Mom's dad was in the army, stormed the beach at Normandy, fought through the French hedgerows, the Battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, and liberated concentration camps at the end of the war.
I dated the same girl all through high school.
All I can hope to do is instill great morality in my son and trust him along the way. The music he listens to or how he chooses to wear his hair doesn't define his moral compass, and if he wants to listen to country music and wear a cowboy hat too, that's fine.
Now everything is available at the push of a button, and that thrill of the search is gone. With vinyl albums and special edition releases, I feel like that's coming back.
I believe that artists should be paid for their creativity. There's no other industry where people can come in and take what you create for free and give it away for free and that's acceptable.
I'm always asking friends what new music they're into, and I love showing people new talented artists.
I firmly believe artists should be paid for what they create.
We really try not to spend too much time thinking about what we're supposed to be a punk band, or whatever. We do the exact same thing today that we been doing for years and years and years.
I like the beaches in Orange County the best. I think Orange County has great beaches. Everything from Dana Point to Newport to Laguna; all over the place.
I don't think any of us felt like, "Oh, we need to put joke songs on the record." If we found something funny, we would record it, and if we wanted to, we'd put it on the record. It's not really something we spent too much time agonizing over.
What I love about Blink-128 is that we write catchy melodies with dark lyrics.
There was a great push and pull of what Blink-128 should sound like all the time. Travis Barker comes from a different background than I do, and Tom DeLonge comes from a different background than either of us in terms of what we write and what we think a song should be. Tom pushes me out of a box that I put myself in.
We worked very hard on that untitled record to do something different and that we were proud of and to try a bunch of different ideas. It was like this gigantic musical laboratory that we were going to every day. I love that record, I think that's one of the high watermarks of us as a band.
Then when we did the untitled record, we just didn't feel like putting joke stuff on it, so we didn't. It wasn't really a deliberation or a real introspective thing like, "Are we going to joke on this one, are we not going to joke on this one?" We just didn't feel like it on the untitled one, so we didn't.
I still feel like we're the underdogs, but I feel like people respect us now. People might not like our band or love our music, but I think people respect the fact that we've been doing this for many years and are still doing it and still able to play three giant New York City shows and have people come out.
Every one of those old songs like "What's My Age Again?" and "All the Small Things" is like a tattoo or a scrapbook or an old photograph. There are just songs that define certain moments in your life. Everyone has a song that got them through a bad breakup or they put on and it made them feel like they wanted to go out and kick the world's ass with their friends on a weekend. Those songs still feel like that to me.
We never really set out to talk about California on the album ['California'], it was something that we noticed that was happening about three-quarters of the way through the recording process. We were looking at which songs we thought would make the record and we realised that there was this theme coming through. I think it's just a product of being in California for as long as I have.
I liked seventeen-year-old me, I was happy when I was seventeen. I was this troubled goth kid that wore eyeliner and make-up to school and listened to punk-rock music and I loved my friends and I started to make music - I like seventeen-year-old me.
There's also this weirdness to California, this darkness, it's a place where people come to follow their dreams and sometimes don't make it.
California to me as a concept or as an idea always seems like endless optimism and endless opportunity - when people think of California they think of palm trees and blue skies and gorgeous sunsets and beaches and everything else.
He [Patrick Stump] is been a friend of ours for a long time, and when we were talking about working with different producers and songwriters for the record, Patrick's name came up. We were excited to work with him - he's a very gifted lyricist and songwriter, and a really cool guy and it was a pleasure to work with him in the studio.
I kinda like the duality of California and the dark side, the underbelly of California, and I think that's what this album ['California']feels like - there's endless hope and optimism but there's also a darker side.
I like that about human nature, that people are always striving to do better, and find something new.
No matter what, I think people are trying to better themselves, or to better their situation, or to find something new and exciting.
I don't have a problem being on 'MTV,' and I don't have a problem being on the radio. I actually like it. So there. And anyone that calls me a sell out is just jealous.
