I was shocked, of course, to hear about the plane crash Friday night in South Carolina that killed four people and hospitalized drummer Travis Barker and DJ Adam Goldstein. (The most recent press reports say that Barker and Goldstein are both expected to make a full recovery.) Everyone on that plane (and their friends and families) has my deepest sympathies. I haven’t seen Barker for a while, but I got to know him pretty well a few years back: between 2000 and 2003 I wrote three separate articles for Rolling Stone on his previous band, Blink-182. When I spent time with him, Barker was intensely focused on the things he loved–principally music and Cadillacs. In addition to being a beast on the drums, Barker was Blink-182’s de facto arranger: if you enjoyed the stop-start dynamics of a single like “All the Small Things,” that was his doing. Barker was quiet and reserved, especially in contrast to the other members of Blink-182, who were entertaining loudmouths–but once I got to know him, he was genuinely sweet. I wish him (and Goldstein) a speedy and complete return to good health.

My 2000 cover story on Blink-182 was previously up in the archives; I’ve just added the article I wrote about traveling to the Middle East with Blink-182 in 2003, when they played shows on an American naval base in Bahrain and an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Oman. It’s probably worth noting that Tom DeLonge changed his mind about the merits of the war and its politics not long after this article was printed; he was a vocal supporter of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

posted 22 September 2008 in Archives, Articles, News and tagged Blink-182, Rolling Stone, Travis Barker. 2 comments