'Fahrenheit-182' Is Essential Pop-Punk Reading
Though it might not unlock too many new insights for hardcore Blink-182 fans, 'Fahrenheit-182' is still a great memoir and a foundational read for all pop-punk enthusiasts.
Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir is a book for the die-hard Blink-182 fans, though I’m not sure there will be too much in it about the band, its formation, and breakups/reunions that those fans don’t already know to some degree.
But if you’re a far more casual Blink fan, or just getting into the group, there will be plenty to learn and appreciate about the band’s genesis and meteoric rise to stardom.
Clearly, the most affecting part of the book is Mark Hoppus taking the reader on a journey through his cancer diagnosis, treatment, and the ultimate reunion of the estranged pop-punk band through those intense circumstances. At that point in the band’s history, the iconic trio of Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker were broken up for the second time, though Hoppus and Barker had still put out a couple solid Blink albums with Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio.
It would be hard not to get emotional reading about these longtime friends coming together in the face of a cancer diagnosis. At the same time, Hoppus goes right up to the edge of telling the reader exactly what he thought of DeLonge at certain times of the band’s existence, especially when the relationship was fracturing.
We all know DeLonge wanted to chase aliens and was having a slight dissociation with reality when talking about his other band Angels & Airwaves. But on a personal level, what did Hoppus really think of DeLonge in these times, beyond the surface of “this whole thing is fucked?” As a memoir about the history of the world’s most popular punk band, you’d expect the airing of some more dirty laundry. I would have loved just a bit more of a dive into moments like these, though Hoppus’s vulnerability about his youth, his anxieties, and his sickness were compelling.
At the end of the day, the band is together again, touring, and working on a new album. Most importantly, Hoppus is healthy. Maybe he just didn’t view all that other stuff as a main thrust of the book.
Beyond all that, what stuck out to me perhaps more than anything else in the book, though, was Blink-182’s transparent desire to be a world-renowned rock band.
A punk band that actually wants to be popular, you say?
What I found most interesting was Hoppus’s open admission about the band’s desire to be commercially popular, to be as big a rock band as they could possibly be. In the punk space - and in the adjacent pop-punk space for the most part - that’s always been a sacrilegious aim; “selling out” goes against the entire punk ethos.
But Blink-182 ushered in a different era where making radio-friendly pop-punk hits didn’t bring the world to its destructive end. The band wrote and performed with the intention of being a global act. At no point did they prattle on about the soul and sanctity of punk music; they wanted as many people as possible to hear their music.
Most of the punk bands that say all that rarely mean it, anyway. And when those bands do try something different or evolve their sound just a bit, they find themselves incurring the wrath of fans who accuse them of selling out anyway. So Blink-182 just bypassed all of that by being honest from the start.
It helps to make generational, timeless pop music, too.