There were hints as far back as five years ago that there was something deeper lurking beneath the goofy skateboard punk of Blink-182.
Blink-182
With: The Used and Taking Back Sunday.
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Post-Gazette Pavilion, Burgettstown.
Tickets: $35 advance; $37 at the door; 412-323-1919.
On "Enema of the State," a record that was otherwise described as "blissfully stupid," Blink included "Adam's Song," a sad depiction of a lonely teen's suicide.
It was a rare departure from the usual Blink fare: three-minute bursts about hormone-surging boys and their awkward dealings with girls, supplemented by videos of the gangly Blink members running around naked and live shows heavy on jokes about "your mom."
Despite the title of 2001's "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket," the band's fifth album, there were further signs that Blink was coming out of adolescence, but nothing that prepared us for the latest developments: a self-titled record in November that broadens the band's emotional range and sonic palette, and the revelation that frontman Tom DeLonge is really a closet ... political junkie.
His first stop here this year was a non-musical one, on the stump with presidential hopeful John Kerry at the University of Pittsburgh. On Saturday, he returns to open the Post-Gazette Pavilion season on a tour that will show a new side to a band that now feels the need to separate itself from the pack of other pop-punk imitators.
Followers of Blink may be wondering, was it a conscious move toward maturity or one that came naturally?
"It's definitely both," DeLonge says in a phone interview. "We knew that we needed to move in a direction and needed to change for the benefit of our fans, for the benefit of music and for the benefit of us loving the music once again, loving the music that we played. We knew that we needed to challenge ourselves, but at the same time, it happened so organically, there's no way that we could ever have predicted where we would have ended up."
On "Blink-182," DeLonge, singer-bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker not only stripped out all the potty jokes, but wrote about relationships with a deeper sense of commitment and longing. They also embellished the songs with piano, synths and even strings. Not that it didn't rock. Blink showed in a couple of places that it can be as loud and fast as ever.
But suddenly, the band that had copped a bit of Green Day here and some NOFX there, pushing the genre of bratty pop-punk and opening the door for a slew of Blink-183s like Sum 41 and New Found Glory, was moving on.
"I think people are kind of getting bored of it again," DeLonge says of pop-punk. "We were bored of it. That's why we changed. Music needs to expand and evolve. If it doesn't, it's the same old [b.s.] that you hear every day. And pop-punk is no better than the same [crummy] hip-hop that comes out every week where they copy the guys before them. Each band -- whether it's hip-hop or rock 'n' roll or punk -- needs to be themselves and challenge themselves to be different and do something that is new and inspiring, from inside their heart and their head. I don't feel that with most pop-punk bands out there today. I don't think they're doing that."
DeLonge thinks that maybe the new technology in the recording industry can make for lazy musicians.
"With the advent of computers and recording, it's become so easy to record records that people have kind of forgotten the art of recording and the art of writing songs. Like, 'Yeah, let's just put a loop here and do this and we're done.' And it's like, '[Damn], computers are cool but they shouldn't be the main source of songwriting.' I think kids feel like they're getting a little gypped on records, too. Maybe that's why CD sales haven't been the hugest in the industry."
Remaking Blink
DeLonge was only about 17 when Blink formed in a suburb of San Diego. The good money was that Blink -- with its bratty vocals and stripped-down attack -- would be an unlikely contender to expand the limits of pop-punk. But Delonge, now 28 and the father of a daughter almost 2, says he knew all along that Blink had other tricks up its sleeve.
"I've always felt like our band's capable of anything," he says. "We always played fast pop-punk because that's what we liked, not because that's all we could ever play. That's just who we were. We were young kids with a lot of energy and we like to play fast. We knew that we would go places. Ever since Travis joined our band, it's like there's no limits to what we can do.
"On our last record, we brought in all this equipment that we wanted to [mess] around with, but the label was always like, 'We need the record, we need the record!' We were so busy and they were so concerned about following up 'Enema of the State,' we didn't really take the time to do what we should have done. Even though I still think that record is the better record than 'Enema of the State' -- it's recorded better, it's got better songs -- it wasn't the big experiment that it needed to be, like this one was."
Blink made a few surprising alliances on "Blink-182," most notably with the Cure's Robert Smith, a mope-rock pioneer whom you'd expect to find on, say, an Evanescence record. Smith, though, had family members who were into Blink and was "a mild fan" himself, so he added his ghostly vocals to "All of This."
"I can tell you that it almost seems surreal to have him on our record, because he's a legend to us," DeLonge says.
The other, stranger partner was James Guthrie, who co-produced Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and did a mix of Blink's "I Miss You."
"People probably think that we don't like music like that ...," DeLonge says, "but we have influences anywhere from Led Zeppelin to the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Cure, Police, that's how we were on this record. We were all about legendary bands and legendary songwriters and that's what we were striving to follow."
For the tour, DeLonge promises that for the first time, the Mark, Tom and Travis show will focus more on the music than the band's goofy antics.
"Our whole show is full of electronic parts and weird segues. There's hardly any talking and there's weird effects and Pink Floyd-type stuff. It's really different, but it mixes so well with the music. Just when you're getting some really weird, atmospheric, ethereal stuff, it goes to a song that has some energy and picks you back up. It's really dynamic and different, and I can guarantee people have never seen Blink like this. But every once in a while there is a [penis] joke that might come out of us, but we've tried to make believe we won't."
Several years back, Blink caused a bit of a stir when the band appeared on stage with a flaming F-word behind it. More recently, Blink was slapped by MTV, in the wake of the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction," for a video of "I Miss You" that showed two girls making out. It could rule out DeLonge's place on the list of vice presidential candidates.
"MTV dropped it because after that Janet Jackson thing they were ultra-concerned. What they should have done is kept playing it and play worse videos and been a leader in the industry for saying [the f-word] isn't that big a deal. Boobs are OK. You know how hard we get laughed at when we travel to other countries because they cannot believe how absurd it is that it was such a big deal that people saw a breast? It's unreal. It's so dumb that the human body is such a taboo thing. Then again, my body's pretty gross, so I can understand that, too."
Delonge: no stumping
Whatever new antics Blink comes up for this tour, they will not include pitches for the Kerry campaign. DeLonge thinks the mosh pit is not the right place for speeches.
But the guy is way into Kerry.
"About a couple years ago, I watched him speak on TV and I was blown away by the eloquence of his speech and his ideas."
So much so that DeLonge read his book and then made a collage of Kerry's accomplishments to hang in the studio. When he heard of his presidential run, DeLonge called and offered to help pitch the campaign to young people. Starting with the Iowa caucuses, he's been making tour appearances with Kerry, he's become a friend of stepson Chris Heinz, and Teresa Heinz Kerry has said that DeLonge has become like an "adopted son."
"If she's going to say that," he jokes, "then I'm entitled to some of the Heinz company."
As for the campaign trail, DeLonge says, "I don't think I do that much, but maybe there are some young people who go, 'Oh, wow, I wonder what it is about John Kerry that makes Tom come out and actually start talking about politics?' It may surprise people, but I'm really into that stuff. I'm really into politics and world affairs, and that's all I read about, all I do. Probably people have no clue about that. Besides being naked and telling poop jokes, I do all that stuff."
And yet, fans who love Blink-182 for the punchy songs about love and lust can expect the band to leave the politics to Anti-Flag.
"I love politics and music, but I don't think our band is about that. ... I'm not saying we'll never do it. I love what Blink is about. I love writing songs about girls and relationships and people as much as I love politics -- it's just a different side of me."
First Published: May 21, 2004, 4:00 a.m.
