Directory:LiveDaily.com/Interview: Mark Hoppus of (+44)

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Interview: Mark Hoppus of (+44)

January 04, 2007 02:23 PM by Christina Fuoco LiveDaily Contributor

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When Blink-182 pulled the plug in late 2004, singer/bassist Mark Hoppus said very little publicly about the trio's meltdown.

At the time, tattoo-covered drummer/reality TV star Travis Barker said that, thanks to his and Hoppus' new project (+44), Blink-182 was effectively over. Then, several weeks after (+44) was born, singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge announced he formed Angels and Airwaves.

Hoppus mostly remained mum on the subject until (+44)'s debut album "When Your Heart Stops Beating" was released. He let the songs "No, It Isn't" and "Lycanthrope" do the talking for him. (For those keeping track, a lycanthrope is a bloodthirsty werewolf or spirit.)

"It was actually good, because" [those songs] were about the end of Blink-182," Hoppus said. "I needed to get it out there because I didn't really talk about it in the press. I really didn't talk about it with anybody. When it came time to put it into a song, it went right into music. It was a good cathartic thing to do. That's for sure," Hoppus said.

While recently on a tour bus somewhere between Seattle and Portland, Hoppus spoke to LiveDaily via phone about Barker's one-armed drumming (he broke his right arm filming the video for "When Your Heart Stops Beating"), the dark nature of (+44)'s album and the current state of his relationship with DeLonge.

LiveDaily: How's Travis doing with his broken arm? Is he still wearing a cast?

Mark Hoppus: Travis is doing great with his arm. It's awesome--you can't even tell the difference [in his drumming]. He wears a soft cast. He uses his left foot with the trigger. He has a regular snare, and a pad snare on the left side. He's playing with one arm.

That's great that you're still able to tour.

Oh, thanks. We're stoked.

"When Your Heart Stops Beating" is a much darker record than those you recorded with Blink-182. Would you agree?

Yeah, in a lot of ways. Some of the darker stuff I've ever written is on this record. But I think there's a lot of happy--well not happy songs, but faith songs on this record as well. But I wasn't really in a spot where I felt I wanted to write an album all about, like, going out to concerts or whatever. I was writing about what was in my head at the time. The last couple years, I had a bunch of stuff going on. That's what I was writing about.

Sounds like it was a cathartic experience.

Absolutely. It was also an education for all four of us in the band. We're writing from different places. We were writing with new people. We were stretching ourselves as musicians. It was a really good environment, a really good atmosphere to be creating in. I think that we all learned about ourselves music-wise on the record.

What's the most important thing that you learned during that experience?

Just writing with different people and writing with different instruments. In Blink, we always started everything on guitar. With (+44), some stuff started off with guitar, some things started off on drums, some things started off on keyboards. Just writing from that different starting point forced us to change the way we write songs and stretch ourselves that way.

What things were you able to try with (+44) that you weren't able to do with Blink?

I never felt like I wasn't able to do anything in Blink that I wanted to do. But I think that we all kind of were very comfortable in our roles in Blink-182. As much as we always tried to push ourselves in that band, I don't think we did as much as we could have. I never felt restricted in any way.

Have you started thinking about a new album? Are you one of these people who writes all the time or do you only write when you have to?

For the most part, I write in the studio and in the months before we record. But we've been coming up with ideas while we're out on the road right now. We plan on kind of writing the whole time because the momentum was so good when we were in the studio that it would be a shame to stop that all together now that we're on the road.

It must have been great to work in such a creative atmosphere in the studio.

Yeah, it was good. It was definitely a very great environment in the studio that we worked on having. We supported one another.

What was it like to produce your own record, and not have someone else to bounce ideas off of?

We ended up having a producer in the studio. Travis and I produced it for about the first year we were in the studio. We were just coming up with a bunch of different ideas and just putting down anything that came into our head, and pursuing anything that we wanted to do. Then, the last, probably, six to eight months of the record, our friend Jerry Finn came in and guided us in the home stretch, just to make sure. We did want that outside opinion. We did want Jerry's input. He knew how much we wanted to push ourselves as musicians, and, at the same time, he keeps us very grounded. Having his input was definitely necessary.

What are you doing now that your US tour is over?

We're doing Europe for about a month. Then we go to Australia and Japan. Then we come back to the States for about two months of touring over here. We're talking about going to South America. Hopefully we can put that together.

That would be sweet. Have you ever been there?

No. We were never able to. One of the members of Blink-182 refused to go down to South America. So now that we can do that, we'll be going down there as soon as we can.

Do you talk to Tom at all?

Not at all. No.

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