Blink-182's Mark Hoppus Confirms Band's 'Divorce' With Tom Delonge

Not much has been said by any members of Blink-182 since they publicly fell out in January and guitarist Tom Delonge himself has still not confirmed his official exit from the band.

While Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba recently filled in on some Blink shows in March, all has been pretty quiet in the Blink camp, that is until Blink's Mark Hoppus appeared on the Das Process podcast recently to open up about what has been going on. 

The bassist said that Blink will be moving forward without Delonge, though he can't give "a date or a time."

And he confirmed die hard Blink fans' worst nightmare when he said: "We are right now going through what so far has been a ‘friendly divorce’ with our former guitarist – hopefully things clear up and it doesn’t get all 'managery' and 'lawyery' and all that and we can move forward."

Speaking about his relationship with Delonge with whom he founded the San Diego band with in 1992, Hoppus revealed: “Tom and I have had a troubled back and forth relationship since forever…”.

"Tom was my best friend for years and years and the thing is if you think about the people that you were friends with at the end of high school and the beginning of college…how many of those people are you still friends with? …We’ve been in the same van and bus and aeroplane and backstage room and stage for twenty something years."

The 43-year-old musician maintains however that he holds no grudges towards Delonge. 

"It’s been great, it’s been awesome – Tom is a great songwriter and a very creative person. He’s excited about stuff, he’s inspired me to do things that I never thought I could do and we’ve made great songs together and you know, no hard feelings."

He did however tease that things may get tense as management gradually become involved in the split: "The love is still there – well, wait until after it gets all 'managery' and 'lawyery', he laughed.

He admitted that this being the second time that Delonge has left the band has made it a much easier process for all involved as he touched on Blink's first breakup in 2004: "The first time that Blink broke up was very difficult I think for everybody."

"For me personally, I’ve always loved being ‘Mark from Blink-182’ – I don’t want to do anything else, I want to be known for that. That’s part of my identity and so to not have that was always weird" he recalled.

“To lose my friend and to not have a job…was really difficult for a number of years and this time when we got the call that Tom was out and that he didn’t want to do Blink anymore, it was almost like, 'Oh, ok'.”

Hoppus conceded that he was crushed in January when his life long friend decided to walk away from what he called a "huge beautiful thing that we've spent twenty years building", though he knew that was Delonge's choice. 

“At the same time I was like, ‘He finally did it…you finally are gonna say that,’ like rather than just have things languish and linger…So for him to finally say, ‘I want out’ it was almost like, ‘Man, I’m proud of you. Go do your thing now.'"

Hoppus gave no hints or details as to who would be replacing Delonge though it was apparently discussed that Skiba could step in permanently.

He said that where Blink go from here will be interesting because: "Blink is a band where people know the three of us…people know who Travis Barker is, people know who Tom Delonge is..."

"...There is this whole thing where Tom was a huge part of Blink’s sound so…it’s a little scary to think that we’re going to move forward and sound a little bit different, but also exciting in the same way."

Fans can only hope for a miracle now. Here's your chance to jump in Mr. Delonge — stay together for the kids?