"People would come backstage, take a look around and be like, This is f***ing boring." Blink-182's Mark Hoppus on how the pop-punk superstars steered clear of temptations that destroy so many lives in the music industry

Blink-182 vocalist/bassist Mark Hoppus freely admits that his band are "boring" when it comes to living up to the clichés of rock 'n' roll debauchery, and he couldn't be happier about this.

In a new interview with The Independent newspaper, Hoppus, 53, says that even when the band were first propelled to global fame in the late '90s with their hugely successful Enema Of The State album, they were never tempted to write new chapters in the Led Zeppelin / Motley Crue playbook for aspiring rock stars.

“We weren’t really big partiers,” he insists. “Sometimes we’d drink or whatever, but it wasn’t part of our lifestyle. People weren’t getting hammered all the time, and there weren’t chicks backstage. People would literally come back, take a look around and be like, ‘This is f***ing boring’.”

“The band was always too important to us to put it at risk by doing the stuff that we saw had ruined bands,” he continues. “There are so many cautionary tales out there, and don’t get me wrong we’ve gotten close on a bunch of it: we’re the band who spent a million dollars recording an album; we’ve broken up twice and gotten back together twice. We’ve done a lot of the rock’n’roll clichés, but luckily, it hasn’t been drugs and alcohol.”

Last month, in an interview with The Guardian, time to coincide with the release of his autobiography, Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir, Hoppus revealed how, having grown up in a broken home, his discovery of skateboarding and punk rock opened up a gateway into a culture where he finally felt a sense of belonging.

“A total sense of community,” he told writer Alexis Petridis. “I didn’t belong to any cliques in school, any sports teams or cool kids’ clubs, and then skateboarding came around. It was like: ‘Do your own shit, be part of us. We welcome all the outcasts, come be part of our little fucked-up crew.’ I loved that. Same with punk rock: ‘We are the haven for the outcasts and the downtrodden – bring us your losers, because we’re all in this together.’”

Reminiscing about Blink-182's early days, before finding fame with the 15-million-selling Enema Of The State, Hoppus stated the experience was "totally the most fun."

"I mean, it’s the fucking worst, trying to find the next venue or a fucking shower – the quest for a shower is insane," he said. "We would go days with no shower and you’re in the gnarly heat, playing in the middle of the day in 92% humidity in some parking lot in New Jersey. But skateboarding, playing in a band, driving down freeways shooting fireworks at each other – what more could you hope for in your early 20s?"

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.