For the foreseeable future, Tom is done,’” Mark said at the time about his former bandmate.
“Every single thing that we’ve heard from his camp - from e-mails from his manager to our production team - was, ‘Tom is out indefinitely. In 2015, Travis and Mark slammed Tom during an interview with Rolling Stone, pointing to him as the cause of their rocky split. The group reunited from 2009 to 2014 for reunion tours, but it was reportedly contentious between the members. The trio released Enema of the State, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket and Blink-182 before announcing an “indefinite hiatus” in February 2005. He reportedly learned the entire 20-song setlist in just 45 minutes. After Scott left the band in 1998, the California native joined full-time in July of that year. Travis met the rest of the guys as the drummer for The Aquabats, who were on tour with Blink-182 in their early days.
Their second album, 1997’s Dude Ranch, went platinum with famous singles like “Dammit” and “Josie.” In 1995, they released their debut album, Cheshire Cat, and began their first national tour. The band came together when Tom entered a high school Battle of the Bands competition outside of San Diego, where he met drummer Scott Raynor and musician Kerry Key.įunny enough, Kerry’s girlfriend at the time was Anne Hoppus, who introduced her brother, Mark, to the crew. The streaking music video (featuring porn actress/ Enema cover star Janine Lindemulder) is arguably the most iconic in all of pop-punk, and has been endlessly parodied – twice by the band themselves for the aforementioned Man Overboard and She's Out Of Her Mind.Hollywood's 'It' Couple! Kourtney and Travis' Cutest Photos So FarĪs fans know, Travis wasn’t originally in the group. And as us fans have grown up with the music we've come to understand that revisiting them is as satisfying – and even more poignant – a form of rock escapism as ploughing through battlefields alongside Iron Maiden or tearing up the Sunset Strip with Guns N' Roses. These guys understand that you don't truly appreciate the comedy, tragedy and low-key beauty of your teenage years until they're behind you. For many, the idea of men in their late-twenties (writing as men in their early 20s) continuing to fixate on high school hijinks and the flutters of first romance seemed strange, if not a little sad. Less a song title than a tongue-in-cheek mission statement, What's My Age Again? found the band bravely facing up to the question of whether they might be getting too old for this sophomoric shit – then flicking a punkish two-fingered salute and carrying on regardless. We’ve done our best, however, to provide a comprehensive overview of the finest milestones on blink’s ever-onward path… With such shifting tones – both sonically and philosophically – different fans from contrasting eras will surely have their own opinions on which sorts of songs belong on a list like this. Bassist/vocalist Mark Hoppus, however, remains a rocksteady constant.ĭig into their eight albums (nine if, like the band, you wish to count 1994’s Buddha demo), however, and you’ll find an artistic evolution drawn out over three decades that few others in rock can match. Original drummer Scott Raynor was replaced by the untouchable Travis Barker in 1998, while once-irreplaceable guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge has been swapped out for Alkaline Trio mainman Matt Skiba for their last two LPs. However, Blink 182 took a departure from other punk bands, primarily politicalminded acts like Rancid or Green Day. Maybe it’s that their stop-start output, numerous side-projects and the changing faces of their line-up have undermined their monumental significance as pop-punk figureheads in some fans’ minds. Perhaps it’s an impression informed by the throwaway façade of their early years (an endless barrage of toilet humour fronting, as it does for so many young men, the well of more complex emotion within) having been mistaken for genuine numbskullery. Even almost two decades since the undeniable artistic watershed of their Untitled LP, there remains a strange consensus amongst many fans that there’s something insubstantial about blink-182’s body of work.