Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just jumping in here.
Speaker 2: There's no theme song yet because we are going to
Speaker 2: get to that big debut later. But first, hello and
Speaker 2: welcome to teen Beat, a brand new interview show hosted
Speaker 2: by me Daniel Fischl, podcaster, TV director, recent celebrity ballroom dancer,
Speaker 2: mother of two, and is proven by the headshot on
Speaker 2: the wall of my dry cleaners. I am the former
Speaker 2: child actor known as Tapanga from the nineties TV family
Speaker 2: sitcom Boy Meets World, and as a result of that role,
Speaker 2: my entire teenage existence from the age of twelve to
Speaker 2: nineteen was in front of both a live studio audience
Speaker 2: and millions of viewers at home. From my first kiss
Speaker 2: to my first haircut, absolutely everything was caught on camera.
Speaker 2: So now, thirty years later, it's time to turn the tables.
Speaker 2: My goal here on teen Beat is to sit down
Speaker 2: with interesting people who have accomplished interesting things in hopes
Speaker 2: that learning about their untelevised upbringings will help us understand
Speaker 2: who they are today. Since they're first pimple wasn't also
Speaker 2: part of a TGIF block of programming, the least they
Speaker 2: can do is share it with me. Now, I gave
Speaker 2: you my childhood, It's time we hear yours and for
Speaker 2: the first teen beat episode ever, I think I have
Speaker 2: found the perfect guest, because no matter what generation you
Speaker 2: like to claim, chances are your coming of age soundtrack
Speaker 2: included his voice. He was present for your first crush,
Speaker 2: your newly licensed long drives down a highway, and a
Speaker 2: majority of your bad decisions, including all of those fourth
Speaker 2: meal taco bell runs of the late nineties and early
Speaker 2: two thousands. He's an architect of the entire pop punk scene,
Speaker 2: somehow taking his underground rock childhood interests and bringing its sensibility, musicality,
Speaker 2: and immature humor to not only the TRL Countdown, but
Speaker 2: to mainstream audiences around the globe. If Warp Tour was
Speaker 2: a contagious disease, and for many years it was, he
Speaker 2: was patient zero. With sales totaling over fifty million records worldwide,
Speaker 2: three number one albums, seven songs in the hot one
Speaker 2: hundred eighteen million Spotify listeners per month, a Coachella headlining surprise,
Speaker 2: and over half a million tickets sold during their twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three reunion tour, their highest grossing it. They have
Speaker 2: proven that thirty years after their debut album, first hit
Speaker 2: shelves they are stronger than ever. And his twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five book Fahrenheit one eighty two, a memoir, debuted at
Speaker 2: number one on the New York Times bestseller list and
Speaker 2: chronicled two things we have in common, a midlife cancer
Speaker 2: battle and the ability to write melodic anthems that will
Speaker 2: withstand the test of time. The crown is heavy for
Speaker 2: us both. He may have been instrumental in your awkward
Speaker 2: teenage years, but now it's time to find out what
Speaker 2: his were like. Welcome to teen Beat, the man who
Speaker 2: once wrote the lyric I want to see some name, dudes.
Speaker 2: That's why I built this pool. It's founding member of
Speaker 2: Blank one eighty two.
Speaker 1: Mark Opus.
Speaker 3: Hello, I sound really cool when you laid all out
Speaker 3: like that. That's raight, Okay, yeah, let's go now. I
Speaker 3: feel very uh accomplished.
Speaker 2: You are very accomplished, and you are very cool. Thank
Speaker 2: you for being here with me. This is really quite
Speaker 2: an honor.
Speaker 4: Thank you glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Not only were you kind enough to share your time
Speaker 2: with us, but we somehow convinced you to write and
Speaker 2: perform the official teen Beat with Daniel Fishle theme song,
Speaker 2: which we will be debuting at the end of this episode,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to admit it now, it's too good
Speaker 2: for me. Basically, anything we do after that is just
Speaker 2: going to let everyone down. So can you share the
Speaker 2: inspiration behind what everyone's going to hear later on?
Speaker 1: With the theme song?
Speaker 3: A couple weeks ago, I was it was late at night,
Speaker 3: I was downstairs in my studio and I was playing
Speaker 3: my acoustic guitar and I had this riff. And just
Speaker 3: a few days later, Jensen, your kind husband and my
Speaker 3: friend for the past whatever twenty years, hit me up
Speaker 3: and said, hey, Danielle's doing a new show. Would you
Speaker 3: be interested in writing a theme song? Do you have
Speaker 3: anything laying around some old ideas? And I went through
Speaker 3: a bunch of old ideas and I didn't really have
Speaker 3: anything that I loved. But I had this one thing
Speaker 3: that I thought was really cool, and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: maybe I can change the lyrics or maybe I can
Speaker 3: rearrange a little bit. And so I sent it over
Speaker 3: and Jensen played it for you and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's perfect.
Speaker 1: It's great, we love it's great, We'll take it.
Speaker 4: So I was like, all right, cool.
Speaker 3: So I had my engineer come over and do it
Speaker 3: correctly and send it in and got it in just
Speaker 3: in time because it was the holidays and my engineer
Speaker 3: was gone and I was gone, and so we put
Speaker 3: it together and got it in what two days ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and it's all perfect. It's just that's
Speaker 2: the way it was supposed to happen. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for putting in all that effort on holidays.
Speaker 4: It's glad to do it.
Speaker 3: I love being creative and I love working with my friends,
Speaker 3: and I'm very glad that it'll live with you.
Speaker 1: It will live forever with me. So you're my first guest.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe we could art by talking about another
Speaker 2: first Okay, first kiss. What do you remember about this
Speaker 2: big teenage moment?
