Interview Tom

For the past 13 years, Tom DeLonge has been one-third of San Diego pop-punk trio, blink-182. (If you didn't know that, there's no helping you.) Together, Blink redefined the face of pop-punk (and spawned a slew of wannabe bands) through naked antics, raucous live shows, and catchy tunes. But after selling millions of albums, including five Top Ten releases, the band announced last February that they would be taking a break. Travis Barker was the first Blink-er to find a new home (he's focusing on his old side project, The Transplants). And now, Tom's got something cooking, too -- Angels and Airwaves with David Kennedy, Atom Willard of The Offspring, and Ryan Sinn of Distillers. But the million-dollar question of the moment is, will they be better than Blink?

CCS: Angels and Airwaves sounds totally different than your past projects. How did the sound come to you?

Tom DeLonge: When I [left] blink-182, it was so stressful and such a hard decision that it made me not want to play music. So I sat around, saying, "What am I gonna do? I wanna feel good, I want to feel empowered [and] heroic." I was so sick of everything over the past few years, such as the political state of America, 9/11, and the Iraqi war. Everything seemed negative and weird. So I said, "This record is going to be the soundtrack [to something positive]." I looked at the album not just as a collection of songs, [but also as] an emotional event of changing my life around, looking into the future, and seeing myself doing something gigantic; the album is going to be the personification of that emotional ride. It's not like I said, "Hey -- I want to sound this way." If you wanted to take the way I feel and put it into music, this is what you would get.

CCS: What have you been listening to lately that might have inspired the feel of the album?

TD: I really shut off a lot of my musical arteries. For so many years, I was so stuck on the cool punk rock bands or underground bands. There's some really cool stuff, but for the most part, it's not good at all. This year, I only wanted to listen to the best music in the world, like Queen, The Police, U2, The Cure, and Peter Gabriel; I'd only listen to the 'best of the best' kind of stuff. I would listen to it a lot to see what makes a classic, timeless piece of music. It wasn't necessarily about the arrangement of songs, but how to insert feelings into them. [It's not about writing about] anger because that's the easiest thing in the world to do -- you scream and you sound mad. It's a lot harder to really create love in a song that doesn't sound like you just learned how to write a Top 40 song about missing a girl; you have to take it a lot further than that.

CCS: Word is, there's gonna be a movie to go along with the album. Can you give us a little preview?

TD: It'll be a theatrical release. It's basically a visual medium to communicate the feeling of the record. It's a lot of surreal iconography and visual. It's very much like [Pink Floyd's] The Wall for this generation. It's like with any art form -- you gotta see how it pans out. But I'm not going to do anything that isn't the best it could possibly be.

CCS: How did you choose the name Angels and Airwaves?

TD: I was driving one day, and the idea of an angelic intention mixed with the airwaves came to mind. Nobody really bit onto it, but then a couple weeks later, we started to talk about it and it stuck.

CCS: So with all this going on, there doesn't seem to be much room for blink-182. What's the band's status?

TD: It's a definite hiatus. For this time in my life, the only thing I'm doing is Angels and Airwaves. But Angels and Airwaves was an unexpected thing. I really found a purpose in my life that's bigger and more ambitious than anything else I've been involved with. It's really scary because I've been on this roller coaster before: you're in this band and it's getting ready to explode, and when it explodes it changes your life forever, and fame and money and all these weird things come into play that you never thought would happen.

CCS: Blink live shows have always been so crazy, are you going to miss that?

TD:I'm definitely still me; I'm still that guy. I'm not someone that takes themselves that seriously, so there's still the same kind of humor. Every single rehearsal is like a stadium show. Our sound guy was clapping at the end [of a recent rehearsal] like it was really a show; [the music] truly is that powerful. Blink never even rehearsed! We would just show up and play to 15,000 people and just wing it, but that's what was rad about that band. With Angels, we rehearse because we love the music.

CCS: A lot of the tour is already sold out! How stoked are you about that?

TD: I'm tripping because it sold out in 15 minutes! When I did Box Car Racer, it took three or four weeks to sell out. Having these shows sell out in 15 minutes without having an album out or a song on the radio is scaring me a little, but I'm excited because it's everything I've wished for.

CCS: Do you ever look back at Box Car and Blink and think, "That's not me," or do you consider each band to be different parts of you?

TD: It's absolutely all parts of me. I really am that unpredictable and immature, but I'm also involved in politics. I've traveled with John Kerry, and I've hung out with Hillary Clinton while doing fundraisers. Box Car Racer was actually a political record -- it talked about the end of the world. It was around the time of 9/11, and my wife was pregnant with our first child. There was so much stress in my family life, and the album was a culmination of a bunch of negative emotions. [But with Angels, we're] saying that the future is now, but what you choose to do with it is up to you. It's the most exciting thing I've ever come across in my life

Ce qu'on apprend:
Blink-182 est en hiatus définitif
Tom considere Blink-182 et BCR comme une part de lui
Tom a trouvé le nom d'AVA sur la route au volant
Tom en avait marre de jouer du Blink en live.

"TD: It's a definite hiatus."

cest un connard un point c tout,je ne reviendrai jamais la dessus

Bon jmen doutais déja un peu que c'était un hiatus définitif...mais bon squon peu souhaiter maintenant c'est que Plus 44 et AVA collabore un peu ensemble

Atticus a écrit:: cest un connard un point c tout,je ne reviendrai jamais la dessus

t'y vas un peu fort la ..

Little_Travis a écrit:

Atticus a écrit:: cest un connard un point c tout,je ne reviendrai jamais la dessus

t'y vas un peu fort la ..

j'y vais pas un peu fort du tout,c mon opinion et que le mien ne vous inquietez pas mais c ce que je pense maintenant de lui et c de sa faute

Décevant mais après ce qu'il viens de dire il a intérêt à ce que AvA déchire vraiment mais vraiment vraiment ! Sinon je proteste !!!

lol j'avoue que tom s'est mis dans une belle merde avec ses discours,si le cd fait pas trop parler de lui il est mal barré

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