A few months ago, Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus revealed that he was battling cancer. Fortunately, most updates since then have been positive, like earlier this month when it was revealed that his chemotherapy treatment is complete. All this while, he has received support from Travis Barker and Tom DeLonge, the latter of whom just revealed that his and Hoppus’ relationship really improved after he learned about Hoppus’ cancer.
In a chat about Angels & Airwaves with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, DeLonge revealed that he just happened to learn about Hoppus’ cancer by chance, and that once he did, he and Hoppus started talking a lot more than they used to:
“The way the universe works is strange, because I reached out to Mark because I needed him to sign this piece of paper that had to do with my divorce. Only because of that call did I learn he had cancer. He told me on the phone. I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ And we weren’t really talking much at all, maybe once every couple of months, a little text here and there. But now, we talk multiple times a day. So it’s like we’ve been able to completely repair that friendship and really cut to the depth of who we are as people and what this is all about. And he’s had a really difficult time, but he’s doing really good right now, in the sense of where the cancer is gone, as far as we know, and the chemo worked really well. So now he’s healing up. I don’t think he’s jumping for joy, but he’s emotionally supercharged from where he was. It’s interesting how stupid and how much ego is involved with boys. We’re just boys and bands. Women are so much better at this stuff than we are. I always tell my wife, I was like, ‘Boys are weird because unless it’s a big deal, we’re either going to fist fight or we’re just going to brush it under the rug. There’s no gray area.’”
Watch a clip from the interview here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.