Will Blink-182 Ever Make a Record Again? Will the Tom, Mark and Travis Show Ever Go Out on Tour Again?

It's not likely for the California pop punkers, known by fans as just Blink, that shot to fame in the late 1990s, but since 2005 have been falling apart just as rapidly.

On Nov. 14, 2006, two thirds of Blink-182, bassist Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker will release When Your Heart Stops Beating, the debut album of their new band, called (+44). (Also in the new band are Shane Gallagher and Craig Fairbaugh.)

Pronounced Plus Forty Four, Hoppus now considers the band to be his main musical effort, he said recently, growing from a side project during a Blink-182 touring hiatus to a major label act with two singles on the way and plans for a tour.

And coupled with Blink guitarist and singer Tom DeLonge talking about his new band Angels and Airwaves in a three-to-five year future, all Blink members are engrossed in new, major-label endeavors.

Angels and Airwaves released its debut We Don't Need to Whisper in May. Ryann Sinn, David Kennedy, who played in DeLonge's prior project Box Car Racer, and Atom Willard, The Offspring's drummer, round out the quartet, which goes by the initials AVA.

After much squabbling, and big-time success, Blink-182 announced in February 2005 they had decided to go on an "indefinite hiatus." But with bands breaking up, then getting back together the norm in rock the past decade or so, the news was not a total shocker.

But the future of Blink-182 as a punk rock trio is more in doubt as ever, since all members are nowadays talking in the past tense and in tougher terms about the band that made classic tunes like, "All the Small Things," "The Rock Show" and "What's My Age Again?"
First off, DeLonge seems to have outgrown the potty humor, sophomoric style of Blink.

He has described Angels and Airwaves with unearthly, religious overtones and believes it will be the best work he's done. There is also a heavy military theme to the band, which had a single titles "The War," and has a movie project in the works that reportedly has a World War II story.

DeLonge has been quoted saying Angels and Airwaves will be "the greatest rock'n'roll revolution of this generation" and "more emotional than Blink-182 and Box Car Racer put together."

And, DeLonge told the British music magazine Kerrang! That the genesis of his new band came about this way, "I had a really weird epiphany. My heart was beating about a hundred miles a minute for three weeks straight and it had never happened to me before in my life. I really felt like I'd been touched by something and I felt I was meant to do something massive."

As for the future of Angels and Airwaves, an MTV news story quotes DeLonge saying the next big project would be revealed next year. "It's bigger than just the band itself. It's a mixture of my businesses and the band, and when people laugh and say, 'Oh, yeah, what a big revolution that was!' ... they have no idea. I have access to developing this record far beyond what people can understand," he went on to say."

While Angels and Airwaves took off, Hoppus and Barker were not so chatty in the media.

But Barker, who also plays in the band The Transplants, with Tim Armstrong of Rancid, spoke first.

In April 2005, the website punkbands.com reported Barker making these comments to the Signon San Diego news website: "Blink, as far as I'm concerned, is over. I have the Transplants going on. I have a project going on with Mark Hoppus. It's called Plus 44, and we're recording and writing as we speak. I just kind of see that as the past. It just ran its course, and now it's time for something new and fun."

In August, Hoppus let loose with an interview on the website b182.com, in which he addressed everything about Blink's breakup, including his deteriorating friendship with DeLonge, his continued friendship with Barker and the future.

Hoppus lays most of the break-up on DeLonge and his wanting to do start a solo career and DeLonge starting to take more control of Blink at the end of their existence as they toured Europe. And he says point blank, several times during the interview, "Tom quit (Blink-182)."

Hoppus says he is selling is interests in Blink side projects like Atticus Clothing, the website loserkids.com and Macbeth Shoes, a company he started DeLonge.

"As to whether or not Tom and I will ever be friends again, I can't say," Hoppus said. He went on to say that he has no regrets with Blink-182 and would not do anything differently: "I loved every single minute of Blink-182. The whole experience was a dream come true. We started in a garage and finished playing arenas. We wrote music that we loved, traveled the world, and sold millions of records. We were supported by the most amazing fans in the world. How could I possibly wish anything went any different?"

Although Hoppus clearly has Blink in the rearview mirror, the band could make a u-turn one day, since there has not been an official statement from their record label that the trio is kaput.

Optimists and dreamers can take comfort in the fact that all great bands seem to have reunited at some point, with the exception of The Beatles. But even Johnny Rotten fronted the Sex Pistols on reunion tours in 1996, 2002 and 2003.

And the money machine marches on. Official Blink-182 websites continue to cross promote the bands' new projects vigorously, keeping Tom, Mark and Travis linked together, if only in cyberspace.