Speaker 4: My first kiss.
Speaker 3: I was literally moving from the town that I lived
Speaker 3: in in the middle of the desert Ridgecrest, California. I
Speaker 3: was fourteen, hadn't been kissed yet, and there was a
Speaker 3: girl who kind of had a crush on me and
Speaker 3: wanted to say goodbye and wanted to like give me
Speaker 3: a card or something before I left. And we were
Speaker 3: standing in my front yard and she gave me a kiss,
Speaker 3: and it was a French kiss, and her tongue was
Speaker 3: very invasive, and I didn't really feel like kissing her,
Speaker 3: but she was like grabby and she kind of kissed
Speaker 3: me forcefully.
Speaker 1: Wow, like a weighted blanket kiss.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like a little more than I was ready for.
Speaker 3: But I was like okay, cool, and then I said,
Speaker 3: all right, well, i'll see you when I moved back
Speaker 3: in a year because my dad was moving away from
Speaker 3: Ridgecrest to Washington, DC to work at the Pentagon for
Speaker 3: a year. And I went inside and I was really
Speaker 3: disturbed by it, and I turned up the cure song
Speaker 3: the kiss, Yeah, really loud. It's just really long song.
Speaker 3: So the first song on kiss me, kiss Me, kiss me,
Speaker 3: and it says, uh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
Speaker 3: Your tongue's like poison, so swollen it fills up my mouth.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly how it felt. I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: not ready for this. I don't feel like this about
Speaker 3: you yet. And so that was my first kiss.
Speaker 1: Wow. Do you think she heard the song playing from outside?
Speaker 3: I doubt it. I doubt it, but yeah, that was
Speaker 3: my first real kiss. And I was like, that's weird.
Speaker 1: That was weird.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of tongue and there's a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff and there's a lot of saliva involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, that's a that's an awkward first
Speaker 2: kiss story. Mine mine was also mine was in front
Speaker 2: of a bunch of people. Yeah, but it was not
Speaker 2: a French kiss, just a kiss kiss, just a long
Speaker 2: peck on.
Speaker 4: The lips, like like old like forties movie.
Speaker 2: Style, exactly forty's movie style, with two twelve year olds
Speaker 2: who had never kissed, okay, and now and are doing
Speaker 2: it in front of a live studio audience and my
Speaker 2: grandparents and my parents.
Speaker 4: Was there an intimacy coordinator at that point?
Speaker 1: No intimacy coordinator.
Speaker 4: We were.
Speaker 1: We were just thrust in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is probably for the best, to be honest.
Speaker 1: We did you consider yourself in any way a ladies man?
Speaker 3: Oh no, okay, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 4: I didn't have any ladies out. No, do you're opposite.
Speaker 1: Do you remember any bad dates?
Speaker 4: He went on bad dates?
Speaker 3: I didn't go on a lot of bad day Probably
Speaker 3: the most awkward date was I was when I turned sixteen.
Speaker 3: My dad was dating a new woman. This is when
Speaker 3: we were living in DC and he wanted to go
Speaker 3: out to or maybe it was when I turned fifteen. Anyway,
Speaker 3: for my birthday. We went to this really fancy restaurant
Speaker 3: in Washington, d C. And had to dress up in tuxedos. Oh,
Speaker 3: and I took a girl that I was kind of seeing,
Speaker 3: and it was it was a weird date because we
Speaker 3: were at a very fancy restaurant, I was wearing a tuxedo,
Speaker 3: and I was eating food I didn't like, and it
Speaker 3: was really to impress my dad's new girlfriend.
Speaker 1: Okay, for your birthday.
Speaker 3: For my birthday, yeah, is that you know what? It
Speaker 3: was a top of one of those buildings I think
Speaker 3: where the restaurant rotated like a big deal back in
Speaker 3: like the late eighties early nineties.
Speaker 2: Your dad designs missiles and bombs for the Department of Defense.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, wow.
Speaker 1: Was he artistic at all?
Speaker 4: No, not at all.
Speaker 3: But he used to bring home these things called witness plates,
Speaker 3: and they're like one inch thick lead or steel or
Speaker 3: I don't know, plates that they set up in concentric
Speaker 3: circles outside of a target so that when they launch
Speaker 3: a missile likes let's say, at a tank or whatever
Speaker 3: it is on the ground and it explodes, you can
Speaker 3: tell the damage done by the witness plates. And so
Speaker 3: he would bring home like this whatever thirty to fifty
Speaker 3: pound plate of steel that was just contorted and bent
Speaker 3: because it had been exploded. And I thought that would
Speaker 3: be such a cool work of art, like a call display,
Speaker 3: like these things have witnessed violence that none of us
Speaker 3: should ever have to see.
Speaker 2: That is a great idea. And your dad's the one
Speaker 2: who bought you your first base, right, he did.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 3: I wanted to play bass guitar. I had just gotten
Speaker 3: into the Cure when I moved to DC. I was
Speaker 3: just starting to get into my own solid music rather
Speaker 3: than you know, my parents always listened to great music
Speaker 3: when I was growing up. They listened to like Barry
Speaker 3: Manilow and Neil Diamond and Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson
Speaker 3: and Elton John and Diana Ross and the Beg's and
Speaker 3: like all kinds of great by Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton
Speaker 3: and I love that. So I had a really strong
Speaker 3: foundation for melody and great songwriting. And then I heard
Speaker 3: The Cure and that was like great songwriting, great lyrics
Speaker 3: and a style that I liked. And so when I
Speaker 3: went to DC, I started finally feeling like myself and
Speaker 3: dressing like myself, and so yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that when you became a little golf.
