Tom DeLonge recently spoke to Spin about Blink-182’s onstage antics ahead of their reunion tour’s final dates.
“We’ve grown up and have families—but when we’re on stage, it feels like we’re much younger,” he said. “We just sound better now, but we definitely revert back to the poorer versions of ourselves and our moral ambiguity. There’s some shit that gets said on stage where I do not know how we’re getting away with this.”
The guitarist explained that the band’s vibe hasn’t changed much since the 1997 ‘Dude Ranch’ era that welcomed Travis Barker to the lineup as drummer a year later.
“The only real difference onstage is that we play to a click track now,” he noted. “Travis plays so fucking fast that none of us can keep up with him, so now we give him a whole bunch of pot and make sure he’s high as fuck before every show, so then he plays at a normal speed.”
DeLonge reunited with Barker and Mark Hoppus in 2023 for their latest album, ‘One More Time…,’ after 15 years apart. The trio kicked off a tour to promote the record that year and is now approaching the end of the run.
They have a few more festival appearances lined up for September and October, including Oceans Calling 2024, South Star Music Festival, and Austin City Limits Music Festival, before wrapping it all up at Foro Sol in Mexico.