Blink 182

The three band members launched Blink 182 in a typical boys-in-the-basement way. They met about five years ago through mutual friends and started jamming in Raynor’s bedroom.

They began writing songs and soon found themselves gigging at coffee houses and small clubs. The band put out its own demo tape and eventually landed a deal with San Diego-based Cargo Records.

Following the group’s first record, Cheshire Cat, the majors began to take notice. The band’s deal with the indie was intercepted by MCA at a time when many majors were jumping on the Green Day bandwagon. Since then, Blink has spent day-in and day-out on the road, playing primarily to the surf/skate rock scene in support of its Cargo/MCA release, Dude Ranch.

Hoppus told POLLSTAR the band’s growth can be attributed to its intense road work. “We started touring about three years ago and pretty much never stopped,” he said. “We’ve always believed that the best way to gain real fans is to tour because if somebody hears your song on the radio, that’s great and they might get interested in your band…. But the way to actually gain fans, really for us, has always been to play live because that’s what we’re really all about anyway.”

Blink’s high energy shows landed them on the side stage of the Warped Tour in 1996. By ’97, the band was a full-fledged member of the tour’s mainstage lineup. Blink 182 has also toured the world with punk pillars Pennywise and NOFX and is on the road packaged with Less Than Jake this fall.

In addition to its fan-grabbin’ tunes, Blink 182 attributes its growth on the tour scene to agent Rick Bonde at the Tahoe Agency and manager Rick DeVoe. “We’ve been really lucky and Rick Bonde at the Tahoe Agency took a chance on us very early on,” Hoppus said. “Right after Cheshire Cat came out, he took a liking to us and became our booking agent. He’s always tried to hook us up with as good of tours as possible. Also, our manager, Rick DeVoe, has really helped us out a lot.”

Hoppus said DeVoe has helped land some of the group’s best bookings — tours for surf videos. “Some of the best tours we’ve had have been for surf videos, like Taylor Steele’s surf videos. And our manager helped get us on to those tours….. Those video tours have taken us around the coastline of the U.S., it’s taken us to Australia, to Hawaii, places like that.”

Getting to see the world — and getting paid for it — is a young man’s dream Hoppus said. However, like many new to the business, Hoppus didn’t realize his dream come true would keep him away from San Diego for such long periods of time. “We’ll probably end up touring for about nine months this year, and it’s kind of rad to think that we’re able to do what we always dreamed about doing, which is be in a band and being able to support ourselves and tour,” he said. “When we first started playing in a band, we’d sit around and say, ‘Oh wouldn’t it be rad if we got to go on tour somewhere.’ And now we get to do it all the time. It’s strange to think we’re on tour … with almost no breaks at all. That’s pretty gnarly.”

Gnarly road work, cramped vans, stinky crew members, that’s all Blink 182 is about these days. “Being in a band is all about playing live shows for kids and having a good time,” Hoppus said.

For that reason, you won’t catch Blink accepting too many over 21 shows. “We’ve done a few 21 and ups here and there but we really just concentrate on all-ages show. And they’re better anyway,” Hoppus said. “If you play in a bar somewhere, the people that are there aren’t really there to see the band. They’re usually there just to drink and pick up on chicks or whatever. It’s the whole cool guy vibe at the bar whereas at an all ages show, it’s just a bunch of kids that want to go out and run around and beat each other up.”