BLINK-182 frontman Mark Hoppus has revealed he genuinely believed he was going to die after being diagnosed with a fast-spreading cancer and had even started preparing his family for life without him.
Speaking on the four-year anniversary of his diagnosis, the pop-punk legend, 53, recalled how the news came out of nowhere while he was relaxing at home.
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The All The Small Things singer told Radio X presenter Chris Moyles today: “It was four years ago today.
“I was playing video games and I was talking to my son who was away at college and I felt a weird thing on my shoulder.
“And three days later I was going ready for chemo. That quick.”
Mark was diagnosed with stage 4 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a serious blood cancer for which there is no standard treatment.
“The chemo was awful, it was brutal,” he added.
“The good news is my form of cancer, the doctor told me I had a 60% chance of getting through it and never having to deal with it again.
“But the bad part was the chemo was one of the worst that you could undergo and it was bad.
“I don’t recommend it. Zero out of five stars. But it saved me so it was all good.”
Mark admitted the emotional toll was just as devastating as he wasn’t feeling at all hopeful.
He said he had prepared for his family, including wife Kelly and son Jack, to “move on” after his death.
Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus shares heartbreaking update in cancer battle revealing he has stage 4 lymphoma
“Oh yeah, it was pretty dark,” he told Chris.
“It was awful and I really thought that I wasn’t going to make it. I thought I was on the wrong side of that 60%,” he said.
“I was mentally preparing for my family moving on and what my wife was going to do after I was gone and who was going to help raise my son.”
Now in remission, Mark says he’s grateful just to be alive and working again.
He said: “So to be here with you all today and to sit next to Captain Crap Beard is just a dream come true.”
Mark co-founded Blink-182 in the early ’90s with Tom DeLonge, who left and rejoined the band multiple times over the years.
Travis Barker joined as drummer in 1998 after original member Scott Raynor’s departure, helping launch the band to mainstream stardom with albums like Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.
Travis himself has faced death – surviving a horrific 2008 plane crash that killed four people inclucing his best friend.
He and DJ AM were the only survivors, and Travis underwent over 20 surgeries and months of rehab.
Now, all three original members are back together, with their latest album One More Time, released last year.
But for a brief time, Tom was absen from the band.
Tom previously left in 2005 to form Angels & Airwaves after Blink-182 split and went on an indefinite hiatus.
He left again in 2015 and was then slammed by Mark and Travis.
In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2015, Mark and Travis discussed the split with their “disrespectful and ungrateful” bandmate and revealed that he had backed out of upcoming commitments, which also included recording a new album.
“We booked January 5th to go into the studio. On December 30th, we get an e-mail from Tom’s manager saying that he has no interest in recording and that he wants to do his other, non-musical stuff and that he’s out indefinitely,” Hoppus recalled at the time.
“There’s a flurry of e-mails going back and forth for clarification about the recording and the show and his manager sends [an e-mail] back saying, ‘Tom. Is. Out.’ Direct quote. This is the exact same e-mail we got back in 2004 when Tom went on indefinite hiatus before.”
Travis added: “I think he’s just bummed because Mark and I were finally honest. We always covered up for him before… It’s hard to cover for someone who’s disrespectful and ungrateful.
“You don’t even have the balls to call your bandmates and tell them you’re not going to record or do anything Blink-related. You have your manager do it. Everyone should know what the story is with him and it’s been years with it.”
Despite the bad blood between the former bandmates, Mark and Tom were “able to completely repair” their friendship as the years went on.
“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,” DeLonge said in a 2021 interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.
“Only because of that call did I learn he had cancer. And he told me on the phone. I was like, ‘Wait, what?”
He added: “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.
“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.”
Is Tom DeLonge back in Blink-182?
Travis and Mark continued to make music without Tom for years, but fans often wondered if he would ever make a return.
That question was later answered in October 2022, when it was revealed that he had rejoined the band.
“Tom DeLonge has rejoined blink-182 and they are coming to the United Center,” Troy Hanson, the Vice President of Rock Programming at Cumulus Media, said on the Q101‘s Brian, Ali & Justin Podcast.
“Live Nation that’s my gift to you for doing this whole thing in late October with Panic! At The Disco. I just blew your nut on Blink-182. Sorry not sorry.”
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