Loading summary
Transcript25 lines
- [00:00]
Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime. In early 2017, I did a three part series called the Rise and Fall and rise of Blink 182. The goal was to chronicle the band from their very beginning, through all the Troubles with Tom DeLonge and the Return with Matt Skiba in Tom's place. It was an interesting narrative arc and at the time it looked as if this lineup would be the future of the band. Well, no, that's not what happened. Matt replaced Tom. In March 2015, there was an album called California that became the group's second number one album on the Billboard 200 and their first in the UK. There was a single called Bore to Death and it was the biggest thing they'd done in years. The album and the single both went gold, the album was nominated for a Grammy and there was a massive world tour that drew in millions. So fantastic comeback story, right? Smooth sailing after that new lineup. No more problems? Continued superstardom? No, it looked like when those episodes were released, that was the way things were going to be. But that's not how things proceeded. Oh, Blink182 is still doing fine, but there were some, well, twists to this story. In fact, things have changed so much that we gotta look at the situation again. So it is time to catch up with Blink 182. This is the ongoing history of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Blink182 featuring guitarist Matt Skiba with Bored to death from their 2016 album California and was the number one album in Canada, the US and the UK. It was number two in Australia and Austria and it was top 10 in six other countries. So pretty good for a trio who had to swap in a new singer and guitarist to replace the original guy who had been with the band since its inception in 1992. But like I said, this is not the end of the story. In fact, far from it. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and this is a long overdue follow up on a profile of Blink 182 that I started back in 2017. So we gotta get caught up for a recap of those shows, which are radio episodes 773, 774 and 775, and the very first ongoing history podcast episodes we ever released. You'll find those at the very beginning of our podcast feed. If you want to start there. Blink 182 forms in 1992 outside of San Diego. They take the indie route, gets a major label deal and then blows up in the late 90s and early 2000s. There is a great run of albums including Enema of the State in 1999, Take off youf Pants and Jacket in 2001 and a self titled record in 2003. Then comes a period of uncertainty, friction within the band and solo projects. Things got to the point where they couldn't continue and an indefinite hiatus was announced on February 22, 2005. Tom DeLonge and bass player Mark Hoppus did not talk for years. More solo work followed. Bands like Tom's Angels and Airwaves and Mark and Travis's Plus 44. There were TV shows and other projects along with drummer Travis Barker's Near Fatal Plane crash and the sudden death of their longtime producer Jerry Flynn, both in 2008. That shocked everyone back to reality and things got sorted out kind of. And after eight years, Blink released their sixth album, Neighborhoods. Blink 182 was back and all was cool, right? No, the industry had changed greatly in that time. They were apart, fewer albums were being sold, music piracy had taken its toll and streaming was only starting to have an effect. Their label wasn't happy with the performance of neighborhoods and in October 2012 the band was cut loose and forced to go indie. A pretty demoralizing thing. After selling tens of millions of albums in November 2012, they released a quickie EP entitled Dogs Eating Dogs and you can interpret that title however you wish. It was well received. There were more tours, but the old cracks returned. Tom and Mark had their issues and Travis had a fear of flying after his plane crash, making it impossible for him to tour with Blink overseas. It all came to a head in late 2014. The last gig with Tom was at the Wine Amplified Festival in Las Vegas on October 14th. Tom may have quit for one day earlier in the year, but was persuaded to come back in. That, of course, wouldn't last. Work began on a new album in early 2015. They needed something in the marketplace because it had been four years since Neighborhoods. A new record deal was finalized and sessions were booked. But then it all fell apart. Tom insisted on recording his parts at home in San Diego while Mark and Travis worked in la. Tensions built and a week before everyone was supposed to convene in the studio for the final push, Mark and Travis got an email from Tom's manager saying saying that he no longer wanted to participate in Blink 182. He wanted to focus