Speaker 4: That's when I became goth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I came, but yeah, I started spiking my hair out,
Speaker 3: I started wearing darker clothes. By the time I was
Speaker 3: a junior in high school, I was wearing like black
Speaker 3: eyeliner and sometimes bright red lipstick and sticking my hair
Speaker 3: all up.
Speaker 4: And I remember I went junior year. First class of
Speaker 4: the day.
Speaker 3: Was metal shop, okay, And I walked into my metal
Speaker 3: shop class, and my metal shop teachers like, all right,
Speaker 3: today we're gonna be learning about arc World. Oh my god, Mark,
Speaker 3: what the hell what are you doing? And everyone turned
Speaker 3: and looked at me in class, and I was like, what,
Speaker 3: It's just my It's just my style. He's like, you're
Speaker 3: wearing lipstick. I was like, yeah, I know. It was
Speaker 3: a listick that was bright red. It was full on
Speaker 3: Robert Smith, like you know, you know, when like you
Speaker 3: get so into something, And I was so into the
Speaker 3: Cure and they were so influential for me. And I
Speaker 3: was wearing black eyeliner and spiking my hair up, wearing
Speaker 3: bright red lipstick, but being like, it's not because I
Speaker 3: like the Cure.
Speaker 4: I just think it's a cool style. You know, this
Speaker 4: is my thing.
Speaker 3: It just happens that Robert Smith does the exact same thing,
Speaker 3: and that's the band I listened to all day long,
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 1: Did your dad question that at all?
Speaker 2: Because I try to imagine what it must be like
Speaker 2: for a parent to see your kid be one way
Speaker 2: for fourteen or fifteen years and then kind of overnight
Speaker 2: change everything about their appearance and possibly their personality.
Speaker 3: He was pretty cool with it, to be honest, for
Speaker 3: as conservative as he is, like you know, not not
Speaker 3: politically or whatever, but just like he's a very middle
Speaker 3: of the road baby boomer, work for the government. His
Speaker 3: whole thing is like planning and being on time and
Speaker 3: doing your best. And you know, he was an eagle scout.
Speaker 3: He was like all this stuff, and so for me
Speaker 3: to like show up one day wearing lipstick, he was
Speaker 3: he just kind of shook his head and was like,
Speaker 3: just okay, just whatever. Plus I'm I'm jen X, and
Speaker 3: my parents really just mostly left me alone.
Speaker 1: Right you were what raised you?
Speaker 3: What raised me was let's see, you can't do that
Speaker 3: on television. Okay, skateboarding, punk rock.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, it all works. Did you
Speaker 1: have a lot of the same interests.
Speaker 2: You've been very vocal about your fandoms Nintendo Baseball.
Speaker 1: Star Wars yep.
Speaker 2: Was was that your same jam growing up or did
Speaker 2: you have other interests?
Speaker 3: It? Had no interest in sports whatsoever at all growing up.
Speaker 3: I'd like skateboarding, but I didn't like organized sports. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to play. I played soccer a little bit
Speaker 3: when my parents made me when I was in fifth grade,
Speaker 3: but I didn't love that. So my outlet athletically was
Speaker 3: skateboarding and going to shows.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: We also during that time where you made the transition
Speaker 2: into being goth, you also discovered cigarettes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Would you have been in major trouble had you been
Speaker 1: caught smoking? Or did you ever?
Speaker 3: I got caught smoking when we were moving back from
Speaker 3: washingt d c. To my town in the middle of
Speaker 3: the desert. We stopped in Las Vegas, went.
Speaker 4: To Circus Circus.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had been secretly smoking for probably a year at
Speaker 3: that point. And my Dad's like, I'm in a gamble.
Speaker 3: You can't be on the floor, but you can go
Speaker 3: upstairs to the arcade, Yeah, and play games up there.
Speaker 4: Do whatever.
Speaker 3: I'll meet you in an hour. And so, like I
Speaker 3: was smoking cigarettes and my dad came a little bit
Speaker 3: early and he came around this corner and he saw
Speaker 3: me and he goes, are you smoking? And I was
Speaker 3: like yeah. He goes, do you smoke? I go yeah
Speaker 3: a little bit. And he's like, ah, come on, Mark,
Speaker 3: you're smarter than that. You know it's bad for you.
Speaker 3: And I was like, I know, I know. And then
Speaker 3: I ended up smoking for like another ten years.
Speaker 1: Right. I did something very similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I got caught smoking the first time with
Speaker 2: my Mormon best friend from childhood, whose parents believed anything
Speaker 2: we told them, and I my mom was not that
Speaker 2: type of mom. My mom was very much like very no.
Speaker 2: So we got caught smoking. We got a ticket, We
Speaker 2: got caught by the police. We got a ticket for California.
Speaker 2: In California, they gave us a ticket because we were
Speaker 2: in possession of the pack of cigarettes. So it wasn't
Speaker 2: just that you were we see you smoking, It was like,
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to have these, So they wrote us
Speaker 2: like a ticket.
Speaker 1: We had to appear in court and that sucks so bad,
Speaker 1: so bad.
Speaker 2: And I was living in Calabasas and I was caught
Speaker 2: in Orange County, so it was like no even convenient
Speaker 2: way we.
Speaker 1: Were gonna have to go to an Orange County court.
Speaker 2: So Jessica my best friend's parents pick us up and
Speaker 2: we tell them we concoct this story that we were
Speaker 2: with a group of people and they were smoking, not us,
Speaker 2: but they were smoking, and when the police saw us,
Speaker 2: all they just wrote everybody tickets, even though we were
Speaker 2: not doing it.
Speaker 1: Jessica's parents were like, well, that seems really unfair.
