Blink-182's Mark Hoppus: I Want to Keep Blink Going for a Long Time

Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus: I Want to Keep Blink Going for a Long Time

2011-09-29

Story by Cat Badra

Blink-182 is here to stay, according to bass player Mark Hoppus

Now that the punk trio of Blink-182 are back together and things are going so swimmingly, fans are wondering, Why did the guys ever end such a good thing in the first place? Ask bass player Mark Hoppus, and he’ll tell you the gents simply “stopped having fun.”

“I think it started to feel more like a job and a commitment than a joy, which it should always be,” he told Billboard. “Tom was the first one who really wanted to take a bunch of time off, and Travis and I didn’t; we wanted to keep touring. We like to tour, we like to have fun, but Tom was the first one to say, “I need a minute here”, and it caused a lot of turmoil in our band. It kind of melted down from there.”

In the end, it took a tragedy — drummer Travis Barker’s near-fatal plane crash in 2008 — to bring the guys of Blink back together; first, as friends, and then, as band mates.

“After Travis was in the plane crash, Tom [DeLonge] reached out to him, just to say, ‘Hey, I hope you’re okay, I’m thinking of you,’ and that was the first time they had spoken in five years,” he said. “And not long after that, I talked to Tom. It was a while – weeks and months before we started talking about Blink at all. But mostly it was connecting as people again.”

As for whether Blink-182 addicts need to worry about another big breakup, they don’t. “We’ve always said we would continue to do Blink-182 as long as it’s fun, and when it wasn’t fun we stopped it, and now it’s fun again I want it to keep going for as long as we can,” Hoppus said.

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Cat Badra

Meet the expert - Cat Badra is a music writer for Audio Ink Radio and a range of other music, sports and lifestyle publications. She's a graduate of Michigan State University with a master's degree in theater and speech. Contact her at cat@audioinkradio.com.