his energies on non musical projects. That's one story. The other says that Tom was presented with a 60 page contract requiring him to concentrate solely on Blink, even at the expense of projects he'd already promised to do and was contractually bound to finish. Whatever the case, Tom quit a second time. Mark and Travis had no plans to kill Blink, so they brought in Matt Skiba from alkaline trio. After three gigs with him starting on March 18, 2015, the first time Mark had ever played in Blink without Tom, it was decided to bring him into the band as an official member. As I said earlier, this arrangement worked brilliantly, and the California album and tour brought the band back to superstardom. There was also time for a few outside projects. Travis Barker seemed willing to collaborate and produce just about anyone, and he would appear in a ton of records over the next seven years. Time Ty Dolla, Sign, Youngblood, the Game, Eminem, Steve Aoki, LL Cool J, Pitbull, Lights, Kenny Hoopla, Machine Gun Kelly, Halsey, Willow Smith, Dirty Heads, and many, many others. He got divorced, got wrapped up with the Kardashians, appeared on more TV shows, and got into a bad car accident where his SUV collided with a school bus. But don't worry, he wasn't injured. Meanwhile, Mark worked on his clothing line, which is called hi, My Name Is Mark. He spent a couple of years playing occasional DJ sets at a club that held a regular emo night. He did some TV and eventually got into podcasting with a show called After School Radio, and he did charity work for a children's hospital in Los Angeles. All right, back to music. There were Blink collaborations with Lil Wayne, Lil Nas, X, the Chainsmokers, Paofu and others. And Mark had a solo project called Simple Creatures with Alex Gaskarth of the band All Time Low. And I think that pretty much brings us up to date where we left off at the end of the last episode in 2017. And now we can start on what has happened since. First, though, let's hear another song from the California album, this is Home is such a Lonely Place. It's a single from the spring of 2017.
- [07:13]
Mark Hoppus
I love the lightning but hate the rain Tomorrow's frightening but not today Wish I could slow down time
- [07:25]
Matt Skiba
but not
- [07:25]
Mark Hoppus
enough slow you down
- [07:30]
Alan Cross
all right. The California album is Blink 182's biggest hit in a couple of decades. Another Matt Skiba era album would follow. But let's talk about Tom DeLonge first. His new passion was UFO research and his company to the stars, Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the books he was co writing on the subject were his thing. There were two children's books called the Lonely Astronaut on Christmas Eve and who Here Knows who Took My Clothes. There were also some short films and a series of rather compelling sci fi novels under the heading of Secret Machines. And they're actually pretty good. There were a couple of fiction and non fiction books. If you want to dive deep into everything to do with the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon situation, I highly recommend them. But Tom wasn't out of music entirely. He released a solo album entitled to the Stars. Demos, odds and ends. There were two angels and airwaves, EPs, some tours, and eventually an album called Lifeforms. And that record was announced in an interesting way. A renewable capsule filled with hydrogen was launched into space and as it was launched, it played a little bit of the album's opening track,
- [08:42]
Matt Skiba
hey there little sad girl, I really wanna hold ya. Your heart is like a time bomb and it's gon.
- [08:54]
Alan Cross
That's Time Bomb from the Angels and Airwaves album Lifeforms, which came out in 2021 when Tom was still estranged from Mark and Travis in Blink 182. Now let's swerve back to Blink. There was still a journey before things would get patched up, as Tom DeLonge was off chasing UFOs and writing books and recording his own music and making short films. Blink 182 continued, with guitarist Matt Skiba taking Tom's place. The success of the California album reinvigorated everyone. Would there be another record? Absolutely. So after the California tour, the band worked on new music. They first entered the studio in June 2019 and over the next 13 months created an album that they called Nine. But hold up though. Mark was struggling with depression during this time and it was bad, his wife was very concerned for his well being and encouraged him to do more things that made him happier. That's how the Simple Creatures project with Alex Gathcarth of All Time Low came together. If we're going to be comprehensive about this, we should probably play at least one song from them. This is from 2019 and it's called Drug.
- [10:02]
Matt Skiba
You Got me going round in circles in my head the signals that we send Electric confidence Plus we puppet
- [10:19]
Alan Cross
Simple Creatures, Mark Hoppus side project born out of an attempt to break out of depression in 2018. Alright, now back to Blink 9 was released on September 20, 2019 and it was their ninth studio album, right? Well, no, it was their eighth. So why nine? Because Mark counted Buddha, a 1994 album recorded before the name change from Blink to Blink 182. Over some legal thing with a band in Ireland. That was his side of the story and he stuck to it. Nine is the number of Universal Love, he said. And nine is the number of Uranus, which I don't understand since Uranus is the seventh planet and if you consult numerology, Mars is actually the planet associated with the number nine. But we'll just leave this alone. Nine features 15 songs, most of which seem to have been constructed around rhythms created by Travis, which, since Travis was so big into hip hop, gave the album a different sort of flavor. There were also loops and electronics, which was something that was largely new to Blink sound. Collaborators included Miley Cyrus and Pharrell Williams. There were more co writers and more producers, and the goal was to really swing for the fences, to have a cross format hit. They really wanted another top 40 hit, but the lyrics were darker, largely because of Mark's depression issues. Here's a quote. My brain naturally goes in cycles to dark places and I have to actively combat that. I wake up and look at Twitter, I get angry and I start my day. It's unhealthy to live with this level of anger. I have to consciously make an effort not to look at the news a lot of the time and just say every single day there's going to be some new outrage. And a lot of the time it's just not worth my time. The way everything is wired now, between news, Twitter and social media, everything spins so quickly that there's no time to take a breath. I think we can all relate. Mark was also consumed with the news of mass shootings across the U.S. especially after a shooting that happened about two miles from Travis's house. He was also angry with the policies of Donald Trump, and Mark wasn't exactly sober at this time. Same thing with Matt Skiba. But despite these difficulties, the album got excellent reviews. Fans loved it too. It reached number three on the American top 200 and was a top 10 rock album in Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany and Austria. And here's the lead single. This is called Blame It On My Youth. Blame It on my youth from Blink 182's Nine album. The record might have done better and they might have had that top 40 hit that they were chasing had the world not shut down for COVID 19 in March of 2020. A big tour had been planned, but that of course was canceled. Blink's last show before everything hit the Fan was in Los Angeles on January 18, 2020, and that also turned out to be the last show with Matt Skiba. Blink Tried to counter the situation, or at least captured the doom of it all with a song called Quarantine. What's interesting about this Track, released on August 7, 2020, well into lockdown, is that it only features Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker. Matt was nowhere to be seen or heard. Interesting. What did that mean?
- [13:52]
Matt Skiba
It'll disappear in April just like a miracle we don't need social distance we don't need help people so throw the shoppers open Save our economy we don't need ICU beds so PPE businesses.
- [14:07]
Alan Cross
As 2020 wore on, blink was caught in the COVID vortex like everybody else. There was nothing much they could do. And then in June 2021, just as all the lockdown measures were starting to ease up, Mark noticed something wrong with his shoulder. There was a weird knot that wouldn't seem to go away. Massage didn't work. Anti inflammatories didn't work. And it wasn't a knot, it was a lump. And that was bad news. More in a moment. In the summer of 2021, Mark Hoppus grew increasingly concerned about a lump on his shoulder. It was time to visit a doctor and then a specialist, and he quickly got a diagnosis. It was something called large B cell lymphoma. This is a fast growing type of cancer. It was the same cancer his mother had, and Marks was stage four. The good news is that Mark's mom, a very tough lady, beat cancer not once, not twice, but three times. Twice with breast cancer and once for this type of lymphoma. Mark was understandably terrified. He really thought he was going to die. He immediately and very quietly started chemotherapy. And the chemo was incredibly strong. There was one session where he was injected with drugs so strong that his doctors told his wife that she couldn't share a toilet with him for three days. He says chemo is like being on the worst international overnight flight where you can't sleep or get comfortable. He lost all his hair. The chemo left him in pain together with all the other drugs, including steroids. He was exhausted all the time and the brain fog was constant. I felt so crappy and the brain fog is so bad. The chemo brain is just heartbreaking because I can feel myself diminished mentally. And this continued for months. But this brain fog actually helped save him. And blink 182. He kept things secret for three months. But then on June 23, 2021, Mark was hooked up to an IV for a chemotherapy infusion. He took a selfie sitting in a chair. He'd planned to send the photo to everyone on his private WhatsApp chat. Instead, he posted it to Instagram, and it went out to 1.2 million followers. It was captioned, yes, hello, one cancer treatment, please. As he's sitting in the clinic, messages started pouring in. He says, throughout the day, as I'm getting chemotherapy and more bags of chemicals are being dripped into my body, other people are reaching out and they're like, dude, what's going on? Mark took down the post immediately, but of course it was too late. There was nothing he could do but come clean with a statement saying that, yes, he was sick, but yes, he was getting treatment, and yes, he planned to beat cancer. For the past three months, I've been undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. I have cancer, it sucks, and I'm scared. And at the moment, I'm blessed with incredible doctors and family and friends to get me through this. This mistake became a happy accident. Maybe part of me subconsciously posted it to my brain, but I definitely didn't do it on purpose, he says. But I don't know, it kind of felt like a band aid had been ripped off and I was able to be honest with people. He went on to say, the best mistake I've ever made by far. I suffered alone in silence for so long because I thought that once it came out I had cancer, people's opinions of me would change. Just generally in life, I felt that when people get sick or injured in some way, they get left behind, like, okay, you're over here now, and in a different category. But I was wrong. Not only did well, wishes and gifts started coming in, but he was also overwhelmed by notes from fans who had gone through cancer themselves. Many of them sent videos of them singing Blink songs. All these people who were fighters and winners who overcame their cancer, that helped. I was finally able to say, yeah, I'm scared, but, you know, I try to put on a brave face. And there is nothing like almost dying to repair damaged relationships. When Tom DeLonge heard about Mark, he was right there. And soon there was a sit down in Mark's backyard. Travis was there, too. Tom remembers that day. We got into more life stuff. What we've learned over the years about ourselves, how we've grown, how nothing really matters when it boils down to what we were dealing with in that moment. And so it wasn't some big meaning about Blink 182. It was more about brothers meeting and saying, how do we support Mark? His intensive treatment continued through the end of 2021 and into 2022. Mark was declared Cancer free, but had to continue screening every six months. And that's when news came down that Mark, Travis and Tom came to the realization that it was time to bury all the animosities and get back to being Blink 182. Rumors of a reunion had begun by mid-2022. In October, the band's social media accounts were wiped. And then on October 11, they made it official. Tom was back in the band. There would be an album and a two year world tour. Matt Skiba took it like a pro. He knew the announcement was coming. He accepted the situation gracefully and congratulated the guys and thanked them for the opportunity of being in the band. Three days after the announcement, a new single came out and it was called Edging with a Knife.
- [19:47]
Matt Skiba
Not sure, no way, no I leave the broken hearted oh no look at the mess we started oh no, I lived a broken heart.
- [20:05]
Alan Cross
Work continued on a new album. In the interim, they got to make a big comeback together at Coachella on April 14, 2023. Frank Ocean, the R B singer, was scheduled to headline that Friday night. But he had to cancel. And with just two days to go, Blink182 was announced as his surprise replacement. Everyone was pretty nervous. This would be the first time since 2014, nine years, that this version of Blink had performed together. 150,000 people were there and it was one big sing along.
- [20:37]
Matt Skiba
Where are you? And I'm so sorry I cannot sleep, I cannot dream Tonight I need somebody and always this extra new.