Speaker 2: No problem, we'll just go to court and tell them
Speaker 2: you're innocent and we'll get this whole thing worked out.
Speaker 1: And I was like, whew, okay, And then we meet in.
Speaker 2: Mantabello and my mom picks me up and we tell
Speaker 2: my mom the story, and my mom's like.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, all right, okay, well bye, it was
Speaker 1: nice to see you. By Stephanie, by Jessica. We get in
Speaker 1: the car, my mom goes, that's stories a bunch of
Speaker 1: tell me what's really going on?
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, so, anyway, I was caught,
Speaker 2: was in massive trouble, was grounded, wasn't allowed to go
Speaker 2: to my school dance. Had a boyfriend at the time
Speaker 2: who then he couldn't go to the dance because I
Speaker 2: certainly wasn't gonna let him go with no can't go
Speaker 2: without me. So anyway, I stopped smoking as long as
Speaker 2: I lived under my parents' roof, and then uh just
Speaker 2: immediately started again the minute I moved out and smoked
Speaker 2: for way too long.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I wish smoking wasn't bad.
Speaker 3: I love so I look like an idiot, Like I
Speaker 3: look back at pictures of myself and I'm like, you
Speaker 3: look dumb as hell smoking cigarette.
Speaker 4: But I felt cool.
Speaker 1: I felt so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I wish if there was like one
Speaker 2: wish that I could be like, I wish that wasn't
Speaker 2: bad for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some cigarettes is nice.
Speaker 1: Cigarettes is great.
Speaker 2: Not only do we have teen Beat the podcast, we
Speaker 2: have a brand new line of teen Beat shirts and
Speaker 2: hoodies that not only celebrate the show, but honestly they're
Speaker 2: just cool all on their own. To make it even cooler,
Speaker 2: we made a one of one shirt just for this
Speaker 2: very first episode to help commemorate mister Mark Hoppus, the
Speaker 2: voice of Blink one eighty two, being my very first guest.
Speaker 2: So I highly recommend you go check it out. It's
Speaker 2: our first drop, available at teenbeatpod dot com. Go take
Speaker 2: a look teenbeatpod dot com. Do you know why your
Speaker 2: dad picked the bass if he was gonna when you
Speaker 2: decided to buy.
Speaker 3: You No, I wanted to play the bass I watched
Speaker 3: I saw The Cure on MTV. They just like Heaven
Speaker 3: Video and Simon Gallup. The bassis from the Cure just
Speaker 3: looked so cool, and there was something about the bass
Speaker 3: that I was drawn to. It was kind of the
Speaker 3: bridge between the drums and the guitar and the melody
Speaker 3: and whatever it was. I wanted to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I asked my dad, can I get a bass guitar?
Speaker 3: Where you buy me a bass guitar? And he said,
Speaker 3: if you paint my girlfriend's house, I will girlriend girl friend. Yeah,
Speaker 3: my stepmom. Now she's awesome. Yeah, we love her all good.
Speaker 4: But yeah.
Speaker 3: So I painted her condo in Washington, d C. In
Speaker 3: the summer and it was like, you know, DC in
Speaker 3: the summer is awful, humid, hot, stanky, just like and
Speaker 3: I was out there painting her condo with makeup on,
Speaker 3: my makeup running down my face. Here now a mine, Yeah,
Speaker 3: like this is why gods don't go outside.
Speaker 4: But I did.
Speaker 3: I painted her. I painted her condo and I got
Speaker 3: a base and I still have it. Actually, that's so cool.
Speaker 3: It was in the Fender Museum for a long time
Speaker 3: until Fenner got sold and then then moved the headquarters.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well we are talking just a week after
Speaker 2: rumors ran rampant that MTV shuddered its music channels for good,
Speaker 2: and who knows what's actually happening there. I mean, it
Speaker 2: is a medium that not only inspired you, but is
Speaker 2: a huge part of the Blink one eighty two story.
Speaker 2: You also met your wife thanks to MTV. I did
Speaker 2: want to tell that story.
Speaker 3: She was an executive at MTV. She ran the West
Speaker 3: Coast office of MTV. She coordinated and booked and dealt
Speaker 3: with all the people for like the MTV Music Awards
Speaker 3: and the uh whatever other awards, the Movie Awards.
Speaker 4: The VMA's fanatic. I met her well.
Speaker 3: The first time I met her was at Sports and
Speaker 3: Music Festival in like ninety five in Austin, and.
Speaker 4: We were a baby baby baby band.
Speaker 3: I think it was like Offspring and Wu Tang and
Speaker 3: a bunch of other like huge bands, and then like
Speaker 3: we're this baby band, and I remember there was an
Speaker 3: executive there who's kind of taking care of us.
Speaker 4: I was like, that chick is really cool. And I
Speaker 4: really like her.
Speaker 3: The next time I saw her was in the Bahamas
Speaker 3: at like a spring break thing. I had actually brought
Speaker 3: a girlfriend with me but had kind of like seen
Speaker 3: Sky again and been like, Oh, that's that lady from before. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I really like her. And then I'd broken up with
Speaker 3: that girlfriend. And then Sky had booked blink onin eighty
Speaker 3: two on making the video, and we were making the
Speaker 3: video for All the Small Things, and making the video
Speaker 3: was a half hour show that they would put and
Speaker 3: it was all behind the scenes of the creation of
Speaker 3: a video and at the end they'd show the video.
Speaker 3: And so it was For All the Small Things, which
Speaker 3: was the video that really broke us. And so the
Speaker 3: day that I saw her, we were at the Third
Speaker 3: Street Dance Studio over on Third Street. We were upstairs.
