The comical moment Liam Gallagher entered the Blink-182 dressing room
Blink-182 emerged from the 1990s in a raging torrent of American pop-punk alongside the likes of Green Day, Good Charlotte and Sum 41. Meanwhile, raising the Britpop banner across the Atlantic were the gobby Gallagher brothers and their group Oasis. While one can only imagine these two disparate styled groups being at each others’ throats, it actually transpires that they admire one another – or the closest thing to admiration Liam Gallagher can muster outside of The Beatles and haircuts.
Although very much a component of their native pop-punk scene, Blink-182 have named a number of British bands as critical influences on their sound, including The Cure, The Clash and Oasis. Speaking in the 2016 documentary, The Pursuit of Tone, Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge recalls the day his band got to play in front of Oasis and the backstage conversation that ensued.
“I remember sitting backstage, and I’ve got my sideways hat on, and I got my fucking nose piercings and crazy shit,” DeLonge laughs. “The doors open up, and here come all these guys in trench coats with Beatles haircuts. First reaction is, ‘fuck, they look pretty fucking cool…but they’re not punk rockers, but whatever’.”
After coming offstage from their set, DeLonge revealed that Oasis’ outspoken frontman came backstage to see the trio. “He goes, ‘Are you guys Blink-182?’ and I say, ‘Yeah,’” DeLonge says. “And he pauses. And he goes, ‘You’re the best I’ve seen in America’. I’m all ‘You like us?’. And he goes, ‘I didn’t say that. But you’re the best I’ve seen in America’. And he slammed the door”.
He added: “I looked at everyone else. I go, ‘Oh my god, that was the most punk rock dude I’ve ever met in my life!’ I became the biggest Oasis fan after that where from that day forward I stopped listening to punk rock music, and I started listening to everything.”
Not long after DeLonge’s kind words about Oasis, Liam Gallagher took to Twitter to react the only way he knows how – with a little rock ‘n’ roll swagger. “The most Punk Rock Dude Ever Ha ha you’ve seen fuck all yet mate as you were LG x,” he wrote.
Watch Tom DeLonge’s full interview on The Pursuit of Tone below, in which he also describes an encounter with Joe Strummer of The Clash.
