1993-Tom DeLongeGuitar, vocals1993-2015, 2022-
Mark HoppusBass, vocals1993-
Travis BarkerDrums1998-
Scott RaynorDrums1993-1998
Matt SkibaGuitar, vocals2015-2022
Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker was recruited at the last minute from his then-current band, The Aquabats, when Raynor left to attend college. Barker was forced to learn all of the band's songs quickly.
They have been honored by several different organizations, including the Teen Choice Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. But no Grammys.
Originally named Blink, they were forced to change by the threat of a lawsuit from an Irish Pop group with the same name. This was after releasing a couple of records on independent labels, but before they were signed to MCA in the late 1990s.
They gained fame when they played on the 1996-1997 Warped Tour with bands that were bigger at the time, Pennywise and NOFX. They also appeared in several skateboarding videos.
Some pre-blink bands: Hoppus was in Of All Things, and Pier 69; DeLonge was in Big Oily Men.
Names considered for the band that became blink-182: Figure 8, and Duck Tape. Those choices would have prevented a lawsuit.
DeLonge clashed with Hoppus soon after they found success, leading DeLonge to form various side projects. He and Barker created a more punk-leaning band called Boxcar Racer in 2004 without Hoppus, and DeLonge formed his own act the following year called Angels and Airwaves. Barker could also be heard around this time in the Transplants, a punk supergroup comprised of him and Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman from Rancid.
Hoppus married Skye Everly in November 2000. They met when she was working for MTV and blink-182 was shooting the videos for "
All The Small Things."
DeLonge began playing the trumpet when he was 11. He wasn't very good so he soon switched to guitar.
Hoppus' parents divorced while he was in third grade. He moved to Monteray, California, with his dad in fifth grade, where his dad worked on a postgraduate degree. His father later worked for the Department of Defense designing missiles.
Hoppus and DeLonge met each other through Hoppus' sister, Anne, who was dating one of DeLonge's best friends. When she heard that DeLonge was looking to start a band, she hooked up the two of them.
They appeared in the comedy American Pie in 1999.
DeLonge is obsessed with aliens and UFOs. He's convinced that there's some kind of government conspiracy to cover up the existence of aliens.
Early on, Hoppus and DeLonge were known for their onstage banter consisting of penis and fart jokes. In contrast, Barker was very quiet and subdued.
Mark Hoppus explained his songwriting process to Kerrang! magazine: "I like to sit down with my guitar and just kind of noodle. I do that for maybe an hour or two hours, and see if something cool happens. I start every song with a little idea, and then I'll be like, 'I don't know about that one,' so I start fighting it.
I then take it to Tom and Travis and they develop it. That's always a really gratifying process - to an watch this smallest idea grow and build into a song that you then release on album, play live and have people sing it back to you. That's an amazing process."
On Halloween night 1995, DeLonge was arrested during a stop on the GoodTimes tour in Jacksonville, Florida, for underage drinking when a cop noticed he was drunk and walking the street at night.
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Suggestion credit:
Ryan - York, PA
In 2004, they had to postpone their tour when Barker broke his foot in very un-punk-rock fashion: getting off a bus in Melbourne.
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Allyssa - Shellharbour, Australia
Hoppus got his first bass in exchange for painting his dad's house at the age of 15.
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Emily - Troy, MI
Blink-182 and Tony Hawk appeared in the 302nd
Simpsons episode, "Barting Over," in February 2003. They recorded their voices for the episodes almost a whole year earlier. Mark gets two lines, whereas Travis and Tom only get one.
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A.J. - Chicago, IL
Early on, Delonge would call up different high schools around his area and say that his band promoted not using drugs and asked if they could play at lunchtime. This is how they got some of their first gigs.
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Daniel - Poughkeepsie, NY
Among the theories of how they got their name: "182" is how many times Al Pacino says the F word in the movie
Scarface.
182 stands for "RB" (R=letter 18, B=letter 2), which stands for rival high school Rancho Bernardo.
The truth is much less interesting - they made up the name.
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Jimmt - Sheboygan Falls, WI
+44 (named for the UK telephone code) was a side project of Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker that formed in 2005 and released their only album the following year. They recruited the female vocalist and guitarist from the band Get The Girl, Carol Heller. Their music was mostly electronic-based, with lots of synth and some songs recorded with electric drums. Travis Barker stated in one interview, "If Blink was the daytime, +44 is the night time. It's such a departure from Blink, but it's amazing."
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Bryant - Salina, KS
Around the same time Hoppus and Barker launched +44, Tom Delonge formed the band Angels & Airwaves, which is more rock than pop-punk. They remained active into the 2020s.
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Carly - NSW, Kyogle, Australia
Travis Barker and his wife Shanna starred on an MTV reality show called
Meet The Barkers that ran for two seasons starting in 2005.
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David - Reno, NV
On September 19, 2008, Barker suffered severe burns in a plane crash. This led to the band reforming, which they announced at the Grammy Awards on February 8, 2009.
Barker spent more than 11 weeks in hospitals and burn centers and had numerous skin grafts. He was in so much pain that he repeatedly called friends and offered them a million dollars to assist him in committing suicide. Hospital staff eventually took his phone away.
DeLonge engaged in a very public feud with Barker and Hoppus in 2015. He was pursuing other projects, including a film and book, so the band replaced him for some gigs with Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio. DeLonge's status in the band remained unclear, which frustrated Barker and Hoppus, who questioned his commitment in the press.
In 2021, Hoppus was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Before starting chemotherapy treatments, DeLonge and Barker visited him at his home to lend their support. It was the first time they'd been together since DeLonge left the group in 2015.