Release: Thursday, August 13
Where to watch: Disney+ & Hulu
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Travis Barker is the subject of a forthcoming Disney+/Hulu documentary about his career and the 2008 plane crash that changed his life, and ahead of its release, the Blink-182 drummer has given a long interview to the New York Times’ Popcast.
There’s lots of ground to cover, but one particularly interesting bit is when Barker talks about the physical toll his drumming style has put on his body. When asked whether the battle wounds had all been worth it, he simply says: “Scars are cool. I’ve never left a show when my hands are a mess and I think ‘I wish I didn’t play the way I did’.
Barker pointed out that he can keep playing in his trademark style partly because he keeps fit. He said he first started to see a link between the two “when I got tired... any time you’re out there and you think of something you want to do and you physically can’t do it because your skill level is not there to, you don’t have the stamina or the endurance, that’s a problem.
"I never want to be there. To not get tired, I need to run or box or sprint. And those are all the things that I replaced bad habits with when I got sober.”
Later on Barker explained how his versatility was in one sense Blink 182's secret weapon. “Tom (DeLonge, guitarist) and Mark (Hoppus, bassist) would just be playing chugs or a riff that was really linear and simple and then Tom would say ‘do that crazy shit that you do’. And that means play a weird latin beat over this and it becomes a signature drum part.”
Barker cited Dysentery Gary from 1999’s Enema Of The State album as an example. “I think it’s the pre-chorus where it goes into Latin world.
"That’s why playing jazz and playing in a marching band and having a drum instructor make me play latin patterns where I independently do something different with my left hand. That’s where that… it blessed me with different ways to approach punk rock or whatever music I was playing in my own unique fashion that became my signature.”
There’s plenty more in the interview ,that also covers how Barker overcame his fear of flying following a 2008 crash in which he was one of only two of six to survive, his entry into the world's foremost reality TV family (he’s currently married to Kourtney Kardashian) as well as the documentary itself.
That is entitled Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear and can be seen via Disney+/Hulu from August 13.
