TRAVIS BARKER
The blink-182 drummer on staying centered, overcoming anxiety, and becoming a mentor to a younger generation of creatives.
From the beginning of his tenure with blink-182, Travis Barker was the “serious” one—an oasis of relative calm and maturity among the dick jokes and dirtbag expressions that animated his bandmates. Barker worshipped jazz drummers and practiced for hours every day, but almost more importantly, this studied devotion to his technique was coupled with the je ne sais quoi separating real rock stars from the pretenders.
So maybe it’s not surprising that, a couple of decades on, Barker has remained renowned for his musicianship and style while aging into a mentor for a newer generation of artists: an example of how to marry stardom with plain hard work. The night before we meet at Manhattan’s Baccarat Hotel, Barker capped off an appearance at Tommy Hilfiger’s New York Fashion Week show with a live performance of an original song just a few minutes long that he nonetheless practiced 10 hours for. “Music is my religion; it’s all I do,” he says, very seriously, from his seat in the hotel dining room. “From the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep every day, I’m either producing or writing or performing. Besides my kids, that’s all I know.”
This dogged commitment has allowed Barker to live multiple lives in the American mainstream, beyond the poppunk dominance of blink-182. He has become the go-to
drummer across musical genres and generations, performing with rappers and punks alike, and oversees the careers of burgeoning stars like Willow and Machine Gun Kelly. He is also, notably, a new celestial body within the Kardashian universe, following his public courtship of and marriage to Kourtney Kardashian. The future holds a great many plans he’s excited about, though he politely refused to hand out any spoilers (most notably regarding the persistent rumors that guitarist Tom Delonge will rejoin blink-182, years after his departure). We talked to the musician about paying tributes to bygone friends, relearning how to fly, what keeps him going, and much more.
In your memoir, there are a couple of instances of people L’OFFICIEL: talking about how blown away they were by your playing. Do you remember when you realized you had that impact on people?
It would be cool to hear that; it’s those moments TRAVIS BARKER: where you’re like, “Oh, maybe I’m doing the right thing.” But I’d never take it and inflate my ego. It would just give me the motivation to keep going. I’d play with whoever I could play with, and throw myself into these situations just to see if I could hang. What I could do, you know?
A lot of people struggle with that ego; is there anything you do L’O: to stay centered?
Go boxing, and get hit in the face a few times. That’ll TB: always check your ego.
Over the last couple of years, you’ve been more visibly working L’O: with younger artists. What pushed you in that direction?
COVID happened, and it changed everything. I’m TB: usually in my studio for a month, and then I’m pulled away to do shows or whatever, and I was just in my studio. So it was really easy. I had finished producing a bunch of stuff for Trippie Redd; I had done one song for Machine Gun Kelly; and then we had this little crew that was always hanging out. Then right around that time, everyone was on lockdown—and I was like, fuck it, I’m just gonna stay in the studio every day and write and record because no one knew what was going to happen. I literally stayed in my studio for 20 hours a day, every day, for like, six months, and co-wrote and produced [Machine Gun Kelly’s 2020 album] Tickets to My Downfall. I just work with people I want to work with; I don’t have a manager who puts me in the studio with artists. Kelly and I have known each other for 15 years; he’s come to blink shows, and I’ve watched his whole career. I’ve been like a mentor to him, and he’s been like a brother to me. So everything pretty much happens organically. It was so fun to not tour and just be in the studio and create stuff and do everything you don’t normally get to do.
Having seen the music industry change, what’s the advice you L’O: share with young artists that you wish you might have gotten at the start?
A great SONG IS STILL WHAT YOU need, BEFORE Tiktok CAN WORK FOR YOU.
You don’t know until you live through it, right? When TB: blink was at its highest, the label would just tell us what to do. We didn’t know we could be like, We don’t want to do that—we just thought you do what you’re told if you want to be on the label. But we were also so good at making fun of ourselves; my experience was the perfect balance of not taking yourself too seriously. I didn’t have any sort of mentor aside from when we’d talk with people who were more experienced than we were, but you learn something from every tour.
I WAS A trash man PLAYING IN A punk band, SKATING EVERY DAY.