Okay, I'm just jumping in here.

There's no theme song yet because we are going to get to that big debut later.

But first, hello and welcome to teen Beat, a brand new interview show hosted by me Daniel Fischl, podcaster, TV director, recent celebrity ballroom dancer, mother of two, and is proven by the headshot on the wall of my dry cleaners.

I am the former child actor known as Tapanga from the nineties TV family sitcom Boy Meets World, and as a result of that role, my entire teenage existence from the age of twelve to nineteen was in front of both a live studio audience and millions of viewers at home.

From my first kiss to my first haircut, absolutely everything was caught on camera.

So now, thirty years later, it's time to turn the tables.

My goal here on teen Beat is to sit down with interesting people who have accomplished interesting things in hopes that learning about their untelevised upbringings will help us understand who they are today.

Since they're first pimple wasn't also part of a TGIF block of programming, the least they can do is share it with me.

Now, I gave you my childhood, It's time we hear yours and for the first teen beat episode ever, I think I have found the perfect guest, because no matter what generation you like to claim, chances are your coming of age soundtrack included his voice.

He was present for your first crush, your newly licensed long drives down a highway, and a majority of your bad decisions, including all of those fourth meal taco bell runs of the late nineties and early two thousands.

He's an architect of the entire pop punk scene, somehow taking his underground rock childhood interests and bringing its sensibility, musicality, and immature humor to not only the TRL Countdown, but to mainstream audiences around the globe.

If Warp Tour was a contagious disease, and for many years it was, he was patient zero.

With sales totaling over fifty million records worldwide, three number one albums, seven songs in the hot one hundred eighteen million Spotify listeners per month, a Coachella headlining surprise, and over half a million tickets sold during their twenty twenty three reunion tour, their highest grossing it.

They have proven that thirty years after their debut album, first hit shelves they are stronger than ever.

And his twenty twenty five book Fahrenheit one eighty two, a memoir, debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and chronicled two things we have in common, a midlife cancer battle and the ability to write melodic anthems that will withstand the test of time.

The crown is heavy for us both.

He may have been instrumental in your awkward teenage years, but now it's time to find out what his were like.

Welcome to teen Beat, the man who once wrote the lyric I want to see some name, dudes.

That's why I built this pool.

It's founding member of Blank one eighty two.

Mark Opus.

Hello, I sound really cool when you laid all out like that.

That's raight, Okay, yeah, let's go now.

I feel very uh accomplished.

You are very accomplished, and you are very cool.

Thank you for being here with me.

This is really quite an honor.

Thank you glad to be here.

Not only were you kind enough to share your time with us, but we somehow convinced you to write and perform the official teen Beat with Daniel Fishle theme song, which we will be debuting at the end of this episode, and I'm going to admit it now, it's too good for me.

Basically, anything we do after that is just going to let everyone down.

So can you share the inspiration behind what everyone's going to hear later on?

With the theme song?

A couple weeks ago, I was it was late at night, I was downstairs in my studio and I was playing my acoustic guitar and I had this riff.

And just a few days later, Jensen, your kind husband and my friend for the past whatever twenty years, hit me up and said, hey, Danielle's doing a new show.

Would you be interested in writing a theme song?

Do you have anything laying around some old ideas?

And I went through a bunch of old ideas and I didn't really have anything that I loved.

But I had this one thing that I thought was really cool, and I thought, well, maybe I can change the lyrics or maybe I can rearrange a little bit.

And so I sent it over and Jensen played it for you and it was like, yeah, that's perfect.

It's great, we love it's great, We'll take it.

So I was like, all right, cool.

So I had my engineer come over and do it correctly and send it in and got it in just in time because it was the holidays and my engineer was gone and I was gone, and so we put it together and got it in what two days ago?

Yeah, I mean, and it's all perfect.

It's just that's the way it was supposed to happen.

Thank you so much for putting in all that effort on holidays.

It's glad to do it.

I love being creative and I love working with my friends, and I'm very glad that it'll live with you.

It will live forever with me.

So you're my first guest.

