Blink 182 have revealed just how serious the tension between the band was before their hiatus, and why the new album took so long to make.
"There was a time when everything was very bleak," bassist Mark Hoppus told Rolling Stone. "There was a lot of tragedy. It was all terrible s--t."
Mark refers to the two tragedies which struck the band at almost the same time; the horrific plane crash in which drummer Travis Barker escaped with serious burns, and the death of their legendary producer Jerry Finn.
Hoppus is full of praise for Finn, who produced their best-known albums. "
One of the smartest, funniest, most generous people I've met in my life," he says. "
He was just the ideal friend. His loss is heartbreaking … in the end it obviously brought us together. But there was an awful, awful period of time that I think we're still going through it in a lot of ways."
The stress of maintaining a prominent music career with the new responsibilities of family life eventually became too much for the band to bear.
"It was so bad right before we broke up," explains Barker. "At the time, if we had better management or some way to communicate, we would have all been in a better place."
During several years apart, the band focused on their own projects, with Barker spreading his wings in the hip-hop arena, Hoppus taking part in his own TV show, and guitarist Tom DeLonge exploring his alternative music tastes with Angels & Airwaves which began as a band, but became a full business enterprise. It recently released a theater documentary about the band, and will release a 22-song double-album in November.
"I never wanted to have two bands," says DeLonge. "It's too much ... All that was going while I was supposed to make this Blink-182 comeback record."
Despite the difficulties of fitting their new album production around their existing commitments, the band say they are proud of their new album "Neighborhoods."
"Every one of us has a different manager. We have different attorneys. We have different business managers. It's like, everything on the outside of the three of us is totally different and weird and bureaucratic. But when the three of us sit in a room together and Tom picks up a guitar, I pick up a bass and Travis gets behind those drums, there's something that happens. It works."
Will Blink continue? "Absolutely," claims DeLonge. "As long as it's fun and people care. And as long as we keep respecting each other the way we are now . . . myself included to them. I think we've proved that the worst is behind us."
