Tom DeLonge
Tom DeLonge
Thomas Matthew "Tom" DeLonge, Jr., is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is currently the guitarist and lead vocalist of the rock band Angels & Airwaves and was the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the American rock band Blink-182 from 1992 to 2015. DeLonge grew up in the suburbs of Poway, California, where he embraced skateboarding at an early age. DeLonge received his first guitar shortly thereafter and began writing original punk rock songs...
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth13 December 1975
CityPoway, CA
When we started Angels Airwaves, we wanted to produce our art on different mediums, but the film was an ambitious one because we actually didn't go into it thinking we could make a big feature film.
We just write down a bunch of words, and pray to god they make sense. And if we don't, it doesn't matter, we're artists
My company created a platform called Modlife, this prepackaged website that runs an artist's website.
When you work with a major label they create their own message for you and a lot of the time that works great, or at least it did back in the 90's but now it doesn't work, so I think as an artist if you learn your own business, like anybody would when they want to start a little restaurant - they'd figure it out and then build it and they work hard - then it could be your own little business that you grew to as big as you want it to be but you had much more control with how to communicate it and how it's cared for.
So many artists today will talk about green this or organic that, but you know what? What we are eating, I think, is really doing a lot of bad to us. I'm not sure if I'm the guy to do it right now, because I have to clean up my house too, so to speak, but we've got to start addressing this. Too many people are getting sick today.
If artists slowly learn how their business works, they'll have the ability to grow at any rate they can dream up, but they'll also have the ability to control the message whatever that might be.
I've realized that I love all forms of music and get excited when any artist goes crazy and creates something that is an experience.
I believe that working independently will give artists the ability to communicate the full extent of their art and not just a piece of it that might sell.
I think that one of the reasons that we chose the word love as the subject is because your human connection and how you affect everybody around you, you'll only understand the gravity of that as you pass later on in life. I think as artists it's our ability to communicate that in certain ways.
I don't listen to punk any more, unless it's right before I play. Not that I don't like it, it's nostalgic. But, it's for kids and it should be it's not art, it's expression.
We really take our music seriously and we take the band very seriously. But we have a lot of personality. So if we're going to write a song about kissing a girl, we're gonna write it. And people think we're a funny band, but we're just realistic, we put our personality into our lyrics.
We're immature guys playing pranks on people, having fun,
Everyone else but me surfs. I grew up skateboarding, but I don't even do that anymore. I'll get hurt and die. But if I die, I'll sell more records. We're thinking of doing that. Actually dying.
We were joking about enemas and I said, 'We should call it