I thought maybe we could art by talking about another first Okay, first kiss.

What do you remember about this big teenage moment?

My first kiss.

I was literally moving from the town that I lived in in the middle of the desert Ridgecrest, California.

I was fourteen, hadn't been kissed yet, and there was a girl who kind of had a crush on me and wanted to say goodbye and wanted to like give me a card or something before I left.

And we were standing in my front yard and she gave me a kiss, and it was a French kiss, and her tongue was very invasive, and I didn't really feel like kissing her, but she was like grabby and she kind of kissed me forcefully.

Wow, like a weighted blanket kiss.

Yeah, like a little more than I was ready for.

But I was like okay, cool, and then I said, all right, well, i'll see you when I moved back in a year because my dad was moving away from Ridgecrest to Washington, DC to work at the Pentagon for a year.

And I went inside and I was really disturbed by it, and I turned up the cure song the kiss, Yeah, really loud.

It's just really long song.

So the first song on kiss me, kiss Me, kiss me, and it says, uh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

Your tongue's like poison, so swollen it fills up my mouth.

And that's exactly how it felt.

I was like, I'm not ready for this.

I don't feel like this about you yet.

And so that was my first kiss.

Wow.

Do you think she heard the song playing from outside?

I doubt it.

I doubt it, but yeah, that was my first real kiss.

And I was like, that's weird.

That was weird.

There's a lot of tongue and there's a lot of stuff and there's a lot of saliva involved.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, that's a that's an awkward first kiss story.

Mine mine was also mine was in front of a bunch of people.

Yeah, but it was not a French kiss, just a kiss kiss, just a long peck on.

The lips, like like old like forties movie.

Style, exactly forty's movie style, with two twelve year olds who had never kissed, okay, and now and are doing it in front of a live studio audience and my grandparents and my parents.

Was there an intimacy coordinator at that point?

No intimacy coordinator.

We were.

We were just thrust in there.

Yeah, which is probably for the best, to be honest.

We did you consider yourself in any way a ladies man?

Oh no, okay, no, no, not at all.

I didn't have any ladies out.

No, do you're opposite.

Do you remember any bad dates?

He went on bad dates?

I didn't go on a lot of bad day Probably the most awkward date was I was when I turned sixteen.

My dad was dating a new woman.

This is when we were living in DC and he wanted to go out to or maybe it was when I turned fifteen.

Anyway, for my birthday.

We went to this really fancy restaurant in Washington, d C.

And had to dress up in tuxedos.

Oh, and I took a girl that I was kind of seeing, and it was it was a weird date because we were at a very fancy restaurant, I was wearing a tuxedo, and I was eating food I didn't like, and it was really to impress my dad's new girlfriend.

Okay, for your birthday.

For my birthday, yeah, is that you know what?

It was a top of one of those buildings I think where the restaurant rotated like a big deal back in like the late eighties early nineties.

Your dad designs missiles and bombs for the Department of Defense.

Yes, yeah, wow.

Was he artistic at all?

No, not at all.

But he used to bring home these things called witness plates, and they're like one inch thick lead or steel or I don't know, plates that they set up in concentric circles outside of a target so that when they launch a missile likes let's say, at a tank or whatever it is on the ground and it explodes, you can tell the damage done by the witness plates.

And so he would bring home like this whatever thirty to fifty pound plate of steel that was just contorted and bent because it had been exploded.

And I thought that would be such a cool work of art, like a call display, like these things have witnessed violence that none of us should ever have to see.

That is a great idea.

And your dad's the one who bought you your first base, right, he did.

That's cool.

I wanted to play bass guitar.

I had just gotten into the Cure when I moved to DC.

I was just starting to get into my own solid music rather than you know, my parents always listened to great music when I was growing up.

They listened to like Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond and Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson and Elton John and Diana Ross and the Beg's and like all kinds of great by Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and I love that.

So I had a really strong foundation for melody and great songwriting.

And then I heard The Cure and that was like great songwriting, great lyrics and a style that I liked.

And so when I went to DC, I started finally feeling like myself and dressing like myself, and so yeah.

Is that when you became a little golf.

That's when I became goth.

Yeah, I came, but yeah, I started spiking my hair out, I started wearing darker clothes.

By the time I was a junior in high school, I was wearing like black eyeliner and sometimes bright red lipstick and sticking my hair all up.

And I remember I went junior year.

First class of the day.

Was metal shop, okay, And I walked into my metal shop class, and my metal shop teachers like, all right, today we're gonna be learning about arc World.

Oh my god, Mark, what the hell what are you doing?

And everyone turned and looked at me in class, and I was like, what, It's just my It's just my style.

He's like, you're wearing lipstick.

I was like, yeah, I know.

It was a listick that was bright red.

It was full on Robert Smith, like you know, you know, when like you get so into something, And I was so into the Cure and they were so influential for me.

And I was wearing black eyeliner and spiking my hair up, wearing bright red lipstick, but being like, it's not because I like the Cure.

I just think it's a cool style.

You know, this is my thing.

It just happens that Robert Smith does the exact same thing, and that's the band I listened to all day long, every day.

Did your dad question that at all?

Because I try to imagine what it must be like for a parent to see your kid be one way for fourteen or fifteen years and then kind of overnight change everything about their appearance and possibly their personality.

He was pretty cool with it, to be honest, for as conservative as he is, like you know, not not politically or whatever, but just like he's a very middle of the road baby boomer, work for the government.

His whole thing is like planning and being on time and doing your best.

And you know, he was an eagle scout.

He was like all this stuff, and so for me to like show up one day wearing lipstick, he was he just kind of shook his head and was like, just okay, just whatever.

Plus I'm I'm jen X, and my parents really just mostly left me alone.

Right you were what raised you?

What raised me was let's see, you can't do that on television.

Okay, skateboarding, punk rock.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, it all works.

Did you have a lot of the same interests.

You've been very vocal about your fandoms Nintendo Baseball.

Star Wars yep.

Was was that your same jam growing up or did you have other interests?

It?

Had no interest in sports whatsoever at all growing up.

I'd like skateboarding, but I didn't like organized sports.

I didn't want to play.

I played soccer a little bit when my parents made me when I was in fifth grade, but I didn't love that.

So my outlet athletically was skateboarding and going to shows.

Okay.

We also during that time where you made the transition into being goth, you also discovered cigarettes.

Yeah.

Would you have been in major trouble had you been caught smoking?

Or did you ever?

I got caught smoking when we were moving back from washingt d c.

To my town in the middle of the desert.

We stopped in Las Vegas, went.

To Circus Circus.

Yeah.

I had been secretly smoking for probably a year at that point.

And my Dad's like, I'm in a gamble.

You can't be on the floor, but you can go upstairs to the arcade, Yeah, and play games up there.

Do whatever.

I'll meet you in an hour.

And so, like I was smoking cigarettes and my dad came a little bit early and he came around this corner and he saw me and he goes, are you smoking?

And I was like yeah.

He goes, do you smoke?

I go yeah a little bit.

And he's like, ah, come on, Mark, you're smarter than that.

You know it's bad for you.

And I was like, I know, I know.

And then I ended up smoking for like another ten years.

Right.

I did something very similar.

Yeah, And I got caught smoking the first time with my Mormon best friend from childhood, whose parents believed anything we told them, and I my mom was not that type of mom.

My mom was very much like very no.

So we got caught smoking.

We got a ticket, We got caught by the police.

We got a ticket for California.

In California, they gave us a ticket because we were in possession of the pack of cigarettes.

So it wasn't just that you were we see you smoking, It was like, you're not allowed to have these, So they wrote us like a ticket.

We had to appear in court and that sucks so bad, so bad.

And I was living in Calabasas and I was caught in Orange County, so it was like no even convenient way we.

Were gonna have to go to an Orange County court.

So Jessica my best friend's parents pick us up and we tell them we concoct this story that we were with a group of people and they were smoking, not us, but they were smoking, and when the police saw us, all they just wrote everybody tickets, even though we were not doing it.

Jessica's parents were like, well, that seems really unfair.

No problem, we'll just go to court and tell them you're innocent and we'll get this whole thing worked out.

And I was like, whew, okay, And then we meet in.

Mantabello and my mom picks me up and we tell my mom the story, and my mom's like.

Okay, all right, all right, okay, well bye, it was nice to see you.

By Stephanie, by Jessica.

We get in the car, my mom goes, that's stories a bunch of tell me what's really going on?

And I was like, oh, so, anyway, I was caught, was in massive trouble, was grounded, wasn't allowed to go to my school dance.

Had a boyfriend at the time who then he couldn't go to the dance because I certainly wasn't gonna let him go with no can't go without me.

So anyway, I stopped smoking as long as I lived under my parents' roof, and then uh just immediately started again the minute I moved out and smoked for way too long.

Yeah, so I wish smoking wasn't bad.

I love so I look like an idiot, Like I look back at pictures of myself and I'm like, you look dumb as hell smoking cigarette.

But I felt cool.

I felt so cool.

Yeah, you know, I wish if there was like one wish that I could be like, I wish that wasn't bad for you.

Yeah, some cigarettes is nice.

Cigarettes is great.

Not only do we have teen Beat the podcast, we have a brand new line of teen Beat shirts and hoodies that not only celebrate the show, but honestly they're just cool all on their own.

To make it even cooler, we made a one of one shirt just for this very first episode to help commemorate mister Mark Hoppus, the voice of Blink one eighty two, being my very first guest.

So I highly recommend you go check it out.

It's our first drop, available at teenbeatpod dot com.

Go take a look teenbeatpod dot com.

Do you know why your dad picked the bass if he was gonna when you decided to buy.

You No, I wanted to play the bass I watched I saw The Cure on MTV.

They just like Heaven Video and Simon Gallup.

The bassis from the Cure just looked so cool, and there was something about the bass that I was drawn to.

It was kind of the bridge between the drums and the guitar and the melody and whatever it was.

I wanted to do that.

Yeah, So I asked my dad, can I get a bass guitar?

Where you buy me a bass guitar?

And he said, if you paint my girlfriend's house, I will girlriend girl friend.

Yeah, my stepmom.

Now she's awesome.

Yeah, we love her all good.

But yeah.

So I painted her condo in Washington, d C.

In the summer and it was like, you know, DC in the summer is awful, humid, hot, stanky, just like and I was out there painting her condo with makeup on, my makeup running down my face.

Here now a mine, Yeah, like this is why gods don't go outside.

But I did.

I painted her.

I painted her condo and I got a base and I still have it.

Actually, that's so cool.

It was in the Fender Museum for a long time until Fenner got sold and then then moved the headquarters.

But yeah, well we are talking just a week after rumors ran rampant that MTV shuddered its music channels for good, and who knows what's actually happening there.

I mean, it is a medium that not only inspired you, but is a huge part of the Blink one eighty two story.

You also met your wife thanks to MTV.

I did want to tell that story.

She was an executive at MTV.

She ran the West Coast office of MTV.

She coordinated and booked and dealt with all the people for like the MTV Music Awards and the uh whatever other awards, the Movie Awards.

The VMA's fanatic.

I met her well.

The first time I met her was at Sports and Music Festival in like ninety five in Austin, and.

We were a baby baby baby band.

I think it was like Offspring and Wu Tang and a bunch of other like huge bands, and then like we're this baby band, and I remember there was an executive there who's kind of taking care of us.

I was like, that chick is really cool.

And I really like her.

The next time I saw her was in the Bahamas at like a spring break thing.

I had actually brought a girlfriend with me but had kind of like seen Sky again and been like, Oh, that's that lady from before.

Yeah, I really like her.

And then I'd broken up with that girlfriend.

And then Sky had booked blink onin eighty two on making the video, and we were making the video for All the Small Things, and making the video was a half hour show that they would put and it was all behind the scenes of the creation of a video and at the end they'd show the video.

And so it was For All the Small Things, which was the video that really broke us.

And so the day that I saw her, we were at the Third Street Dance Studio over on Third Street.

We were upstairs.

We were dressed ridiculously.

I was in like bright blue leotards with like leg warmers on and a headband and like like we were because we were learning choreography for the All the Small Things video, we thought it would be funny to dress up in these costumes.

And Sky was there and I was talking to Tom, and Tom always trying to embarrass me.

So we walked over to Sky and he said, Hey, my friend Mark thinks you're hot.

Would you ever go on a date with him?

And immediately she said absolutely not.

I don't date artists.

Oh And I was like, hey, I get that, totally cool, understand it.

Professional.

Here's my number.

If you ever want to talk or go get coffee or whatever, just whatever, give me a call.

Didn't think anything about it, thought she'd never call.

Had a date that night with Melissa Joanhart.

Nice okay, who I had just met at an award show and like I was feeling cool, like blinkeredy too.

We were on MTV.

We're filming a video.

We're going to do the behind the scenes thing you.

To award show.

Melissa Joan Hart had her publicist contact my publicist at the label to get my number, and I was like, yeah, you know, I'm going to be up in LA film in a music video.

Maybe one day after the shoot we can go out to dinner or something.

So we went out to on a date that night and we just didn't connect.

It was just like a boring day.

She didn't like me, I didn't like her.

We were both totally cordial with one another.

She dropped me back off of the hotel at like whatever was ten o'clock at night, eleven o'clock at night.

I look at my phone and I had missed a call and gotten a message from Sky.

So I called her up and we talked until like three or four o'clock in the morning, and then like we were married within a year.

Wow, where did you take her on your first date with her?

We drove past.

So the first time that I went on a date with her, we went to a dive bar across the street on Highland called Powerhouse.

I know Powerhouse.

Yeah, that was a place that light you smoke for a really long time after you were anymore.

Our birthday it was August sixth.

It was her birthday.

So I met her August fourth.

August fifth, we shot and I didn't get to go out with her that day.

August sixth was the last day of the shoot.

I took her out that night.

We went to Powerhouse because it was her birthday, and we met up with a bunch of people there and we went She dropped me off back of my hotel because I was there for the shoot, and we kissed on Third Street at that hotel right down the street from What's Casuia.

Now I think it's called what's that hotel called?

Now, the Dream?

N it's not the Dream.

It's not that nice.

Come on, okay anyway, So yeah, we kissed in the parking not in the parking lot, but in the little driveway of that hotel.

Wow, that's cute.

Yep.

But now we've been married twenty five years and we have a son.

And how old your son?

Twenty three?

Wow?

Three twenty three?

He's awesome.

He is a great kid.

He has a job.

He programs Call of Duty.

Wow, that's his job.

Yeah?

Does he play instruments?

Does he is into music at all?

You know?

Growing up he wanted a drum kits, so we bought him a drum kit and that lasted for like a week.

And then he wanted a guitar and we got him a guitar and that lasted like a week.

But he was always very technical and into video when he was a kid.

That was in like fourth grade.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

I want to program video games?

All right?

Eva was such a bad parent.

It's just like my dad was when I said I wanted to play in a band, and he's like, that's great, never gonna.

Happen, right, right, right, but you you keep up that dream.

Just make sure you have a backup plan.

And so when my son came to me and was like, I want to program video games for a living, I'm like, yep, okay, great, not gonna happen, but you keep that dream alive.

But he worked his ass off, went to college that a double major, has always like studied how games work.

And it's more than just like he likes playing video games, like he looks into the mechanics of it and gets on the programming.

And so, yeah, I mean, playing music in a band is something that so many people want to do, and yet so few people actually end up making.

It doing it.

Why did you think video game programming was something like that was never going to happen?

Just because when you talk to anybody, any like kid boy, especially who's like ten or eleven years old, they're like playing video games.

They're like, yeah, I want to play video games.

Okay, our kids are into video games too, but thankfully they like playing them with us.

Still, it's like they really only want to do it if we're going to play with them.