Speaker 3: We were dressed ridiculously. I was in like bright blue
Speaker 3: leotards with like leg warmers on and a headband and
Speaker 3: like like we were because we were learning choreography for
Speaker 3: the All the Small Things video, we thought it would
Speaker 3: be funny to dress up in these costumes. And Sky
Speaker 3: was there and I was talking to Tom, and Tom
Speaker 3: always trying to embarrass me. So we walked over to
Speaker 3: Sky and he said, Hey, my friend Mark thinks you're hot.
Speaker 3: Would you ever go on a date with him? And
Speaker 3: immediately she said absolutely not. I don't date artists. Oh
Speaker 3: And I was like, hey, I get that, totally cool,
Speaker 3: understand it.
Speaker 4: Professional. Here's my number.
Speaker 3: If you ever want to talk or go get coffee
Speaker 3: or whatever, just whatever, give me a call. Didn't think
Speaker 3: anything about it, thought she'd never call. Had a date
Speaker 3: that night with Melissa Joanhart. Nice okay, who I had
Speaker 3: just met at an award show and like I was
Speaker 3: feeling cool, like blinkeredy too. We were on MTV. We're
Speaker 3: filming a video. We're going to do the behind the
Speaker 3: scenes thing you.
Speaker 4: To award show.
Speaker 3: Melissa Joan Hart had her publicist contact my publicist at
Speaker 3: the label to get my number, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm going to be up in LA film
Speaker 3: in a music video. Maybe one day after the shoot
Speaker 3: we can go out to dinner or something. So we
Speaker 3: went out to on a date that night and we
Speaker 3: just didn't connect. It was just like a boring day.
Speaker 3: She didn't like me, I didn't like her. We were
Speaker 3: both totally cordial with one another. She dropped me back
Speaker 3: off of the hotel at like whatever was ten o'clock
Speaker 3: at night, eleven o'clock at night. I look at my
Speaker 3: phone and I had missed a call and gotten a
Speaker 3: message from Sky. So I called her up and we
Speaker 3: talked until like three or four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 3: and then like we were married within a year.
Speaker 2: Wow, where did you take her on your first date
Speaker 2: with her?
Speaker 4: We drove past.
Speaker 3: So the first time that I went on a date
Speaker 3: with her, we went to a dive bar across the
Speaker 3: street on Highland called Powerhouse.
Speaker 1: I know Powerhouse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a place that light you smoke for
Speaker 2: a really long time after you were anymore.
Speaker 3: Our birthday it was August sixth. It was her birthday.
Speaker 3: So I met her August fourth. August fifth, we shot
Speaker 3: and I didn't get to go out with her that day.
Speaker 3: August sixth was the last day of the shoot. I
Speaker 3: took her out that night. We went to Powerhouse because
Speaker 3: it was her birthday, and we met up with a
Speaker 3: bunch of people there and we went She dropped me
Speaker 3: off back of my hotel because I was there for
Speaker 3: the shoot, and we kissed on Third Street at that
Speaker 3: hotel right down the street from What's Casuia. Now I
Speaker 3: think it's called what's that hotel called?
Speaker 1: Now, the Dream?
Speaker 4: N it's not the Dream. It's not that nice.
Speaker 3: Come on, okay anyway, So yeah, we kissed in the
Speaker 3: parking not in the parking lot, but in the little
Speaker 3: driveway of that hotel.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's cute.
Speaker 4: Yep. But now we've been married twenty five years and
Speaker 4: we have a son.
Speaker 1: And how old your son?
Speaker 4: Twenty three?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: Three twenty three? He's awesome. He is a great kid.
Speaker 3: He has a job. He programs Call of Duty. Wow,
Speaker 3: that's his job.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does he play instruments? Does he is into music at all?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: Growing up he wanted a drum kits, so we bought
Speaker 3: him a drum kit and that lasted for like a week.
Speaker 3: And then he wanted a guitar and we got him
Speaker 3: a guitar and that lasted like a week. But he
Speaker 3: was always very technical and into video when he was
Speaker 3: a kid. That was in like fourth grade. What do
Speaker 3: you want to do when you grow up? I want
Speaker 3: to program video games?
Speaker 4: All right? Eva was such a bad parent.
Speaker 3: It's just like my dad was when I said I
Speaker 3: wanted to play in a band, and he's like, that's great,
Speaker 3: never gonna.
Speaker 1: Happen, right, right, right, but you you keep up that dream.
Speaker 4: Just make sure you have a backup plan.
Speaker 3: And so when my son came to me and was like,
Speaker 3: I want to program video games for a living, I'm like, yep, okay, great,
Speaker 3: not gonna happen, but you keep that dream alive. But
Speaker 3: he worked his ass off, went to college that a
Speaker 3: double major, has always like studied how games work. And
Speaker 3: it's more than just like he likes playing video games,
Speaker 3: like he looks into the mechanics of it and gets
Speaker 3: on the programming.
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, I mean, playing music in a band
Speaker 2: is something that so many people want to do, and
Speaker 2: yet so few people actually end up making.
Speaker 1: It doing it. Why did you think video game programming
Speaker 1: was something like that was never going to happen?
Speaker 3: Just because when you talk to anybody, any like kid boy,
Speaker 3: especially who's like ten or eleven years old, they're like
Speaker 3: playing video games.
Speaker 4: They're like, yeah, I want to play video games.
Speaker 2: Okay, our kids are into video games too, but thankfully
Speaker 2: they like playing them with us. Still, it's like they
Speaker 2: really only want to do it if we're going to
Speaker 2: play with them. So I'm like, I'm actually trying to
Speaker 2: encourage that with as many co op games as we
Speaker 2: can find.
