MARK HOPPUS POSTS A BLINK-182 STORY
You can read a new blink-182 story from Mark Hoppus below.
This is a photo of one of the greatest humans I’ve ever known. Jerry Finn. He produced all the blink-182 albums from Enema of the State through the untitled record, until his untimely death in 2008. Jerry was one of the kindest, funniest, most talented people to walk the Earth. He helped turn blink-182 into what it is. I took this photo on a private jet the label got for us to fly to the MTV European Music Awards in 2001. We flew overnight to Frankfurt, Germany, went to the hotel, slept for a few hours, went to sound check, then went straight into the awards ceremony. To our complete surprise, we won the award for Best Rock, beating out U2, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, and Crazy Town. We also had the honor of closing the show with a live performance of First Date. We’d planned it out for a couple of weeks, and thought it’d be funny to use the characters from the video, and at our request, the label also hired a bunch of extras for the performance. Dudes in chaps, elderly couples chasing each other in walkers, bikini babes washing an old Volkswagen bus, etc. It was an expensive undertaking, flying us, our producer, our crew, wives, hiring extras, renting a vintage VW bus, shipping all of our gear and everything else, but the show goes out live to a billion people around the world, so it was surely worth all the effort, time, and expense. We took the stage for our big exit performance. Ali G announced us, Travis counted us in, and we started the song. Unfortunately, one of the guitars used by Depeche Mode from their performance earlier in the night still had its wireless transmitter on, and of course it was set to the same frequency as Tom’s guitar. After the intro, his guitar cut out completely for the rest of the song. So our triumphant show-closing performance fell flat, as Travis and I played a drum and bass remix and Tom sang along, hoping desperately that something would happen and his guitar would turn back on, or time would stop completely and we could all disappear. Neither happened. Then we got back on the plane and flew home. Jerry laughed at us the whole way. True story.
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»Aug. 25 @ 6:37PM | 74 notes