So I'm like, I'm actually trying to encourage that with as many co op games as we can find.

I honestly, like my favorite memories of raising my son, some of them were playing video games, like we got Zelda Twilight Princess when he was just a you know, a small child.

He couldn't really control the game too much, so he would sit next to me on the couch and we would play video games together.

And it was such a great memory.

And I credit video games with teaching him, you know, spatial learning and math and reading to some extent, and logic and you know, really the games that he was playing helped his development and helped him become a smarter person.

And like, I don't know, I don't think of video games is like a throwaway pastime.

Yeah it can be, you know.

And I still play video games with him now, but he's so much better than I am.

We spent the holidays playing a game called Arc Raider, which is really popular right now, and he's great at it.

Like he plays for hours and hours and hours with his friends, and like I'm playing with him and he's just I'm just frustrating him.

I suck so body.

He's like, Dad, he's right behind you, He's right behind you, what are you doing?

Turn us shoot his ass?

What are you doing?

And like robots are killing me?

Yeah, and he just like shakes his head, but he's very patient.

At least that's good.

I want to talk.

We've talked a lot about you and that time you spent in Washington, d C.

How did you get back to California because you went to college in San Diego.

I did, So we were living in this small town in California where my dad worked on a Navy base in the middle of the desert because that's where they would test their missiles and bombs from planes.

Then we moved to one year when I was a sophomore, to Washington, d C.

So we could work at the Pentagon, and then we moved back to the small town.

Okay, And when I graduated cob When I graduated high school, I was playing in a band, and I was working at a restaurant and just aimless, like I was waiting tables, making pizzas, going to community college, playing in like a garage band.

And then my dad kicked me out of the house.

Well you didn't like kick me out, but he was like, it's time for you to go to a real school.

And go be an adult and get a job and start your life.

So I moved to San Diego to go to college.

My sister, my mom, and my stepdad were living in San Diego, so I got in.

So I went to finish my community college in San Diego and go to a four year school, which is cal State San Marco.

So I was studying to be an English teacher.

The day that I moved to San Diego, like got up in the morning, loaded up my shitty Nissan Stanza, drove from my small town down to San Diego.

Halfway there, I was like, what am I going to do in this big city?

Like I don't know anybody, I don't really want to get a job, and I don't do anything.

I like playing music.

So we got to my parents' house or my mom's house, unloaded my car, turn to my sister and I go, well, what do I do now?

Like I want to play music, and what do I do?

I put an ad in a paper?

Do I put like, you know, bassist wants mediocre bandmates or whatever?

And my sister was like, my boyfriend has a friend who plays guitar, loves punk rock, loves skateboarding.

You should meet him.

So we got in the car that night, drove over to this guy's house and it was Tom.

Wow, you were like set up on a friend date.

Yeah, blind friend date, but it went great.

Like I went into his garage where he had his bedroom because his parents were going through a bad divorce, so he moved into his garage and we started playing music and laughing and hanging out, and that night we wrote a song that.

We still play today.

It's called Carousel.

I wonder if that's the only story of meeting a guy who has a bedroom in his garage and going into it on your first blind meeting, that's is the only story that's worked out?

Well?

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't recommend that for most blind dates, but it did pay off in the situation.

Yeah did Okay, So how quickly do the two of you form?

Blink one E two?

Immediately we were like, we want to play music together.

Tom had already started playing some shows and not shows, but like backyard parties and stuff with a guy named Scott who ended up being our first drummer.

So yeah, like you know, the next day Tom called up.

It was like, hey, let's keep writing songs, let's get and so we just started doing stuff.

Tom was ending high school.

I was still in community college.

Scott was in high school, and that it all began there in ninety two.

Did your dad ever say to you when I said it was time for you to launch?

I didn't mean just go move into your mom's house and start playing music at backyard parties.

No, my dad didn't think that our band was successful.

So I was ninety two.

My dad didn't think our band was successful until ninety nine, when it was like ninety nine or maybe even two thousand.

We played on the Jay Leno Show.

