Suicidal Barker offered friends $1m to kill him

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By ( Louder ) published

Blink drummer Travis recalls death wish after horror plane crash

Travis Barker offered friends $1million to kill him as he struggled to deal with his 2008 plane crash.

Four people died when his Learjet veered off the runway in South Carolina. Only the Blink-182 drummer and his friend DJ AM survived. Barker suffered severe burns to 65% of his body.

In his memoir Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death & Drums Drums Drums, he recalls the pain and guilt he felt over his bodyguard Che Still’s death in the crash.

Barker tells ABC: “I stayed in burn centers for like the next four months. That feels like hell. I would call friends and go, ‘I’ll deposit $1million in whoever’s bank account.’ They had to take my phone out of my room.”

Visits from his children helped steer him away from the suicidal thoughts – but he remains upset at how much the incident affected son Landon. “It was hard for them to see me like that,” says the drummer.

”They colour in class and everyone was drawing pictures of their family and what they did at the weekend. Landon’s drawing a picture of a plane crashing. It was definitely something that he was old enough to understand.”

His agony was prolonged a year later when DJ AM, real name Adam Goldstein, died from a drug overdose. Barker still hasn’t taken another flight – but he’s vowed to do it one day. ”I tell my children, ‘When you’re ready to fly, I’m ready to fly’,” he says.

The book is published next month via HarperCollins. Barker revealed this week that Blink-182 had written five songs with Matt Skiba, who replaced Tom DeLonge earlier this year.

Stef Lach

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.