It feels like high school all over again — drama and Blink-182. Monday marked a flurry of rumors of break-ups, bitterness and bad blood in the camp.
Here’s a quick recap of what happened:
On Monday, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker announced that guitarist Tom DeLonge was out of the band
“We were all set to play this festival and record a new album and Tom kept putting it off without reason,” they said. “A week before we were scheduled to go in to the studio, we got an email from his manager explaining that he didn’t want to participate in any Blink-182 projects indefinitely, but would rather work on his other non-musical endeavors. No hard feelings, but the show must go on for our fans.”
But, shortly after news of the statement spread, DeLonge denied that he had quit Blink-182,
To all the fans, I never quit the band. I actually was on a phone call about a blink 182 event for New York City at the time all these weird press releases started coming in… Apparently those releases were ‘sanctioned’ from the band. Are we dysfunctional- yes. But, Christ….. #Awkward #BabyBackRibs
By Monday afternoon, with Hoppus and Barker that explained their side of the story.
the band had signed a contract to start recording a new album on Jan. 5, but before they could start recording Hoppus and Barker got an email from DeLonge’s manager saying he was focusing on other projects.
We booked January 5th to go into the studio. On December 30th, we get an e-mail from Tom’s manager saying that he has no interest in recording and that he wants to do his other, non-musical stuff and that he’s out indefinitely. There’s a flurry of e-mails going back and forth for clarification about the recording and the show and his manager sends back saying, “Tom. Is. Out.” Direct quote. This is the exact same e-mail we got back in 2004 when Tom went on indefinite hiatus before.
While that seems like a nasty situation as it is, there is also some bad blood between the Blink-182 members. When why DeLonge is saying he didn’t quit, Barker says:
“I think he’s just bummed because Mark and I were finally honest. We always covered up for him before. It was always, “We’re going to record an album,” then “Tom refuses to get into the studio without a record deal.” So everyone does hella amounts of work to get a record deal and now Tom isn’t part of Blink-182. Itap hard to cover for someone who’s disrespectful and ungrateful. You don’t even have the balls to call your bandmates and tell them you’re not going to record or do anything Blink-related. You have your manager do it. Everyone should know what the story is with him and itap been years with it. When we did get back together after my plane crash, we only got back together, I don’t know, maybe because I almost died. But he didn’t even listen to mixes or masterings from that record. He didn’t even care about it. Why Blink even got back together in the first place is questionable.”
Blink-182 fans, you might want to start crossing your fingers, because things don’t look great right now.
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