- [20:50]
Alan Cross
Blink182 played an hour long set that night at Coachella and sounded great. And by this time, Mark had all his hair back. It was truly an amazing moment. Mark said this about his cancer and the repaired friendship with Tom. The cancer brought back friendships that I hadn't had in years. It healed my friendship with Tom. From day one. He was like, what do you need? I'm there in that friendship and love and support of people around me. I thought, you know what? I've had a pretty awesome life. If you want to read more about Mark's journey, I highly recommend the memoir Fahrenheit 182, which came out in April 2025. After Mark was well enough to start playing again, the band started recording new material in January 2022 and they took their time waiting until October 20, 2023 to release the next album. And it was appropriately called One More Time.
- [21:43]
Matt Skiba
I don't wanna act like there's tomorrow I don't wanna wait to do this One more time One more time One
- [21:57]
Alan Cross
more, one more time is an interesting album for Blink 182 because it was obviously affected by Mark's cancer. Relationships, friendships and becoming a little more mature, but not too much. This is, after all, Blink 182. There was no outside producer. Travis Barker handled all that, and most of the recording was done at his home studio. This was something of a sensitive subject at first and wasn't planned, but as the sessions progressed, it became obvious that Travis really was up to the task. They'd meet once every two weeks or so for three intensive days of writing and rehearsing. Everything was done in secret because having Tom back in the band was. Well, he'd bailed on them before, and Mark and Travis needed to make sure that this reconciliation was going to work. And Mark really still wasn't 100%. The chemo had done a number on his vocal cords and his strength still wasn't where it needed to be, but each day he got stronger. When it was done, there were 17 tracks on the album, two bonus tracks and then another further eight bonus tracks. And yes, there was a cancer song. It's called you Don't Know what yout've Got.
- [23:10]
Mark Hoppus
You don't know what you got.
- [23:20]
Alan Cross
Reviews for One More Time were solid. It debuted at number one on the Billboard Top 200, helped along by 11 different vinyl versions of the album. Fans had to have all of them, of course, and that all counted towards the chart position. It reached number two in Canada, the uk, Australia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. It was top five in Belgium, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal. The headline tour, known as the Hard Rock Tour and the One More Time tour for the second leg began in May 2023 and didn't end until November 8, 2024. Four legs, 91 shows, each with about 25 songs, with the biggest box office take of any rock tour that year. Three dates were canceled, but one was because of a hurricane and the other two were just routine illnesses. That was followed by the Missionary impossible tour in 2025, which saw the band play a lot of songs that they hadn't touched in decades. And as things moved into 2026, there was no sign that the band was interested in slowing down. We'll leave it there, but I have a feeling that we're going to need another update in the Future. The Blink 182 story is wild, touching on all kinds of cool stuff, weird stuff, sad stuff and scary stuff. It looked dicey many times and sometimes things threatened to break down completely, but each time the guys have been able to pull it back together. Blink 182 is now into their fourth decade. How much longer can they go on? Well, given their resilience, never count them out. If you want the whole story, remember that the original three parter on the rise and fall of Blink 182 is available as podcasts. Meanwhile, I will see you at my website which is a journal of musicalthhings.com it's updated every single day with cool music related stuff. And if you need a jump on what's happening, sign up for the free newsletter which will reach your inbox by 10am Eastern every single day. Email can go to AlanAlancrosse CA and if you'd rather interact through social media, we can do that too. Just search for my name or ongoing history and you'll find me. Technical productions by Rob Johnston I'll talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross.
- [25:27]
Mickey Fox
My name is Mickey Fox.
- [25:28]
Narrator (Sheriff Country Promo)
Friday, February 27th on Global I'm sheriff of Edgewater for her keeping the peace. Cartels moving in means every investigation people are getting threats. It's close to home.
- [25:40]
Mickey Fox
At the end of the day, I'm responsible for this town.
- [25:42]
Narrator (Sheriff Country Promo)
Secrets, loyalties and and small town justice collide in the new hit drama I'm
- [25:47]
Mickey Fox
a Damn Good Sheriff.
- [25:48]
Narrator (Sheriff Country Promo)
Sheriff country returns Friday, February 27th on Global Stream on STACK TV.