Tom DeLonge says his commitment to work on four albums and 15 novels led to his estrangement from Blink-182.
The singer/guitarist has been replaced by Matt Skiba in Blink-182, although he hasn’t officially left the group. The fallout came about after DeLonge said he was unavailable for much of Blink’s planned work this year.
Now he’s outlined the projects that meant he couldn’t commit to Blink’s plans. They include two solo albums and two records with his other project, Angels & Airwaves.
In a post on Instagram, which was uploaded at the weekend but has since been removed, DeLonge says: “One of the reasons all this Blink stuff went haywire was because I am in six contracts with best-selling authors that are co-writing 15 novels with me personally.
“Each one has an EP soundtrack that launches with it. I told my manager the contract that was sent to me for the Blink deal contained weird new language that I had to drop all that music for almost a year. I said I couldn’t, but I could record the album in and around those things that were already in the works.
“He wrote them an email saying I’m out. I didn’t know, and he was only talking about the deal. Next thing you know, a press release saying things I didn’t say.”
Earlier, DeLonge said via Twitter: “I am putting out four albums in one year — this year. To clarify, two albums with Angels & Airwaves, two albums from myself. Three of them are released with novels. This has been in the works for a couple of years.”
Blink-182 have performed three shows with Skiba filling in for DeLonge, including at this weekend’s Musink Festival, but no further plans have been confirmed.