Though it seemed like the final word came down Monday night when Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker dissed and dismissed bandmate Tom DeLonge in Rolling Stone, the Blink One-Eighty-Feud thunders on. Last night, DeLonge posted a self-aggrandizing and finger-pointing screed on his Facebook page, saying the entire group is “accountable” for its dysfunction, “which is why we haven’t talked in months.” In the statement, DeLonge attempts to absolve himself from wrongdoing, saying he’s tried to be in constant communication with the group and blaming some legal shenanigans for his absence. As he says,
“Over the past two and a half years, while a recording partner was being sought for a new Blink record, I launched a media company. I just put out a new Angels & Airwaves record and as some of you know, there’s a lot more coming–comics, books, a film, etc. The books will all come with music. This is a wheel that’s already in motion. So you can imagine my frustration when I was handed a 60-page Blink contract saying I couldn’t release an Angels album for 9 months and that the Blink album had to be recorded in 6 months, which was impossible for me. Doing so would force me to breach several artist contracts. Authors, Concept Artists, Animators… Many people.
They did eventually drop the Angels provision, but the part about having to finish a Blink album in 6 months remained. All of these other projects are being worked, exist in contract form–I can’t just slam the brakes and drop years of development, partnerships and commitments at the snap of a finger.”
DeLonge also says the whole dispute makes him “sad. Sad for us. Sad for you—that you’re witnessing this immaturity”—not that he minded when fans witnessed the group’s immaturity before. He says he’s surprised Hoppus and Barker are fueling “negativity about the legacy of the band on something as trashy as the Internet” and says that, while he “never planned on quitting” the group, the “relationship got poisoned” earlier this week, no doubt right alongside millions of fans’ opinions of the once fun group.