Wow, oh, that's the night show.

With Jay Leno.

That is for sure, a dad, Oh, this is official anything below the Jay Leno Show.

No, not a story.

And he'd been coming to shows and stuff.

He'd seen us play in front of larger and larger venues.

Yeah, but somehow coming to that show.

And Richard Simmons was one of the guests.

Okay, you and Richard Simmons.

So we're all in the dressing room the green room before the show, and my dad's hanging out and like my future wife's parents were there whatever, and the door flies open and this dude comes in Blink twenty two and it's Richard Simmons.

I never met the guy.

He comes barely in.

He comes in, he goes, hey, blakewiny too, and he comes and he grabs Tom and he gives him a kiss on the cheek.

Same with me, same with Travis.

And I go, uh hey, Richard, what's going on?

We start talking.

I go, so, how do I get in shape?

Want to be as in shape as you?

And he is, oh, please, I'm old enough to be your dad.

And my dad goes, actually, I'm his dad.

And Richard Simmons goes dad and grabs him and gives him a giant kiss on the cheek, and then he runs out of the room.

And then we go and we play on jay Leno.

That's the photo right there.

That's the one that's when my dad kissed Richard Simmons.

Your dad is so happy, he's so happy, he's so happy with that kiss.

Yeah.

And so that was when my dad's like, oh, if Richard Simmons knows who my son is, then he must be fak.

Richard Simmons and Jay Leno give my son's band a sign of it.

Wow, that's pretty great.

What would high school Mark Coppus have thought about?

Number one on TRL.

Mark Coppus e Ben Stoked.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean I grew up watching MTV, you know, even before.

I remember the summer that MTV happened, and like it was a big deal.

My dad was always a fan of music, and I remember him and my uncle being like, oh my gosh, there's a channel where you can watch music on TV.

And we were watching like the Police, and we were watching like all these original videos.

And I remember when Michael Jackson's thriller video came out.

It was a huge deal.

Like people stayed home, people like made plans to be home or whatever.

It was eight o'clock at night to watch the premiere of this thriller video directed by John Landis, who did like, you know, all this cool stuff.

Yep.

So yeah, MTV was a big deal for me.

So knowing that our band was on MTV and was doing well on MTV, I think I'd have been stoked.

So you and Tom, how did you guys then meet Travis and then the three of you start doing shows?

Well, we met Travis just by playing a lot of shows around southern California and.

Then we did a tour.

It was he played a man called the Aquabats and we did a tour it was Primus Blanquidity two in the Aquabats.

It was called the Snowcore Tour, and it took place during the winter, and it was a tour that we performed punk rock music at snowboard competitions.

So cool.

So you were touring in the dead.

Of winter in snowboard mountains, so it was always icy, always cold, always bleak.

And Travis smoked and drank.

But he was playing in the Aquabats a lot of whom are Mormon who didn't smoke or drink, and so he would always come onto our bus and smoke with us, and like we would hang out.

That was back when everybody would smoke on a bush.

Yeah, And so we became friends with Travis that way.

And then our drummer was having some personal stuff going on had to leave tour.

Travis filled in.

It was great.

When Travis filled in, was like, oh man, this is something different, there's something cool.

Yeah, and then like the situation came to a head with our drummer.

Our drummer left the band and then like at that point it was like, oh, Travis.

Is the guy.

So what were those early Blink one shows like were they always did they always feel like a success?

Yes, at least to us.

I mean, when Tom and I are on stage, we really performed from one another, almost more than we perform for the crowd.

Like if I can make Tom laugh, that's a good thing.

If I can make Travis laugh, that's a big thing.

And so Tom and I we leave on tour and we start joking around and we try and say some outrageous stuff.

But then the next night it gets a little further, and the next night gets a little further, and the next Like I remember, at one point we were on tour and our manager pulled us aside because we were on a tour called the Mark, Tom and Travis Show Tour.

And Tom had this idea that if you took a vocal effect that pitches your voice down and octave, you can grab a microphone and you can act like you're Satan.

Talking directly to the audience.