Speaker 3: I honestly, like my favorite memories of raising my son,
Speaker 3: some of them were playing video games, like we got
Speaker 3: Zelda Twilight Princess when he was just a you know,
Speaker 3: a small child. He couldn't really control the game too much,
Speaker 3: so he would sit next to me on the couch
Speaker 3: and we would play video games together.
Speaker 4: And it was such a great memory.
Speaker 3: And I credit video games with teaching him, you know,
Speaker 3: spatial learning and math and reading to some extent, and
Speaker 3: logic and you know, really the games that he was
Speaker 3: playing helped his development and helped him become a smarter person.
Speaker 3: And like, I don't know, I don't think of video
Speaker 3: games is like a throwaway pastime. Yeah it can be,
Speaker 3: you know. And I still play video games with him now,
Speaker 3: but he's so much better than I am. We spent
Speaker 3: the holidays playing a game called Arc Raider, which is
Speaker 3: really popular right now, and he's great at it. Like
Speaker 3: he plays for hours and hours and hours with his friends,
Speaker 3: and like I'm playing with him and he's just I'm
Speaker 3: just frustrating him.
Speaker 4: I suck so body. He's like, Dad, he's right behind you,
Speaker 4: He's right behind you, what are you doing? Turn us
Speaker 4: shoot his ass?
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
Speaker 3: And like robots are killing me? Yeah, and he just
Speaker 3: like shakes his head, but he's very patient.
Speaker 1: At least that's good. I want to talk.
Speaker 2: We've talked a lot about you and that time you
Speaker 2: spent in Washington, d C. How did you get back
Speaker 2: to California because you went to college in San Diego.
Speaker 3: I did, So we were living in this small town
Speaker 3: in California where my dad worked on a Navy base
Speaker 3: in the middle of the desert because that's where they
Speaker 3: would test their missiles and bombs from planes. Then we
Speaker 3: moved to one year when I was a sophomore, to Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. So we could work at the Pentagon, and
Speaker 3: then we moved back to the small town. Okay, And
Speaker 3: when I graduated cob When I graduated high school, I
Speaker 3: was playing in a band, and I was working at
Speaker 3: a restaurant and just aimless, like I was waiting tables,
Speaker 3: making pizzas, going to community college, playing in like a
Speaker 3: garage band.
Speaker 4: And then my dad kicked me out of the house.
Speaker 3: Well you didn't like kick me out, but he was like,
Speaker 3: it's time for you to go to a real school.
Speaker 3: And go be an adult and get a job and
Speaker 3: start your life. So I moved to San Diego to
Speaker 3: go to college. My sister, my mom, and my stepdad
Speaker 3: were living in San Diego, so I got in. So
Speaker 3: I went to finish my community college in San Diego
Speaker 3: and go to a four year school, which is cal
Speaker 3: State San Marco. So I was studying to be an
Speaker 3: English teacher. The day that I moved to San Diego,
Speaker 3: like got up in the morning, loaded up my shitty
Speaker 3: Nissan Stanza, drove from my small town down to San Diego.
Speaker 3: Halfway there, I was like, what am I going to
Speaker 3: do in this big city? Like I don't know anybody,
Speaker 3: I don't really want to get a job, and I
Speaker 3: don't do anything.
Speaker 4: I like playing music.
Speaker 3: So we got to my parents' house or my mom's house,
Speaker 3: unloaded my car, turn to my sister and I go, well,
Speaker 3: what do I do now? Like I want to play music,
Speaker 3: and what do I do? I put an ad in
Speaker 3: a paper? Do I put like, you know, bassist wants
Speaker 3: mediocre bandmates or whatever? And my sister was like, my
Speaker 3: boyfriend has a friend who plays guitar, loves punk rock,
Speaker 3: loves skateboarding.
Speaker 4: You should meet him.
Speaker 3: So we got in the car that night, drove over
Speaker 3: to this guy's house and it was Tom.
Speaker 1: Wow, you were like set up on a friend date.
Speaker 3: Yeah, blind friend date, but it went great. Like I
Speaker 3: went into his garage where he had his bedroom because
Speaker 3: his parents were going through a bad divorce, so he
Speaker 3: moved into his garage and we started playing music and
Speaker 3: laughing and hanging out, and that night we wrote a
Speaker 3: song that.
Speaker 4: We still play today. It's called Carousel.
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's the only story of meeting a
Speaker 2: guy who has a bedroom in his garage and going
Speaker 2: into it on your first blind meeting, that's is the
Speaker 2: only story that's worked out?
Speaker 4: Well? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: I don't recommend that for most blind dates, but it
Speaker 2: did pay off in the situation. Yeah did Okay, So
Speaker 2: how quickly do the two of you form?
Speaker 1: Blink one E two?
Speaker 3: Immediately we were like, we want to play music together.
Speaker 3: Tom had already started playing some shows and not shows,
Speaker 3: but like backyard parties and stuff with a guy named
Speaker 3: Scott who ended up being our first drummer. So yeah,
Speaker 3: like you know, the next day Tom called up. It
Speaker 3: was like, hey, let's keep writing songs, let's get and
Speaker 3: so we just started doing stuff. Tom was ending high school.
Speaker 3: I was still in community college. Scott was in high school,
Speaker 3: and that it all began there in ninety two.
Speaker 2: Did your dad ever say to you when I said
Speaker 2: it was time for you to launch? I didn't mean
Speaker 2: just go move into your mom's house and start playing
Speaker 2: music at backyard parties.
Speaker 3: No, my dad didn't think that our band was successful.
Speaker 3: So I was ninety two. My dad didn't think our
Speaker 3: band was successful until ninety nine, when it was like
Speaker 3: ninety nine or maybe even two thousand. We played on
Speaker 3: the Jay Leno Show. Wow, oh, that's the night show.
