Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesAnd the he-said-he-said saga continues...
Blink 182's Tom DeLonge has responded via a Facebook post to Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker's interview with Rolling Stone, in which the two accused DeLonge of being "disrespectful and ungrateful" while insisting the 39-year-old musician quit the band.
Their interview with the publication was in response to Tom's countering of a press release (he wrote on Instagram that he "never quit") which claimed that the recording artist was taking an indefinite hiatus from group, which has been around since the early 1990s.
"The truth is always a good place. Let's go there," he began in his lengthy post, attempting to set the record straight. "I love Blink and am incredibly grateful for having it in my life. It has given me everything. EVERYTHING. I started this band, it was in my garage where I dreamed up the mischief."
While Hoppus and Barker claimed the trio had plans to record an album, but Tom refused to come into the studio, DeLange says he has been doing everything in his power to keep the band together.
"So what have I been doing behind the scenes? Well, I've tried to make things work." he wrote. "I've tried to help move this band down 50 different paths using my people, or other people, and people we don't even know. I tried to put forth ideas about how we can grow and challenge ourselves to become a better band. I'm not sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work. I'm not wired that way.
"The big reset was when I tried to put together a band summit in Utah where we'd talk and work things out," he continued. "It quickly was narrowed down to three hours in someone's dressing room in a s--tty casino. What I hoped would be a positive get-together away from everything turned into an awkward meeting in a smelly convention hall dressing room. But it was there that I told Mark and Travis that as long as we talked, and things were good between us as real friends, that I would be engaged and work passionately. I'd mirror our personal relationship. Exact words."
He then takes credits for the group's recording efforts and says that his bandmates were barely in the studio.
"Then, the EP was the test. Months later, we're recording those songs. I was in the studio for two months and they came in for around 11 days," he claimed. "I didn't mind leading the charge, but we had all agreed to give it 100%. And this time- no baggage. Despite that, we still somehow managed to self-sabotage. At one point, squabbling and politics forced me to pull the EP down at a time when 60,000 fans were trying to purchase it. And that blew my mind...It was after that episode that I promised myself I would never be in that position again – to rely on the words we said to each other."
He added: "I remember asking one of them on the phone, "did you try your best? Like we all agreed to?" He was silent."
DeLonge does take credit for his role in the band's demise, calling himself "nuts."
"But there's three of us – we're all accountable," he continued. "At the end of the day, we've always been dysfunctional, which is why we haven't talked in months. But we never did. In the 8 years we have been together it has always been that way."
The guitarist goes on to discuss his other music endeavors—he also fronts the alt-rock band Angels & Airwaves—while insisting that he always remained committed to his Blink commitments "as it was fun and worked with the other commitments in my life, including my family."
"So you can imagine my surprise when a press release went out yesterday—without my knowledge—about the band's future," he wrote. "This is new to me. It's not in my nature to fuel negativity about the legacy of the band on something as trashy as the Internet world. But I guess that's another example of how I differ from most. I follow the light... I follow passion and I make art. I hang with my son, my daughter and my wife.
"At the end of the day, all of this makes me really sad," he acknowledged, "Sad for us. Sad for you- that you're witnessing this immaturity. 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. Like we all do. And even as I watch them act so different to what I know of them to be, I still care deeply for them. Like brothers, and like old friends. But our relationship got poisoned yesterday.
He concluded: "Never planned on quitting, just find it hard as hell to commit."
Thoughts on Delonge's reponse? Tell us in the comments!