995 I just wanted to jump around and play music as fast as possible.”

“It seems like the punk genre is something that some bands are trying to break out of. We’ve been around long enough and have met all of our peers, and we feel like we’ve contributed something to the scene. We don’t feel like we have to prove anything to anybody.”

“I think my outward rebellion happened when I was younger. I really embraced the goth thing at high school. I grew up in the middle of the desert, and the only music people would hear would be totally mainstream, so if you listened to anything else you were considered a freak. Me and my friends listened to punk rock and goth, and we loved being different. I used to wear black eyeliner to school and have hair like Robert Smith, just wanting to kick against the restrictions of that small town.”

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“We always noticed that when we came over here and we’d say a joke in-between songs that people would instantly get it. We’ve always loved the English sense of humour, growing up with shows like Monty Python. It’s so quick and dry, and sometimes it’s really silly and over the top, and sometimes it’s really sharp and subtle. I love it.”

“I think you guys think blink-182 are a bit cooler than we actually are! In America we have a long history of stupid things we’ve done…”

“People expect all blink songs to be the same. They say to us, ‘How do you guys joke around so much and then be so sincere and write a sad song?’ and we’re like, ‘Don’t you have times when you’re ecstatically happy and you’re glowing and crazy about something, and then have times when you want to wring somebody’s neck or you want to cry?’ That’s normal. We’re just people…”

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“We’ve always been pegged as a band that only sings about adolescence. Sure, it is something that we’re about, and it’s what we do, but at the same time we’ve always been extremely sincere. I have to differ with critics who would pawn us off as a joke band… I always want to point out that we’ve done songs about a family breaking up, or a girl breaking your hear and tearing it in two.”

“Our old drummer (Scott Raynor) was just as quiet as Travis is and since Mark and I suffer from diarrhoea of the mouth, we would always try to crack him and ourselves up. Then we started mouthing off when we did shows, which was fine since it was only our friends who were there – just being really stupid.”

“They had to stage an intervention one time. I was talking about fucking dead people or something, and I think I took it too far. Our own people would come up to us after the show and say, ‘Okay, you guys really shouldn’t be talking about what you were talking about tonight…”

“I asked a girl out on a date, but she told me she was sick. So I dressed up like Santa and went to her hour to deliver a ‘get well’ card and flowers. Her dad answered the door and said that she wasn’t sick, she had just gone out with her friends. So I’m standing there in this Santa outfit thinking, ‘You fucker!’”

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“I sometimes find it scary when I think about how big a machine this band has become. It’s good to forget about it when we’re at home with our families, but when Mark and I sat down to watch some videos of ourselves on tour, it was amazing to see just how many people came to those shows.”

“Instead of being the old punk rock dudes, we’ll be the sexier, not-as-awkward-with-our-bodies punk rock dudes.”

“The only thing I’m worried about is writing the same record over and over again. There’s a lot of stuff that you can’t control about the music industry, it’s just the nature of the business. Things go in cycles, and there are times when certain genres are more in vogue and better selling than others.”

“Any kind of bacteria up there, means there’s life everywhere. There obviously is, man. Fuck, we’re so dumb if we think we’re the only thing ever. I wonder what the Egyptians knew when they got buried and they had tunnels pointing up to the stars. I wonder if that’s sending your spirit up there.”

“I want to die by orgasm. Like, the biggest orgasm you’ve ever had and you just explode. That’d be an embarrassing way to die, though. If you’re having an orgasm you always have something in your butt…”

“Every city seems over-populated and dirty, and I find myself wondering more and more where the people are who are going to take care of this place. Everyone all over the world wants a good life, but somehow there’s always a war and there are dead animals everywhere. I wonder when we’re going to have a perfect utopia again. I wonder how the world is even going to last another hundred years. That’s what scares me.”

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“There’s no part of me that ever wanted to say, ‘That’s a wrap, then.’ I feel like we have more to say and do. I love this band and all I’ve ever wanted to do is play in blink-182 and play music with my friends and have fun. I count myself lucky to have been doing it for as long as I have.”

“The fun is what I love, that’s what I need from blink. It’s about angst, energy release, and the troubles in your life, hanging out with your friends. We could have easily ridden off into the sunset on what we’ve done before. Neither Travis or me wanted that. I love this band.”

“He’s a very handsome, very kind guy; fucking hilarious beyond words and very, very bright.”

“He was the first and only person we talked to [about filling in the spot vacated by Tom DeLonge]. He’s a great friend, a great bandmate, a great songwriter, a great singer.”

“I’m an electrical storm. My friends would say, ‘He practices like he’s a Zen person, but he’s a fucking maniac.’ That’s why I need that quiet and calm, because it’s a mess upstairs. For me, songwriting, recording, going for a drive, or going for a walk is a form of meditation. Travis and me are kindred spirits in that. I think I’m probably a bit more OCD and ADD than Travis. Twenty minutes of meditation is the same as eight hours of sleep. It brings me calm.”

“It’s like finding a pot of fucking gold twice. It’s a special family thing that I didn’t think I would find two times in this lifetime. And bands are like marriages, they’re tricky, they don’t always work. To be in both is such a blessing.”

“I’m not a Buddhist, I don’t do yoga, I don’t meditate, but I zone out up there on stage. It’s like meditation. I don’t know what my body’s doing at all. If I started to think about, I’d probably fuck shit up.”

“To me, punk rock is about doing what you want to do in your heart and not worrying what other people think about you.”

“By next year [2002] we’ll be known as one of the greatest bands of all time throughout the universe. People will say, ‘The Beatles? Yeah, they were rad but blink? Oh my God, those guys really spoke to a generation and really lead the youth!’ Or maybe we’ll be remembered as the band who sung about fucking dogs. Only history will tell.”

All quotes sourced from Kerrang! Archives