Teen People Article
Blink-182 Ready For Takeoff
Mark Hoppus boards Blink-182's tour bus and points to the malfunctioning bathroom. "You can only pee in this toilet," tbe bass player instructs this TEEN PEOPLE reporter. "No pooping!"
Drummer Travis Barker, 24, is feeling under the weather today, so he heads right for the rear lounge of the luxury coach; he intends to nap during the 90-minute drive that will take the band from New York City to Asbury Park, N.J. Everyone else-Blink's managers, guitarist-singer Tom De Longe, 24, Mark, 27, and his girlfriend, Skye Everly-settle in toward the front of the bus.
Suddenly, Tom wonders out loud what it would be like if the chefs at Benihana, the Japanese restaurant chain that is known for preparing meals on scorching-hot grills in front of its patrons, wore nothing more than tool belts. Predictable, a sizzling penis features his scenario.
Soon, Tom's audience is laughing so hard that they're wiping away tears, begging him to stop. But the below-the-belt joking continues, as he and long time friend Mark reminisce about the time they poured water on their ex-guitar technician's crotch while he was asleep on an airplane; when the poor guy awoke, he thought he'd had an "accident".
"Most people think we're just like this onstage, but we talk about poop all the time," Tom says with pride.
Certainly no one can accuse the members of Blink-182 of faking their immaturity for the sake of record sales. They're the genuine article: silly, poop-obsessed, girl-crazy, and endlessly amused by the naked body. Everyone knows someone like them, which is just one reason this San Diego pop-punk band, who once performed under a banner that read POO POO PEE PEE, has become wildly popular-especially with teens. Their first major label album, 1997's Dude Ranch, featuring the adolescent anthem "Dammit (Growing Up)," went platinum. Their latest, Enema of the State, is an even bigger hit (it has sold 4 million copies since its June '99 release), fueled by the success of two singles and their laugh-out-loud videos: "What's My Age Again?," which gave the guys reps as lovers of public nudity, and "All the Small Things," which spoofs videos by popsters Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, among others. (*N SYNC's Lance Bass says he was sorely disappointed that his group wasn't targeted. "I wanted them to make fun of us," he says. "Those guys are so funny!")
Actually, Blink's penchant for running around naked began long before the "What's My Age Again?" video. During early band rehearsals back in 1992, Mark used to flash his friends to make them laugh. Although he doesn't want Blink "to be known as 'the naked band' forever," Mark says that he's not sick of the tag just yet. (Indeed: The trio opened the 1999 Billboard Music Awards via a filmed segment of them streaking through Vegas casinos.) Neither is Tom, who enjoys when fams pay homange by baring themselves. "We believe that people can come to a show, take off their clothes, run around and have a good time," he says. Then he adds, semiseriously, "We never entice guys and girls under the age of eighteen to get naked. We make jokes so we don't sound like we're preaching-"Hey, we love to see boobies, but if you're under the age of eighteen, make sure you have a note from your parents.'"
The group's invitations to women to expose their breasts at concerts-another Blink signature-have earned them accusations of sexism, which Tom finds upsetting. "It's funny, because we'll get onstage and say, 'Mark sleep with his dad,' and no one calls us incestuous-no one thinks he actually goes home and does that," he says. "But if we say, 'We like to see boobies,' then all of a sudden people think we're sexist, that we're out saying, 'Show us your t***'. We would never say something gross and demeaning like that. We love girls. We absolutely love girls."
Mark agrees: "I would never, ever disrespect my mother, my sister, or my girlfriend like that."
Their logic may be a little hard to follow. Is there all that much difference, after all, between saying, "We like to see boobies" and "Show us your t***"? Still, these guys seem genuinely concerned with the way their behavior affects fans. "We'll never tell them to do drugs, to burn people's houses down or to kill people, or worship Satan," Tom says. "I'm really into Jesus Christ, God, all that. I really am a big believer. I'm a Christian. I just happen to have a foul mouth, and I try to make kids laugh. But that's just me. I'm as God made me."
That's exactly what endears Blink to people, according to Willie Salazar, singer for Fenix-TX, a punk band out of Texas that Mark manages. "We have the same sense of humor," he says. "They're one of my favorite bands. Our first album [was dedicated to] Blink-ever before we knew them. We said on the linear notes, 'To Blink, thanks so much for ruling the world and making us the people we are.'"
