Tom Delonge has reflected on his time in Blink-182, recalling that at the time the pop-punk trio were often referred to as a “boyband”.
Delonge, who departed the band in 2015 and was replaced as Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba, told Guitar magazine of Blink’s rise to fame following the release of their 1999 album Enema of the State: “We weren’t a mainstream pop-punk band. We were touring for seven years with bands like Guttermouth and the Vandals.
“We were coming from a more raw, unfiltered, unproduced scene. Those attributes are in our DNA, regardless of how big Enema got.
“People were putting us up and thinking we were a boyband. We didn’t get it. We were like, ‘What the f*** is going on?’
“A week ago we were lighting drumsticks on fire in our ass on stage and then people think we’re supposed to be on MTV dancing around.”
The group’s 2001 follow up album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, which features famous tracks like ‘The Rock Show’ and ‘First Date’, went on to explore punk themes inspired by bands like NOFX.
Tom explained: “On that record, I remember specifically the things that appealed to us were, ‘What’s NOFX doing? What’s Fugazi doing? What’s Propagandhi doing, or the Queers?’
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“Just cool s*** that’s raw, where you can hear the guitars. You can hear the angst. You can hear the, ‘F*** off, what I’ve been doing is cooler than what you’ve been doing.’ ”
He added: “You don’t hear that now in pop-punk bands. They do vocal acrobatics or they f*****’ have lots of electronics that disguise everything.
“We were trying to be very clever with three instruments, coming from a place that was all angst and breaking the law and growing up in broken families.”
Check out ‘Dumpweed’ by Blink-182:
