If you love playing punk rock, but can't seem to keep up with those breakneck tempos, then Blink 182's Tom DeLonge has some advice for you. According to the guitarist, masturbation is the key behind mastering those speedy riffs, and says that "if you don’t masturbate, you can’t play punk rock".
The golden nugget of advice was gifted to our friends over at Guitar World in a new interview, where DeLonge discusses his new album Lifeforms, soon to be released with his side project Angels And Airwaves.
titleBlink 182's Tom DeLonge says masturbation is the secret behind playing great punk rockld be fair to say the majority of them haven’t tried picking at full speed for two hours straight," DeLonge says. "Playing fast is not easy. Especially doing it good and doing it for hours.
"You want to know the secret? It’s all about masturbating. That’s the only one way to do it and if you don’t masturbate, you can’t play punk rock [laughs]." Well, we're not entirely sure how those two things are connected, but to each their own...
Elsewhere, the guitarist proves once again to have genitalia on the mind, citing that the one element that ties his biggest hits together in terms of songwriting, is "knowing everyone loves dick jokes". He continues, "Seriously though, I’d say it all comes down to cadence and simplicity. It’s all about the melody for me, whether that’s on a guitar or vocal line.
“It’s always about the rhythm. Shakespeare always had that rhythm. You’d read a Shakespeare play – or listen to somebody read it, because I didn’t fuckin’ read it – but you’d hear that cadence in the writing. 'He doth come over and stab me and he stabs me as he doth come over!' It kinda goes and flows and rhymes, almost like he’s rapping. That’s the genius of Shakespeare...”
In the same interview, DeLonge opens up about his relationship with Blink 182's Mark Hoppus. Speaking of the bass player's ongoing chemotherapy treatment to combat his cancer, the guitarist says: "Mark and I have a long history. When he came out with cancer, it was like nothing else mattered. I just wanted to be there, human-to-human.
"The cool thing is that it looks like the chemo is totally working, which is fucking awesome. Not like working a little bit, it’s literally eradicating this cancer from his body. It’s the best scenario, but it’s still crazy hard for him because it’s chemotherapy – which we all know is difficult from TV or having people we care about going through it.
“So he’s not celebrating. He’s trying to finish up his treatments and he has good days and bad days. I just wanted to be there as a friend, honestly, like a brother. Yeah, we’ve argued over the years and stuff, but right now who the fuck cares about any of that? All I want to do is ask him, ‘What do you need and how can I help your journey right now?’”
Lifeforms is out on September 24 via Rise Records.