Blink's beginnings can be traced back to 1992, when Mark dropped out of college and moved to San Diego to start a band. The moonfaced heartthrob grew up in Ridgecrest, Calif., a small town so boring, he and his friends used to "go out and burn things in the desert" for fun. He lived with his dad from the time he was eight, while his sister, Anne, now 23, went to live with his mom. "I guess they figured, two parents, two kids," he says sadly. "They ripped us from each other. It was awful." After attending college for five years and never making it beyond sophomore status (Tom advises: "All those teens out there, you have to see a counselor! Mark just took every English class in the world and didn't know they had nothing to do with his major!"), Mark decided to pursue music and met his future bandmate through his sister, who was dating one of Tom's best friends at the time. "We had the same awful sense of humor and similar music influences," Mark says. "Everyone thinks we're brothers. It's rare that two such good-looking guys find each other."
In 1997, they released Dude Ranch with their first drummer, Scott Raynor, but when promotion for the album was winding down, Mark and Tom found themselves in need of a new third man after Scott dropped out. Travis, who is a veteran of many punk bands, most notably the Aquabats, steeped into the role easily.
"He's been one of us since day one," says Mark. Travis, however, does stand apart from the other two; he doesn't join in when they get up to their naughty antics. "I think they're superfunny, the tattoo-covered percussionist explains, "but you wuold never hear me [talking like them]. If I feel like being a potty mouth in the privacy of my own home, I will. I just don't have it in me to do it in front of ten thousand strangers."
Despite the fact that they're well into their twenties, Mark and Tom are unusually attached to their teen years. "I think we never finished developing after high school," Mark admits. "We finished high school, and we started the band, and we've been in the band ever since. It's like suspended animation." They even look to high school experiences for inspiration when writing. Tom, for example, says that when he was a high school junior in Poway, Calif. (where he grew up with his mom, Connie, now a real estate agent; his dad, Tom, an energy company executive; sister Kari, 17; and brother Shon, 26), he was expelled for a year for consuming alcohol. "I never drank in high school," Tom says. "But one night my friends were like, 'Let's go to a basketball game and drink.' So I drank that one night and one of my friends fell on his face [in front of school officials]. My parents made me quit the band thing. I felt so trapped at the time. I wrote a song on Dude Ranch about it."
Tom, incidentally, had the last laugh: After being readmitted to the school as a senior, he was voted Homecoming King. "I was such a well-liked guy; everyone loved me," he fake-brags. "No, it wasn't like that. My friends did it to p*** off the administrators because they all hated me."
Travis's high school experience was much different from Tom's. He grew up in Fontana, Calif., in a high-crime neighborhood, with his dad, Randy, a machinist, and his mom, Gloria, a housewife who babysat local kids. "I was always around little babies," Travis remembers. "It was rad." But his mom died the day before he started high school, after being diagnosed with cancer only three months earlier.
"It was harsh," he says. "I was a full-on mama's boy. She made my bed, did my laundry, helped me with my homework. She made me start playing drums at the age of four. My dad was kind of like the hardhearted blue-collar guy who says you have to work fifty hours a week. But on her deathbed, my mom told me to keep on playing music, to go for my dreams. That's pretty much why I kept on doing it." One of his many tattoos is a large Virgin Mary on his forearm that says, "In loving memory of Gloria."
Travis still takes his music seriously. "I've never been one to party on tour. When all the other bands are going out after the show, I'm sitting in a room practicing. I feel guilty if I don't, like I'm taking everything for granted." That's one reason he's resting up for most of the ride to Asbury Park. Although today, partying would be appropriate: It's his 24th birthday.
Mark, meanwhile, is sitting at a table at the front of the bus, snuggling with Skye, his girlfriend since last summer, and flipping through a photo album full of mementos of their relationship.
"Remember that?" he says, pointing to a Polaroid of her at a restaurant table. "That's the night I kissed you for the first time." Stopping to look at Skye, he says, "I love our photos, honey," and gives her a smooch. Tom also has a girlfriend. He has been with her for three years, but, he says, "I'm just not sickening about it like Mark is."
Mark definitely loves being in love. "Adam's Song" on Enema, he says, is something he wrote before meeting Skye. "It's about me being lonely on tour and thinking that I was never going to be able to find a girl to love." Now he's so in love that he and Skye, whom he met while shooting the "All The Small Things" video (they'll only disclose that she works in the music industry), have a running argument about who loves the other most. One night, when Mark knew she was coming to a Blink show, he used masking tape to spell out I LOVE YOU MORE in two-foot letters on the band's giant stage amps.
As the bus pulls in to Asbury Park, Tom runs around lowering blinds so as not to attract the attention of crazed fans. The Convention Hall is full of screaming kids waiting to see Blink.
After entering the venue, Mark surveys the display of devotion. "We don't think of ourselves as any different from the kids at our shows," he says. "We're just on the stage and they're in the crowd." Soon, duty calls, and over the course of their 90-minute show, Travis dons bunny ears, Tom gives a mock lecture on sodomy, and Mark leads the audience in a round of "Silent Night".
Maybe they're just a little different.