Blink-182 drummer clean, busy after ‘big awakening’
Q&A: Travis Barker survived drug addiction and a plane crash, and now he’s back behind the kit with four albums in the works
The new year has barely begun, but Travis Barker’s calendar is already getting crowded.
“I have like four albums coming out,” says the 40-year-old drummer from his home in L.A.
“Blink-182 is in the middle of doing an album. I’m finishing up a Transplants EP — we’ll have two EPs in the next year, actually. I’m doing a solo album that I’m about halfway through. It’ll be the followup to my album Give the Drummer Some. It’s predominantly me doing all the music and production and it’ll be a hip-hop-centred album. And then I did an album with Omar (Rodriguez-Lopez) and Cedric (Bixler-Zavala) from Mars Volta and their new band Antemasque. So I’m real excited. The next year is going to be fun.”
He’s earned it. After all, Barker spent much of the past two years working on his brutally honest memoir Can I Say. Released last fall, the autobiography unflinchingly details his personal and professional highs and lows — from his glory days with Blink-182 to his turbulent marriages, sex and drug addictions and the 2008 plane crash that left him horribly burned and suicidal.
The hyperactive Barker found the time to call up and talk about coming clean, flying and second chances.
Q: The book is incredibly honest. Was it tough to be that open?
A: It was actually easy. I’m not an addict no more. I’m not suicidal in a burn centre no more. I’m not sleeping with 100 girls a day any more. I’ve come out on the other side of all those things and it’s a much brighter, positive side of things. Some people may think, ‘Man, being with a million girls whenever you want is cool.’ But no, it’s not. That lifestyle is not something I was proud of. Neither was my drug lifestyle. Some of the stuff in the book makes my skin crawl with shame. But it was important to say it.
It must be difficult to be asked about the plane crash over and over again.
Well, you have to understand that right after the accident, man, I dealt with some really tasteless journalists who would ask things like, ‘So how does it feel living through a plane crash where everyone else has died?’ I would walk out of interviews constantly. It wasn’t something I could talk about. I watched four people die and I couldn’t do anything about it, 65 per cent of my body was burned and I wanted to commit suicide. I had to deal with that for so long that talking about it in the book was nice because I could finally explain everything and get it out of my system. It was therapeutic for me. There’s still days when I’m hit hard. And then there’s days when I don’t even think about it. I’m thankful for those.
You haven’t flown since the accident. Is that something you want to overcome?
I would love to. But the thought of me going into a plane and being trapped in a little area — like the one I had to escape while I was on fire — it just scares the s--t out of me. And I was already very, very afraid of flying before that happened, so literally my worst nightmare came true. But I don’t want my kids to have that fear so they can’t fly. So I’d like to overcome it to show them it’s not something you need to fear. But anytime I feel like I might try to fly, there’s a horrific piece on the news where 250 people are dead.
Do you feel fully recovered physically and mentally?
I’m healthier than ever. I was a drug addict before. Now I box an hour a day, I run, I skateboard with my kids, I’m playing music. They gave me a laundry list of things I would never do again and I proved them all wrong. It was a big awakening for me. But it’s hard — the plane crash was what sobered me up, but it’s also what led to one of my best friends dying.