COED’s Interview with Mark Hoppus of Blink-182

Last night Neal and I went out to dinner  (and back to high school) with Blink-182‘s charismatic bassist and lead singer Mark Hoppus to talk about his new show “A Different Spin” debuting on Fuse this Thursday. It was supposed to be a business type dinner where Mark pushed his show and we ran home and wrote about it. But we’re COED so we made sure to get a little off topic during the meal — and we’re proud to say that after spending some quality time with Mark, we were more excited than ever to see him back in the spotlight.

Even though he wouldn’t do any Rock Show acapella, he totally made up for it by telling us  a few awesome stories, including how on his way to the dinner, he stole a cab from Robert Redford. I didn’t believe it until his other guests/witnesses backed it up. Reminds us of the time one of our editors stole a cab from John Stewart and snapped a picture that BLEW UP on Digg.com. Like most of you, I was a big Blink 182 fan growing up and I had the awesome opportunity to pick Mark’s brain about the band, his TV show, and if his friends still say he should act his age.

Someone asked Mark his favorite place to eat in New York City for under $10 and he responded jokingly, “How would I know that? I sold 25 million records.” While he meant it as a joke, it was totally true. He is one of the top rock musicians in the world and really did define a generation with his music. After all, most people my age will gladly say that their first mosh pit experience happened at a Blink concert.

The return of Blink 182 has been a big mystery on the internet. The band reunited for a tour last summer but haven’t released any new material in years. Mark confirmed that the band is getting back together and will start recording as soon as Travis is back from Europe. (I wish I could tell you my job to just hold off on the blog until I’m back from Europe.) They have 7-8 songs outlined and will create the beats in studio. Mark is well aware of his following — how can you not be with over 1.5 million followers on Twitter — and really just wants to get new material out to the fans. I suggested that they look into releasing a mix tape similar to what rappers do but he said since the band is signed to a major label they would probably shoot down the idea.

But enough about how his fans are chomping at the bit to hear some new music. Let’s get  back to his joke about selling 25 million records and being a massive successful rock star. Not many people know that Mark has helped produce many up and coming bands and offered them helping hands that they flat out could not have got anywhere else.  He asked if I was aware of any bands coming out of the college scene that he should check out and as it turns out COED has been following the career of Nottingham, a band of friends based out of New Jersey who took time off from school to tour this year and have put together an impressive start to their career. The guy from AbsolutePunk.net was well aware of Nottingham (which kind of made me all emo and sad because I thought we were the only ones) and it made me wonder what a band needs to do these days to get exposure through all the YouTube/MySpace clutter on the internet. Like how can someone be the next Justin Bieber…minus the lesbian haircut?

Mark said first and foremost, the band needs a great song — without it they’ve got nothing. Secondly they need to burn three or four of their best songs to CD and get it into the right hands. So often he receives CD’s from aspiring bands jam-packed with 10 songs and it’s confusing. He said to play as many songs as humanly possible regardless of the situation and went on to tell a story about how in the very early days of Blink 182 they drove a few hundred miles in a snowstorm just to play a show for 10 people. I mean that’s dedication,  I won’t even go see my girlfriend if there’s more than a 50% chance of rain.

He says that it is exposure and word of mouth from other bands that will get the ball rolling. If someone you open for really enjoys your music and the show you put on, they will act as ambassadors in the future.  And most importantly he said don’t get comfortable. So many times a band will have a hit single and try to ride that wave when in reality they should be focusing on parlaying that success into more opportunities.

Oh and despite being a huge punk band, Mark still listened to his mom when it came to getting advice. Blink 182 would have never happened if it wasn’t for Mark’s Mom. While he was in college Mark and the band got their first opportunity to hit this road. Only problem was the guys were in college and couldn’t travel very far from their home base in southern California. His Mom gave the life changing advice when she said the guys should take a semester off and tour. She said he could always go back to college, but being in a band was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The advice seemed to pay off because the band went on to produce 10 Top-10 singles.

But Mark  will be the first to admit there were many songs the band wrote that  didn’t get radio play or love from critics.  The example he gave was “Going Away To College” off of Enema of the State which he wrote on Valentine’s Day after watching the movie Can’t Hardly Wait. Mark said it’s about a guy coming back home and wondering if his old girlfriend will remember him and he says it is still one of the bands favorite songs to play live.

Mark is very excited for the debut of his new TV show. He is taking a “let’s wing it” kind of attitude into the whole process (not to different from my approach to COED),  but does say that the show will consist of interviews, performances, music news and his  industry knowledge and irreverent sense of humor. He is filming the first episode today with Neon Trees and will have some of the top musical artists of the day stop by the studio. He did say there will be a segment called “Question Mark” where users will submit questions via their smartphone for him to answer.

Mark Hoppus’ top 5 favorite websites: Notcaught.com, Brooklynvegan.com, Absolutepunk.net, Latimes.com, Fuse.tv.

Mark Hoppus’ top 5 favorite TV shows: Louie, Children’s Hospital, Mad Men, The Wire, Party Down (Canceled).

Photo credit Marion Curtis/Starpix