Tom DeLonge has claimed he and Mark Hoppus discussed firing Travis Barker a year before the Blink-182 split that exploded into acrimony this week.
The frontman denied he’d quit the band after his colleagues accused him of having refused to start work on an album after they’d spent months in preparations.
Last night DeLonge issued a tweet, soon removed, which said: “A year ago Mark and I spent a week on the phone with managers debating parting with Travis. Don’t pretend there isn’t more to this story.”
Responding to the suggestion that Hoppus and Barker had been carrying him for years, DeLonge said in another statement: “I’ve tried to make things work. I’ve tried to help move this band down 50 different paths. I tried to put forth ideas about how we can grow and become a better band. I’m not sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work.”
He claimed that he’d tried to arrange a band summit that was “quickly narrowed down to three hours in someone’s dressing room in a shitty casino.”
And he said that, while he spent two months in the studio working on the band’s last EP, his colleagues “came in for around 11 days.” He added: “Squabbling and politics forced me to pull the EP down at a time when 60,000 fans were trying to purchase it. That blew my mind – I’d been trying so hard, but that moment broke my spirit. I realised this band couldn’t lose the years of ill will.”
DeLonge continued: “I remember asking one of them on the phone, ‘Did you try your best like we all agreed to?’ He was silent.”
And he finished: “I know them very well, and their current actions are defensive and divisive. I suppose they’re doing this as a way to protect themselves from being hurt. I still care deeply for them. Like brothers, and like old friends. But our relationship got poisoned yesterday.
“Never planned on quitting, just find it hard as hell to commit.”