And so I remember we were on tour one time and after the show, our manager's like, hey, can I talk to you guys for a second, And he calls us into his office and he goes, I think you're taking a little farm.

We're like, what are you talking about He's like, well, when Tom gets on the microphone, he acts like Satan and he says, hey, kids, I'm.

Here to your blood.

It's a little too far.

Back, is the line?

Yes, the line it.

We're like, Okay, that makes sense, got it?

Roger copy that.

Nope, your blood?

Got it?

Has your sense of humor changed it all?

Since you were no so stupid?

It's so dumb.

Literally, for the past two years.

We played one hundred and seventy five shows in the past two years since the band reformed, since we played Coachella in twenty twenty three, one hundred and seventy five shows.

Literally Tom and I and we're we're traveling so comfortably, private jets, five star hotels, people carrying our luggage like we don't do any but Tom and I after the show get on the plane and we were just making dick jokes on a private jet with like, you know, champagne and.

Like eating caviar.

Making totally.

It's like professional people dealing with me and Tom talking talking dick jokes.

It's so funny.

I love it.

It's great.

Would teenage Mark have been on social media?

Uh?

Yeah, probably, I don't think that.

I mean adult Mark has enough problem, enough trouble staying off social media.

I don't think that, you know, teenage Mark would have done much better.

It's awful.

I hate it.

I know I hate it, and I also can't stay away from it.

I know it's just the hot stove that you can't stop touching.

Yep, that's true.

Did you guys ever contemplate adding a dedicated guitarist because you are a rare trio in rock?

No?

Okay, no, I you know, I have nothing but crazy respect for bands like Foo Fighters or Green Day or anybody else who's like this core band, but then they add additional musicians on you know, no doubt.

But for us, Blink has always just been the three of us.

So when you know, it's the three of us.

And then when we had keyboards, we didn't have a keyboard player.

We had our friend Roger Joseph Manning Junior from Jellyfish come in and he did all the keyboard parts, but he wasn't touring, and so we would use track for those, and we still use track for keyboards.

But on stage, I just want to see the band, right.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, I don't want to.

Keep the theme song from our listeners any longer.

I would really like to play it.

We officially have the coolest theme song in all of podcasting.

Thank you.

Yeah.

It's pretty great, written, performed, recorded all.

By Mark Oppus.

This will begin every episode moving forward, and it's eventually going to chart on Spotify.

I know it then single handedly bring back MTV.

Yeah, so thank you for this.

Absolutely, Thank you so much, Mark for everything.

I couldn't be more excited to be connected to you through this theme song forever.

Moving forward, let's get into the theme song.

That's okay, I was doing it.

I love it.

So the thing at the end is literally because I had turned in the I had turned in the song, and then Jensen, your husband, was like, uh, what a fun Is there a way to work in like a teen beat in there somehow?

And I'm like, yeah, but not the way that it is right now.

We need to go teen beat?

And I had I immediately knew what the song needed, but I was gone and my engineer was gone, and so literally I think it was New Year's Day.

I have that torn out and I'm like, okay, we need to shout teen beat.

So like everyone's kind of hung.

Over from New year's and we're all like weird.

We're like it's sitting in our kitchen going teen beat into my phone and sending it to the engineer to drop into the song.

Perfect.

Who are you with?

I need to know?

Is this a family teen beat?

Yeah?

It was me, my wife and my son.

I love that so much more.

That's just perfect.

Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of teen Beat.

We will have a small bonus episode for you with Mark on Friday on the teen beat Feed and an awkward teenage story from one of you.

We would love to.

Hear all of your awkward teenage stories.

Send us a concise voice memo to Teenbeatpod at gmail dot com and maybe we'll play your story on the pod.

Also, don't forget to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at teen beat Pod.

Teen Beat is.

An iHeart podcast produced and hosted by Danielle Fischel, Executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production Danielle Romo, producer and editor Tara Suboch.

The theme song is by mar Coppus.

Yes that Mark Coppus.

Follow us on Instagram.

I'm at Team b Pod