One day after Blink-182's Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker blasted founding member Tom DeLonge to Rolling Stone for being "ungrateful" and "disingenuous" over conflicting reports that he had left the band, the singer-guitarist issued an open letter to fans detailing his side of the story.
"I love Blink and am incredibly grateful for having it in my life. It has given me everything. EVERYTHING," DeLonge wrote in a Facebook post. "I started this band, it was in my garage where I dreamed up the mischief."
The musician said that a band summit he tried to arrange to sort out the group's differences devolved into "three hours in someone’s dressing room in a shitty 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," wrote DeLonge. "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."
Things quickly went downhill, though, according to DeLonge, while the band was recording their 2012 EP Dogs Eating Dogs, a time when DeLonge said the band began to self-sabotage and other members failed to "try [their] best."
DeLonge claims that Hoppus and Barker tried to delay an album by DeLonge's side project Angels & Airwaves, a move that the musician said would have caused numerous breaches of contract. He also alleges that the group tried to force him to record the new Blink-182 album in six months. "All of these other projects are being worked, exist in contract form," wrote DeLonge. "I can’t just slam the brakes and drop years of development, partnerships and commitments at the snap of a finger. I told my manager that I will do Blink-182 as long as it was fun and worked with the other commitments in my life, including my family."
DeLonge also countered Hoppus and Barker's contention to Rolling Stone that he was purposely delaying recording a new Blink album. "From their view, I was controlling everything," wrote the musician. "In reality, I was scared to put myself out there again. To repeat the EP experience."
DeLonge finished the open letter stating that it wasn't "in my nature to fuel negativity about the legacy of the band.
"All of this makes me really sad. Sad for us. Sad for you - that you're witnessing this immaturity," DeLonge concluded. "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. Never planned on quitting, just find it hard as hell to commit."
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