Travis Barker Finally Responds to Tom DeLonge’s Twitter Post

It’s been a few days now since we’ve heard anything from the blink-182 chronicles, making us feel like the explosion might have died down, but now, drummer Travis Barker is opening up about the drama behind the scenes.

In a radio interview on Kevin and Bean, Barker covered many topics including the latest revelation that Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus were considering replacing him after he got into a Twitter feud with the promoter from their Australian tour in 2013.

“You know, I didn’t really know that much about that [Tom’s tweet],” he said.

“Mark had to explain it to me, and I was like, cool. If that was his decision, I definitely wouldn’t make the stink that he is now. I would bow out and be like, much love to you, I wish you nothing but the best. I wouldn’t be doing the back and forth and most importantly, I would speak for myself.”

But things did not end there. When asked about DeLonge and his lack of desire for anything blink-182 related, he admitted, like he and Hoppus had in a previous interview, that they were done covering up for their former frontman.

“I’ve always had to cover up for him,” Barker said. “Finally it’s just out. He doesn’t want to record. He hasn’t wanted to record. We’ve tried recording four or five times. We’ve catered to him. We’ve got label interest. We did everything he wanted to do and then his manager still sends us an email saying Tom’s out.”

But on thing that caught many fans’ attention during the interview was when Barker still called DeLonge his friend.

“He’s [DeLonge] absolutely still my friend, it’s just he doesn’t want to play in a band. It’s like a chick. You’re not gonna make a chick that says ‘Hey I don’t want to see you indefinitely and I don’t know how long, I might not want to see you forever.’ You’re not going to be like ‘You get over here. You play with me right now.’ You need to give her her space, you need to let her go live… and it’s the same thing.”

While not the best metaphor, Barker does make a point.

Mark Hoppus Responds to Tom DeLonge’s Twitter Claim

It’s day three of the blink-182 soap opera and things seem to be getting a lot more dramatic with every passing day.

Yesterday, Tom DeLonge revealed that he and Mark Hoppus spent a week discussing with managers if it would be a good idea to let go of drummer Travis Barker, a very low blow to Barker if it turned out to be true, considering he and Hoppus have been on the same side since news broke on Monday.

Now, Hoppus is once again speaking out against his former bandmate exclusively with Alternative Press. In the one-on-one, Hoppus was asked about the tweet DeLonge posted, and quickly deleted, about replacing Barker. He responded by saying that the conversations weren’t about replacing Barker indefinitely, but more how issues arose during their 2013 Australian tour when Barker and the tour promoter were in the middle of feud with the latter claiming they were duped. This resulted in a lot of stress on the band especially with the idea that the promoter could sue them.

Check out the complete, newly released statement from Hoppus below.

There was a post of Tom’s on Twitter—since taken down—that said you and he once talked about replacing Travis.

[For the 2013] Australian tour in January, Travis obviously didn’t go on that tour because he didn’t feel comfortable flying, which was a possibility that we had known about from day one. When we agreed to do the tour of Australia Travis said, “I will do everything in my power to get back on an airplane, but if it gets to the day and I’m not ready to go, we need a back-up plan.” As it [came] closer to the time, Travis called me and Tom and said, “I’m not ready yet, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make the flight. We should go with a back-up drummer.” With Travis’ blessing we enlisted Brooks Wackerman and completed the tour.

However, during the course of the tour, Travis and the promoter got into a Twitter argument back and forth that was very contentious and was a lot of stress. Tom was upset, I was upset because it was happening while we were on this tour, and the tour was going very well. Everything should’ve been cool. The promoter thought that Travis had never intended to come to Australia and felt that he had been duped. Of course, that wasn’t the case.

After the tour, Tom was very upset about being put in that situation on tour, where people were threatening to sue, the promoter was angry and everything else. But he was really just blowing off steam. We got back from tour and Tom was having these calls where he was talking about “can we replace Travis, can we do whatever,” but it was really just Tom blowing off steam. There were a few days of calls where I listened to Tom, commiserated with Tom and, immediately afterwards, called up my manager and [said], “Tom’s upset right now, he’s talking about trying to replace Travis, but I’m not into it. That’s not going to happen.” And sure enough, Tom, after a month, called back up and was like, “Hey you know what? I was just angry about it. It was a bad situation, and of course I don’t want to kick Travis out of the band.” I don’t think Tom was ever truly serious about it. Even at the time, I felt he was just angry and he just needed to vent.

Tom DeLonge Responds to ‘Rolling Stone’ Tell-All

Apparently there are several sides to the blink-182 drama and former (or not former) singer Tom DeLonge is throwing his bandmates under the bus just like they did to him during their tell-all niterview with Rolling Stone last night.

Things started to get hairy from DeLonge’s side earlier in the day when he took to Twitter and posted, and quickly deleted, a message to his followers.

The message read: “A year ago Mark and I spent a week on the phone with managers debating parting with Travis [Barker]…Don’t pretend there isn’t more to this story.”

Ouch.

If this revelation turns out to be true, what would Barker think about Hoppus considering both were on the same side during the interview and their side project, +44.

But DeLonge couldn’t just leave that along. The singer has now taken to Facebook to post a super long message to fans, telling his side of the long, twisted, and frankly soap opera worthy story.

The complete over 900 word post can be read below. As for our take on the matter, we still don’t know whose side to take, if anyone’s at that.

“Where to begin?

The truth is always a good place. Let’s go there.

I love Blink and am incredibly grateful for having it in my life. It has given me everything. EVERYTHING. I started this band, it was in my garage where I dreamed up the mischief.

