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 Scott Raynor bowed out of the band's West Coast mini-tour in 1998 due to an emergency back home. Barker was forced to learn all of the band's songs in less than an hour, and Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge were impressed by the incendiary energy he brought to the music. Tensions had already been growing between the bandmates due to Raynor's anger issues and heavy drinking, which led to his dismissal when the tour wrapped.
They have been honored by several different organizations, including the Teen Choice Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. Their 2016 album, California, was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 2017 Grammy Awards, but the trophy went to Cage The Elephant for Tell Me I'm Pretty.
Originally named Blink, they were forced to change by the threat of a lawsuit from an Irish techno 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 put off coming up with a new name for months until their then-label, Cargo Records, threatened to choose one for them. Hoppus randomly came up with the addition of 182, but the band has offered several fake explanations for the number over the years. One of the most popular, but disproven, theories is that it's the number of times Al Pacino says the F word in Scarface.
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 Box Car Racer in 2001 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's first instrument was a trumpet he got for Christmas when he was 11. He wasn't very good so he soon switched to acoustic guitar, but his true musical awakening didn't come until the seventh grade, when he was introduced to punk rock while visiting a friend who'd moved away. When he first got his hands on an electric six-string, something clicked. "I picked up that guitar," he
told Kerrang in 2021, "and, suddenly, it was like, 'Holy s--t!'"
Hoppus grew up in Ridgecrest, California, a small town in the Mojave Desert near the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake military base, where his father worked for the Department of Defense designing missiles. Two years after Hoppus' parents divorced, he moved to Monterey, California, with his dad and spent most of his fifth-grade year alone while his dad worked on a postgraduate degree. He eventually ended up back in Ridgecrest to finish up high school, with a couple years in between spent in Fairfax, Virginia, while his dad commuted to The Pentagon.
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 and reworked their song "
Mutt" for the movie's soundtrack. In the scene where the main character accidentally turns on his webcam and broadcasts his bedroom activities to the whole school, the band pauses their practice to share their reactions to the sexy livestream. Hoppus ad-libbed the sing-song, "Go, trig boy. It's your birthday," and was surprised the director kept it in the scene.
DeLonge is obsessed with aliens and UFOs, which is evident on the
Enema Of The State track "
Aliens Exist." He's convinced that there's some kind of government conspiracy to cover up the existence of aliens. He even expanded his entertainment company To The Stars to include aerospace and science divisions for researching extraterrestrial life and other fringe science topics. He co-founded the organization with parapsychologist Harold E. Puthoff and former CIA officer Jim Semivan.
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.
Formed in Poway, California, in 1992, Blink-182 brought pop-punk to the mainstream after releasing their groundbreaking third studio album,
Enema Of The State, in 1999. Hit singles like "
What's My Age Again?" and "All The Small Things" delivered catchy vocal melodies and frenetic punk-rock tempos wrapped up in their signature irreverent humor. The original lineup consisted of bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge as co-lead vocalists and Scott Raynor on drums. In 1998, prior to recording
Enema Of The State, Raynor was replaced by Travis Barker of The Aquabats.
+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 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."
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 then-wife Shanna Moakler starred on an MTV reality show called Meet The Barkers that ran for two seasons starting in 2005. Barker was formerly married to Melissa Kennedy, whom he divorced after nine months in 2002. In 2022, he married Kourtney Kardashian three times: first they eloped to Las Vegas on April 3 without a marriage license, then they officially tied the knot in California on May 15, and finally had a religious wedding ceremony the following week in Portofino, Italy.
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.
After Blink-182 got a major-label deal with MCA Records, they did everything the label asked them to do. They appeared in teen magazines opposite boy bands and Britney Spears, made appearances on talk shows and sitcoms, and wore ridiculous outfits for cheesy photoshoots. After becoming a success with
Enema, Hoppus said the band entered their "No phase" - refusing any and all requests - to reshape their image with an edgier look and style, which is reflected in the promo photos for their subsequent album,
Take Off Your Pants And Jacket (2001), with the guys wearing black and sporting serious faces. Their sound also goes harder, with darker humor, angrier guitars and messier arrangements. Blink's manager was uncertain about the demos and thought they were missing the fun summertime vibe that fans came to expect from the trio. Hoppus and DeLonge angrily responded to the criticism with "
The Rock Show" and "
First Date," respectively, which became hit singles.
DeLonge officially rejoined Blink-182 in October 2022 with the single "
Edging" marking their reunion. Peaking at #61, it was their highest-charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the nearly two decades since "
I Miss You" reached #42 in 2004. The new single teased their ninth album,
One More Time…, which dropped in October 2023.
Hoppus' dad remained dubious over his son's career choice for several years and didn't grasp the band's popularity until they were invited to perform on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1999 and a famous guest visited their dressing room. The elder Hoppus was astonished when fitness enthusiast Richard Simmons swept into the room and gushed over the group - he even planted a kiss on Mr. Hoppus' cheek. He finally had to admit his son's band wasn't just a phase. "It took years of hard work, but I finally won my dad over that day," Mark wrote in his 2025 memoir, Fahrenheit-182. "Thank you, Richard Simmons."
Barker's former mansion in Corona, California, was featured on
an episode of MTV Cribs in 2002. The drummer showed off his car collection, including a number of Cadillacs and a custom Denali monster truck, his 500 gallon fish tank - the home to his favorite fish, Scooter - and his backyard, featuring a massive pool surrounded by caves and a 10-foot rock cliff.
When Hoppus was in high school, he became a huge fan of The Cure after borrowing his friend's cassette tape of their 1987
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me album. He even started walking the halls dressed in the English rock band's gothic style, with black clothes, black eyeliner and, sometimes, bright red lipstick like frontman Robert Smith. Years later, blink-182 collaborated with Smith on the moody track "
All Of This" on their 2003 self-titled album.
