Q&A: Blink-182's Mark Hoppus

Mark Hoppus / Photo by Megan Thompson

There's been a lot of talk about whether you're going to release a new Blink-182 single.
Well, we'll definitely play at least one or two new songs on the tour, but I don't know yet if the single's going to be released. Ideally, I would love to have a single come out around the time we're going to be going on tour, just so people have a little taste of the new music and can enjoy it at the show. New songs at shows always seem a little weird. When I go and I see a band play and they're like, "We're going to play some new stuff now," I just go, "Oh my God, for real?" I just want to rock out with the stuff I can sing along with. So I would love to have a single out beforehand.

You do so much online with your fans. Will you get them involved on tour, too?
Yeah, definitely. We haven't decided on anything yet, but we always try to let people into the soundchecks, and we try and do meet-and-greets. Our whole thing, as part of the live show, is to eliminate the separation between the band onstage and the audience watching us. I think that Blink has always had this feeling that we're all in this together, that the audience wasn't a separate thing. We want everyone to feel like they're part of the show in some way. Do not be surprised if all of a sudden we're playing right next to you.

Seriously, you have half a million people following you on Twitter. Why?
Pete [Wentz of Fall Out Boy, 561,000 Twitter followers] and I have been trying really hard to make things cool. We're not guys that feel like we're above anybody because we're in a band. Especially in Blink, we've always recognized the fact that the only reason we get to do what we do is because people support us. It breaks my heart when I see bands that don't interact with their fans and think that success is deserved, rather than it being a wonderful blessing that people support your band.

One last thing: Is Tom ready to not be so serious?
I think even more so than people realize. Because Tom has been such a serious artist for the past five years, he has about five years of obscenities backed up in his system. Given a microphone and an audience in front of him, I think he's going to say so many out-of-line things that I'd like to apologize in advance for my friend.