Blink-182 saved Mark Hoppus’ life when he had cancer. His new book helped him heal him

It was September 2021 and Mark Hoppus had just completed a aggressive chemotherapy for six months. Blink-182 had formed again and the stars had decided for Hoppus, guitarist Tom Delonge after a turbulent decade-and the band had left and drummer Travis Barker in 2015.

In June 2021, a kind of non-Hodgkin lymphoma was diagnosed in Hoppus, which led to intensive treatment before it was explained without cancer. In order to cope with stress and exhaustion, his doctor suggested that he write. What started as a form of therapy was transformed into the book “Fahrenheit-182”, which tells his life, from a military child to a punk, skateboard teenager to a rock star with millions of fans.

In the memoirs, the 53-year-old records the devastating effects of his parents’ divorce and fell in love with punk rock through bands, including social distortions, bad religion, dead Kennedys and Nofx. The true love story of “Fahrenheit-182” is ultimately the trio behind Blink’s success: Hoppus, Delonge and Barker. Nevertheless, these relationships were repeatedly tested and tense, and when he was called back to these tribulations, Hoppus tried to be sensitive to everyone involved.

Hoppus says: “It was really cathartic to write everything out and try to be fair in the book. My whole goal with the book was not to demonize anyone. I wanted there no bad guys in the book because I have not felt that there were no bad guys.

He explains: “When my cancer went to remission and I had as if I had switched to a ball, I wanted to tell the story of Blink-182 and not necessarily my story, but the history of the band from someone In The band. I love Tom and Travis so much, and everyone just wanted to tell our story as it is, until now: all heights, all depths, the brotherhood, the friendships, everything. “

He is not afraid to tell separations, make-ups and legal and personal battles between friends and bandmates, but there is a patina of sadness about these anecdotes and not bitterness or guilt.

“I had to write about things that Tom and I disagreed at the time, but I also wanted to insert his perspective quite in this way. And the same with travis and arguments that we had as a band.

Hoppus has a knack for storytelling that will not surprise fans of the band’s extremely cited texts.

Hoppus was born shortly after it was born as a suburb of Oakland’s Ridgemont district: “To survive in the desert. It is a one-to-million shot. Nothing grows in this environment. Nothing takes it. It creates or thrives.

Read more: Travis Barker wants to be “superhuman”. Disaster will do that to a man

Hoppus was a top student and a high performance part until his parents were divorced. It led to the fact that hailed between his parents’ different houses, got used to their new partners and was often separated from his beloved younger sister Anne.

Until 1992, the skateboarding, spiked hair eraser, finally listened to his parents’ requests and wrote down for college, which reunited him with his mother and Anne in San Diego. After Hoppus had dealt in various high school bands, he was decided to “be a guy in a band. My friends and I against the world. Like a Ramone.”

Anne’s friend introduced Hoppus to the local guitarist Delonge, who was equally determined as a guy in a band. The two recruited a drummer who was ultimately replaced by Barker in 1998 during the tour for the band’s second album.

Hoppus remembers in the book: “Tom and I became quick friends and bandmates. He had an entire social circle, a group of godless villain rats. That was my people. I really fell in. We spent these sweaty, carefree weeks that terrorize the unusual residents of San Diego. We were young and stupid and unobjectionable.”

Blink-182 made its famous name in a brand of young, humor-loaded punk songs, which were the top billboard charts and achieved platinum sales. The trio has driven personal and professional tumult for more than three decades. The relationship between Hoppus and Delonge was at times as rocky and passionate as a marriage. For decades they lived from tour vans and cramped hotel rooms on the roadside, while they drove with the roller coaster ride of popularity and the main load of record labels, unpredictable public responses and Delonge’s fascination for extraterrestrials and UFOs. When Delonge started other bands, Box Car Racer and Angels & Airwaves in 2005 in 2001, it seemed to see that Blink-182 would not survive the band’s personal and professional divisions.

The fans held their passion regardless of the internal friction of Blink-182. Young people who had discovered the band on tiny stages in the back sticks or through word of mouth and cassettes at the parties have been captured for decades, and Hoppus remains alike.

Hoppus says: “From the beginning, I used to have a mailbox in which people sent a self -addressed, stamped envelope, and I set stickers or as a band that we would put together a silly newsletter that we would send to the people. We always sold our own dealer.

He adds: “What I love about blink is that there is no hierarchy between the band and the people who see us play. I don’t even like to say” fans “because I have the feeling that Blink-182 is a big party and everyone is invited. And I love that people feel this kind of possession of our music and our band.”

Read more: The guitarist Mike Campbell had a challenging relationship with Tom Petty, but “love and respect” never fluctuated

However, it was not smooth in the music press. The humor of Blink-182 has grated a few critics for a long time, but it is the discharge of the band’s punk rock, which makes the Hoppus really angry. In 2023 the Guardian snapped “her shtick sometimes wears thin.” A year later, a reviewer described the end of the band at Lollapalooza as “shabby and repulsive”.

Today they are still no longer stopped as a unit. Hoppus says: “Blink-182 is the heart of all of us, and I think that in the past 15 years the band had separated from the band for the first time, as they have taken from them in one way or another, and the feeling of losing what is blink-182 has recognized the joy of our band. I feel in the world.

The ninth album of the band “One More Time …” was released in 2023 and showed the typical bladder guitars of the trio, plummet drums and songwriting skills. It was the band’s third album that made up 1st place in the Billboard 200th place in the week after its release. It was a triumph that the band had not reached since 2001, with “Off Your Pants and Jacket” and 1999s “Enema of the State”.

This time Charts albums and Touring are not the discrombo-bobbing affair that they were almost 30 years ago when their second album “Dude Ranch” went gold. Within eight months after the publication, the sales grade for half a million and the band had a relentless campaign to achieve global recognition.

Read more: Blink-182 were idiot with cute videos. Twenty years later they have the last laugh

Hoppus writes: “We jumped on every tour and every festival that came in our way. Immediately after the album was released in June 1997, we spent another summer on the warned tour and then went directly to a US tour with less Jake. Then we set off to end for a month, and then end the year when all Rock -Radio Christmas shows were played.

Soon afterwards, loneliness and the feeling of being indecent led to Hoppus wrote “Adams song” when he thought about taking life. His success was bitter and the rawness of the song was not dissolved over time.

“I have it very difficult,” he says. “I wrote this song when I was in a really bad place. Our band started and we were signed on a large label, but I felt really lonely when I came home from the tour. Band and Tom and Travis saved me a second time when I was sick.

Hoppus refers to life -saving moments and his incredibly good luck during our interview and in his book. In fact, this random moment in 2021, when the seed was sown of “Fahrenheit-182”, was sown, the beginning of so much and the momentum no longer stopped.

Hoppus says that the band since the reunification of the band three years ago: “There are no signs of stop, so that’s great. And this book is not like my farewell. It’s just a milestone marker.”

Hoppus will discuss “Fahrenheit-182” at The Wiltern at 4 p.m. April 20.

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.