Speaker 4: With Jay Leno.
Speaker 2: That is for sure, a dad, Oh, this is official
Speaker 2: anything below the Jay Leno Show.
Speaker 4: No, not a story.
Speaker 3: And he'd been coming to shows and stuff. He'd seen
Speaker 3: us play in front of larger and larger venues. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but somehow coming to that show. And Richard Simmons was
Speaker 3: one of the guests.
Speaker 1: Okay, you and Richard Simmons.
Speaker 3: So we're all in the dressing room the green room
Speaker 3: before the show, and my dad's hanging out and like
Speaker 3: my future wife's parents were there whatever, and the door
Speaker 3: flies open and this dude comes in Blink twenty two
Speaker 3: and it's Richard Simmons.
Speaker 4: I never met the guy. He comes barely in.
Speaker 3: He comes in, he goes, hey, blakewiny too, and he
Speaker 3: comes and he grabs Tom and he gives him a
Speaker 3: kiss on the cheek. Same with me, same with Travis.
Speaker 3: And I go, uh hey, Richard, what's going on? We
Speaker 3: start talking. I go, so, how do I get in shape?
Speaker 3: Want to be as in shape as you? And he is, oh, please,
Speaker 3: I'm old enough to be your dad. And my dad goes, actually,
Speaker 3: I'm his dad. And Richard Simmons goes dad and grabs
Speaker 3: him and gives him a giant kiss on the cheek,
Speaker 3: and then he runs out of the room. And then
Speaker 3: we go and we play on jay Leno. That's the
Speaker 3: photo right there. That's the one that's when my dad
Speaker 3: kissed Richard Simmons. Your dad is so happy, he's so happy,
Speaker 3: he's so happy with that kiss.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so that was when my dad's like, oh, if
Speaker 3: Richard Simmons knows who my son is, then he must
Speaker 3: be fak.
Speaker 2: Richard Simmons and Jay Leno give my son's band a
Speaker 2: sign of it. Wow, that's pretty great. What would high
Speaker 2: school Mark Coppus have thought about? Number one on TRL.
Speaker 2: Mark Coppus e Ben Stoked.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I grew up watching MTV, you know,
Speaker 3: even before. I remember the summer that MTV happened, and
Speaker 3: like it was a big deal. My dad was always
Speaker 3: a fan of music, and I remember him and my
Speaker 3: uncle being like, oh my gosh, there's a channel where
Speaker 3: you can watch music on TV. And we were watching
Speaker 3: like the Police, and we were watching like all these
Speaker 3: original videos. And I remember when Michael Jackson's thriller video
Speaker 3: came out. It was a huge deal. Like people stayed home,
Speaker 3: people like made plans to be home or whatever. It
Speaker 3: was eight o'clock at night to watch the premiere of
Speaker 3: this thriller video directed by John Landis, who did like,
Speaker 3: you know, all this cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: So yeah, MTV was a big deal for me.
Speaker 3: So knowing that our band was on MTV and was
Speaker 3: doing well on MTV, I think I'd have been stoked.
Speaker 2: So you and Tom, how did you guys then meet
Speaker 2: Travis and then the three of you start doing shows?
Speaker 3: Well, we met Travis just by playing a lot of
Speaker 3: shows around southern California and.
Speaker 4: Then we did a tour.
Speaker 3: It was he played a man called the Aquabats and
Speaker 3: we did a tour it was Primus Blanquidity two in
Speaker 3: the Aquabats. It was called the Snowcore Tour, and it
Speaker 3: took place during the winter, and it was a tour
Speaker 3: that we performed punk rock music at snowboard competitions.
Speaker 1: So cool.
Speaker 4: So you were touring in the dead.
Speaker 3: Of winter in snowboard mountains, so it was always icy,
Speaker 3: always cold, always bleak. And Travis smoked and drank. But
Speaker 3: he was playing in the Aquabats a lot of whom
Speaker 3: are Mormon who didn't smoke or drink, and so he
Speaker 3: would always come onto our bus and smoke with us,
Speaker 3: and like we would hang out. That was back when
Speaker 3: everybody would smoke on a bush. Yeah, And so we
Speaker 3: became friends with Travis that way. And then our drummer
Speaker 3: was having some personal stuff going on had to leave tour.
Speaker 4: Travis filled in. It was great.
Speaker 3: When Travis filled in, was like, oh man, this is
Speaker 3: something different, there's something cool. Yeah, and then like the
Speaker 3: situation came to a head with our drummer. Our drummer
Speaker 3: left the band and then like at that point it
Speaker 3: was like, oh, Travis.
Speaker 4: Is the guy.
Speaker 2: So what were those early Blink one shows like were
Speaker 2: they always did they always feel like a success?
Speaker 4: Yes, at least to us.
Speaker 3: I mean, when Tom and I are on stage, we
Speaker 3: really performed from one another, almost more than we perform
Speaker 3: for the crowd. Like if I can make Tom laugh,
Speaker 3: that's a good thing. If I can make Travis laugh,
Speaker 3: that's a big thing. And so Tom and I we
Speaker 3: leave on tour and we start joking around and we
Speaker 3: try and say some outrageous stuff. But then the next
Speaker 3: night it gets a little further, and the next night
Speaker 3: gets a little further, and the next Like I remember,
Speaker 3: at one point we were on tour and our manager
Speaker 3: pulled us aside because we were on a tour called
Speaker 3: the Mark, Tom and Travis Show Tour. And Tom had
Speaker 3: this idea that if you took a vocal effect that
Speaker 3: pitches your voice down and octave, you can grab a
Speaker 3: microphone and you can act like you're Satan.