So what have I been doing behind the scenes? Well, I’ve tried to make things work. I’ve tried to help move this band down 50 different paths using my people, or other people, and people we don’t even know. I tried to put forth ideas about how we can grow and challenge ourselves to become a better band. I’m not sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work. I’m not wired that way.

The big reset was when I tried to put together a band summit in Utah where we’d talk and work things out. It quickly was narrowed down to three hours in someone’s dressing room in a shitty casino. What I hoped would be a positive get-together away from everything turned into an awkward meeting in a smelly convention hall dressing room. But it was there that I told Mark and Travis that as long as we talked, and things were good between us as real friends, that I would be engaged and work passionately. I’d mirror our personal relationship.

Exact words.

Then, the EP was the test. Months later, we’re recording those songs. I was in the studio for two months and they came in for around 11 days. I didn’t mind leading the charge, but we had all agreed to give it 100%. And this time- no baggage.

Despite that, we still somehow managed to self-sabotage.

At one point, squabbling and politics forced me to pull the EP down at a time when 60,000 fans were trying to purchase it. And that blew my mind. I’d been trying so hard but that moment ultimately broke my spirit. I then realized that this band couldn’t lose the years of ill will.

It was after that episode that I promised myself I would never be in that position again – to rely on the words we said to each other.

I remember asking one of them on the phone, “did you try your best? Like we all agreed to?”

He was silent.

Are they at fault?

Am I? Of course. I’m nuts.

But there’s three of us – we’re all accountable. At the end of the day, we’ve always been dysfunctional, which is why we haven’t talked in months. But we never did. In the 8 years we have been together it has always been that way.

Over the past two and a half years, while a recording partner was being sought for a new Blink record, I launched a media company. I just put out a new Angels & Airwaves record and as some of you know, there’s a lot more coming – comics, books, a film, etc. The books will all come with music. This is a wheel that’s already in motion.

So you can imagine my frustration when I was handed a 60-page Blink contract saying I couldn’t release an Angels album for 9 months and that the Blink album had to be recorded in 6 months, which was impossible for me. Doing so would force me to breach several artist contracts. Authors, Concept Artists, Animators… Many people.

They did eventually drop the Angels provision, but the part about having to finish a Blink album in 6 months remained. All of these other projects are being worked, exist in contract form– I can’t just slam the brakes and drop years of development, partnerships and commitments at the snap of a finger.

I told my manager that I will do Blink 182 as long as it was fun and worked with the other commitments in my life, including my family.

But Mark and Travis know all of this.

I wrote this same letter to them a year ago. But it created a massive argument, the biggest one yet actually. I just wanted us to do things we all agreed on. But that was their moment to dig in. From their view I was controlling everything.

In reality, I was scared to put myself out there again. To repeat the EP experience.
I also wrote all of this to their managers this past December (who told me my bandmates weren’t angry and agreed with some of my ideas of how to grow the band).

So you can imagine my surprise when a press release went out yesterday—without my knowledge—about the band’s future. This is new to me. It’s not in my nature to fuel negativity about the legacy of the band on something as trashy as the Internet world.

But I guess that’s another example of how I differ from most. I follow the light… I follow passion and I make art. I hang with my son, my daughter and my wife.

At the end of the day, all of this makes me really sad.

Sad for us.

Sad for you- that you’re witnessing this immaturity.

I know them very well, and their current actions are defensive and divisive.

I suppose they’re doing this as a way to protect themselves from being hurt.

Like we all do.

And even as I watch them act so different to what I know of them to be, I still care deeply for them. Like brothers, and like old friends. But our relationship got poisoned yesterday.

Never planned on quitting, just find it hard as hell to commit.
–
Tom”

Tom DeGone: Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker Speak Out

Guess Blink-182 aren’t staying together for the kids.

After all the drama that unfolded yesterday afternoon between the band members, we thought the inner band turmoil had reached an all time high and it couldn’t get any worse. Turned out, it could.

Late last night, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker responded to Tom DeLonge’s claim that he “didn’t quit” the band in a tell-all interview with Rolling Stone. In the interview, they unveiled that DeLonge’s claim that he didn’t leave the band was all a ruse.

In actuality, DeLonge didn’t quit the band; his manager did the quitting for him via and email.

A lot of information was revealed in the interview including Barker and Hoppus questioning the reason behind the band getting back together after Barker’s plane crash.

“When we did get back together after my plane crash, we only got back together, I don’t know, maybe because I almost died,” Barker admits to the publication.

“But he didn’t even listen to the 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.”

They also reveal that they did everything that they could to keep DeLonge happy just so they could go forward with the new record that should have been recorded two years ago.

Apparently, everything appeared to be going as planned in December, but then, out of the blue, DeLonge’s manager sent the band an email telling them that DeLonge has no desire to work on the new Blink album, and better yet, not be involved in any Blink-related engagements.

The final email that did it in for them, according to Hoppus, was one that simply read “Tom. Is. Out.” an exact replica of the one sent before the band had gone on hiatus in 2004.

Barker, who is not one to mince words, called DeLonge, calling him disrespectful and ungrateful after all the hard work the people in their camp did in order to meet his demands including getting a record label to released the new material. (Apparently DeLonge did not want to foot the bill and use his label.)

“So everyone does hella amounts of work to get a record deal and now Tom isn’t part of Blink-182. It’s 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.”

At the end of it all, Hoppus and Barker say that their goal is “protecting the legacy of Blink-182.”

Maybe the best way to protect the band’s legacy is to simply put it to rest and let the fans remember them as the quirky, funny guys who would run around naked in their music videos instead of his hot mess of drama behind the scenes.