You’ve been punk’d

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This article was published 30/07/2009 (6226 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HOLLYWOOD — It took a brush with disaster to get the members of the multi-platinum-selling punk trio Blink-182 to stop giv­ing each other the cold shoulder a four-year “hiatus” as a band. Specifically, it took drummer Travis Barker nearly dying in September plane crash — which claimed lives of his assistant and body­guard — to make the group’s sing­er- guitarist Tom DeLonge re-evalu­ate priorities and break the radio toward his bandmates.

"We started talking again after Travis’s accident," DeLonge asserts with uncharacteristic sombreness.

The co-frontman was seated in a backstage dressing room before the band performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last month. His mouth trembled with emotion before he lapsed back into his default goofball mode.

"There was some hate before then," he blurts out. "Don’t make me cry!"

But rekindling the bromance that propelled Blink’s potty-mouthed popularity as one of Southern California’s unlikeliest arena rock acts required that DeLonge, Barker and bassist-vocalist Mark Hoppus put aside their differences and come together as creative equals.

 

"We had to be friends before we could be in a band again," Barker said.

Hoppus, 37, recalls the moment of satori that would result in Blink’s resurrection.

"We were sitting in the courtyard of our studio one day," he says. "We had been hanging out for about eight weeks or something, just as friends. And it was like there was a giant elephant in the room. … Tom asked me and Travis, ‘Where is this going? Are we going to do this thing?’ Blink was obviously such a huge thing in our lives. We realized we wanted to continue doing it."

He added: "Not only with a sense of what we brought to the table but an appreciation for what everyone else brought."

Now, San Diego’s punk princes — who have sold some 13 million albums domestically — are on a 50-date North American comeback tour. They are the marquee act on a bill that features a rotating lineup of openers that includes the All-American Rejects, Weezer, Fall Out Boy and Asher Roth. Blink will play the biggest stadiums and perform for the biggest audiences of its career. (They hit Winnipeg’s MTS Centre on Sunday with Fall Out Boy; tickets are $49.50 to $69.50 at Ticketmaster.)

Hoppus marvels at how far the group had come.

"We started playing in small punk-rock clubs, touring in a van," he says. "None of us had any aspirations beyond playing the music we loved and having a good time. Next thing you know, we’ve sold millions of records. And the pressure was gigantic."

To hear them tell it, that’s why in 2005, at the height of Blink’s popularity, the trio’s interpersonal discontent boiled over, prompting a career timeout.

On hiatus, DeLonge put together his successful alt-rock outfit Angels & Airwaves; Hoppus and Barker formed the electronic rock act +44; and Barker became an in-demand hip-hop drummer for top-selling rappers including Eminem, Lil Wayne and Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, while also producing a solo album he still hopes to release in coming months.

"It was never a thing where I didn’t want to be in a band with nobody or something," Barker, 33, explained. "In our band, it just got kind of crazy. We took a break."

After Barker’s plane crash — which everyone carefully avoided discussing, because the drummer is suing a company that owns the Learjet on which he crashed — the course of action seemed obvious for DeLonge. His reticence is generally credited with having prevented the band from re-forming sooner.

"When you see opportunities in your life, you’ve got to analyze, ‘Why was that choice given to me?’ " DeLonge, 33, says. "It was very clear to me after Travis’s thing that all these forces of nature were pushing for (a reunion) to happen."

Still, moments before what was to be Blink’s fourth public post-hiatus performance, the bandmates tried to laugh off a palpable sense of performance anxiety. DeLonge was busy re-memorizing the Blink song lyrics he had written down on a yellow legal pad.

"Here’s how wheels-off this organization is: We’re about to walk out onstage tonight in front of a national audience and perform songs we haven’t played in seven years," Hoppus said.

"Not to mention, I can’t actually remember all the guitar parts," DeLonge said. "It’s all a blur to me."

But when they hit the stage, Blink performed energetic run-throughs of two of its biggest Warped Tour hits, What’s My Age Again? and Dammit, for Kimmel’s cameras. Then, glancing at each other from across the stage with barely contained class-clown glee, the band members decided they were having too much fun to leave.

"I love you, Tra-vis," Hoppus drawled into the mike, prompting DeLonge to elucidate for the crowd: "It’s a physical thing."

"And I love you, Tom De-Long-ee," Hoppus continued, just before the trio launched into its single Down.

With Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz and wife Ashlee Simpson looking on from backstage, flanked by a gaggle of Blink’s preteen children sitting on an overstuffed sofa, the group performed eight songs (not including an off-the-cuff cover of the Beastie Boys’ High Plains Drifter) over the course of an hour.

With all of Hoppus and DeLonge’s sexual double-entendres and frat-boy repartee, the mini-concert seemed more like a declaration of purpose than a tour warmup. The implicit message was that Blink-182 is back and as solid as ever — that its tour isn’t going to be some kind of profit-driven road slog even if it represents one of Blink’s biggest paydays to date.

"This isn’t a reunion tour," Hoppus had insisted backstage. "That has the stigma of a band that’s riding on its own coattails…. This is a continuation for us. We want to make an album, do what we love and continue where we left off."

— Los Angeles Times