Speaker 4: Talking directly to the audience.
Speaker 3: And so I remember we were on tour one time
Speaker 3: and after the show, our manager's like, hey, can I
Speaker 3: talk to you guys for a second, And he calls
Speaker 3: us into his office and he goes, I think you're
Speaker 3: taking a little farm. We're like, what are you talking
Speaker 3: about He's like, well, when Tom gets on the microphone,
Speaker 3: he acts like Satan and he says, hey, kids, I'm.
Speaker 4: Here to your blood. It's a little too far.
Speaker 1: Back, is the line?
Speaker 4: Yes, the line it.
Speaker 3: We're like, Okay, that makes sense, got it? Roger copy that. Nope,
Speaker 3: your blood?
Speaker 4: Got it?
Speaker 1: Has your sense of humor changed it all? Since you
Speaker 1: were no so stupid?
Speaker 3: It's so dumb. Literally, for the past two years. We
Speaker 3: played one hundred and seventy five shows in the past
Speaker 3: two years since the band reformed, since we played Coachella
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three, one hundred and seventy five shows.
Speaker 3: Literally Tom and I and we're we're traveling so comfortably,
Speaker 3: private jets, five star hotels, people carrying our luggage like
Speaker 3: we don't do any but Tom and I after the
Speaker 3: show get on the plane and we were just making
Speaker 3: dick jokes on a private jet with like, you know,
Speaker 3: champagne and.
Speaker 1: Like eating caviar.
Speaker 4: Making totally.
Speaker 3: It's like professional people dealing with me and Tom talking
Speaker 3: talking dick jokes.
Speaker 4: It's so funny. I love it. It's great.
Speaker 1: Would teenage Mark have been on social media?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, probably, I don't think that. I mean adult Mark
Speaker 3: has enough problem, enough trouble staying off social media. I
Speaker 3: don't think that, you know, teenage Mark would have done
Speaker 3: much better.
Speaker 4: It's awful. I hate it.
Speaker 1: I know I hate it, and I also can't stay
Speaker 1: away from it.
Speaker 3: I know it's just the hot stove that you can't
Speaker 3: stop touching.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's true.
Speaker 2: Did you guys ever contemplate adding a dedicated guitarist because
Speaker 2: you are a rare trio in rock?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: Okay, no, I you know, I have nothing but crazy
Speaker 3: respect for bands like Foo Fighters or Green Day or
Speaker 3: anybody else who's like this core band, but then they
Speaker 3: add additional musicians on you know, no doubt. But for us,
Speaker 3: Blink has always just been the three of us. So
Speaker 3: when you know, it's the three of us. And then
Speaker 3: when we had keyboards, we didn't have a keyboard player.
Speaker 3: We had our friend Roger Joseph Manning Junior from Jellyfish
Speaker 3: come in and he did all the keyboard parts, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't touring, and so we would use track for those,
Speaker 3: and we still use track for keyboards. But on stage,
Speaker 3: I just want to see the band, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Keep the theme song from our listeners any longer.
Speaker 1: I would really like to play it.
Speaker 2: We officially have the coolest theme song in all of podcasting.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's pretty great, written, performed, recorded all.
Speaker 2: By Mark Oppus. This will begin every episode moving forward,
Speaker 2: and it's eventually going to chart on Spotify. I know
Speaker 2: it then single handedly bring back MTV. Yeah, so thank
Speaker 2: you for this. Absolutely, Thank you so much, Mark for everything.
Speaker 2: I couldn't be more excited to be connected to you
Speaker 2: through this theme song forever.
Speaker 1: Moving forward, let's get into the theme song.
Speaker 4: That's okay, I was doing it.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: So the thing at the end is literally because I
Speaker 3: had turned in the I had turned in the song,
Speaker 3: and then Jensen, your husband, was like, uh, what a
Speaker 3: fun Is there a way to work in like a
Speaker 3: teen beat in there somehow? And I'm like, yeah, but
Speaker 3: not the way that it is right now. We need
Speaker 3: to go teen beat? And I had I immediately knew
Speaker 3: what the song needed, but I was gone and my
Speaker 3: engineer was gone, and so literally I think it was
Speaker 3: New Year's Day. I have that torn out and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: we need to shout teen beat. So like everyone's kind
Speaker 3: of hung.
Speaker 4: Over from New year's and we're all like weird.
Speaker 3: We're like it's sitting in our kitchen going teen beat
Speaker 3: into my phone and sending it to the engineer to
Speaker 3: drop into the song.
Speaker 1: Perfect. Who are you with? I need to know? Is
Speaker 1: this a family teen beat?
Speaker 4: Yeah? It was me, my wife and my son.
Speaker 1: I love that so much more. That's just perfect.
Speaker 2: Thank you all so much for listening to this episode
Speaker 2: of teen Beat. We will have a small bonus episode
Speaker 2: for you with Mark on Friday on the teen beat
Speaker 2: Feed and an awkward teenage story from one of you.
Speaker 1: We would love to.
Speaker 2: Hear all of your awkward teenage stories. Send us a
Speaker 2: concise voice memo to Teenbeatpod at gmail dot com and
Speaker 2: maybe we'll play your story on the pod. Also, don't
Speaker 2: forget to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at teen
Speaker 2: beat Pod.
Speaker 1: Teen Beat is.
Speaker 2: An iHeart podcast produced and hosted by Danielle Fischel, Executive
Speaker 2: producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of
Speaker 2: production Danielle Romo, producer and editor Tara Suboch. The theme
Speaker 2: song is by mar Coppus. Yes that Mark Coppus. Follow
Speaker 2: us on Instagram. I'm at Team b Pod