It wasn't long ago—just shy of a year and half to be exact—Tom Delonge was on stage singing some song of adolescent teenage angst to which he'd long ago lost the ability to relate. He'd been doing the pop-punk rock star thing for over two decades. By this time, the typically wisecracking singer-guitarist for perennial pop-punk stalwarts Blink-182—the man who seemed to always flash a toothy grin when onstage, the guy who penned a song called "Aliens Exist"—had bigger things on his mind. He officially quit Blink last March.
Delonge was obsessed with UFOs—so much so that he's focused his attention on a cross-platform, multimedia project entitled Sekret Machines: novels, comics, documentaries, feature films, and more. It's all centered on digging deep into that which can't be explained: flying objects; secret government knowledge; and, most importantly, how we as a society grapple with the reality of it all. Delonge's first offering? A novel titled Chasing Shadows, cowritten with A.J. Hartley, out April 5.
In a conversation with Delonge, the former Blink-182 frontman talks about his meetings with Department of Defense head honchos for his new venture, how he knows quite well some people think he's crazy for all this, and why Blink is officially in the rear view.
I take it UFOs and extraterrestrial life have long been a fascination of yours?
Anybody that's into this subject matter has found ways to pursue it. For most people, it's reading books watching movies or cruising around various dark corners of the Internet to find little breadcrumbs to hopefully create a larger picture. That's how it's been for me for a very long time. It wasn't until recently that I was able to break down a few doors and present an idea that I thought was worthy of people's attention on this issue. A series of events put me in front of people that I never thought I would have the chance of being in front of. It's the first time we're going to be answering questions and communicating things about this topic to the world. This project is going to be something that I think could be pretty revolutionary.
When did this fascination with UFOs start?
When you get into this subject and you see someone from the military talking about something that's extraordinary; or you see video of machinery that can turn into a ball of light and skip the distance of 1000 miles in half a second; or you read a transcript of a physicist talking about his work on special access programs underground in the Nevada desert… How can you not be completely obsessed with that? You're telling me we've conquered gravity and nobody's known about it? You're telling me there's a bunch of weird shit going on on the Moon that nobody knows about and that's why we haven't gone back? Yes [laughs]. You don't have to see a UFO to be completely blown away by the contents of the subject matter.
You talk about this project being extremely important to communicate to the next generation.
It's gonna be Apollo all over again where people are blown away by what our country is capable of and what we've been doing. They're not going to be the Big Bad Secret Government. People are going to want to re-allocate more money to space defense and exploration. They're going to want to work for incredible companies—that I can't say here—instead of Elon Musk. Some of these companies are having a hard time getting new engineers because they can't talk about what they're doing. But I'm like, "If people knew what you're doing, they will all day long graduate from MIT and come work for you." It's like how the day after 9/11 everybody went to work for the military. Just be truthful and they'll support you.
It's no exaggeration to say Sekret Machines is a huge undertaking.
I'm intimately aware with how people absorb their media and their art. I've been building companies ever since the genesis of Blink-182. I've been an entrepreneur. One of the companies we built was called Midlife. Today that technology powers Pearl Jam's 10 Club, all of their ticketing, and all of the monetization of their goods. And the White Stripes and Jack White's company Third Man Records used it. Nine Inch Nails. Kanye. I learned from many years doing that how people want to consume their art. So I knew it needed to be multi-platform, and I knew it needed to be in a way that was what we call a franchise—an actual property that is conveyed on different mediums. It has a much larger rate of traction with people.
Tell me about your secret meetings with high-level government officials.
For me to go into the areas I did and pitch something with knowledge, to bring ideas that had a voice that they don't have, I think that's what resonated with them. Being who I am afforded me at least an open door. But once you get in there, you gotta say something smart. Because a lot of these people—even though they have multiple stars on their shoulders, they have multiple PhDs, have an enormous responsibility, and in some cases they command tens of thousands of scientists and engineers and different programs that nobody knows about—when you get in there you've gotta speak coherently about your idea and get to the point quickly. My knowledge of the UFO phenomenon as an academic of the subject and presenting a thesis to these people instantly made them understand that I could be a rare force that could execute this type of a project. I also understood the more scary and complex parts of the phenomenon. I wasn't just in there saying, "UFOs are aliens from another planet and they wear tinfoil hats."
Were you worried they might dismiss you as some far-flung rock star?
Oh, yeah. I always anticipate that I'm underestimated in anything I do in my life, to be honest. But if you get five minutes to sit in front of someone at the levels of these men and women, you've got to challenge the way they think and far surpass what you think they think of you. I remember my first conversation—it's in the foreword of the book—where I went through four major layers of security with guns and electronic code systems and hallways with white noise. I asked others to leave the room, I shut the door, and I looked this person in the eye and said, "I understand the national security implications of what I'm about to say, and I'm not naive to this topic and I want to understand. I come with the utmost respect for this issue. But if you hear me out and you really hear what I'm trying to say, I think you're going to find merit in what I propose. I think you'll find that this could be a rare opportunity that could be an extraordinary breakthrough for young people. People like your children, my children, and how they view themselves and more importantly how they view the government." [That was] my speech was almost word for word. From the get-go I was very hard-hitting and very confident. Even though on the inside I was shaking like a 13-year-old.
Understandably so.
It was nerve-racking even being in a place like that.
I know you're still making music with your band Angels and Airwaves, but Sekret Machines sounds fairly all encompassing.
These types of projects take a long time, and they move in different ways. Day to day, it's not so much working from point A to point B. You can be doing a lot of work one week, and then you have a couple weeks go by before you have another major meeting on something. The only thing that's a day-to-day operation on Sekret Machines that takes up a lot of time is my interactions with the advisors and organizing the information that will be coming out in the docuseries or in the next book. Because that's a long process.
You must go into a project like this knowing some people are going to think you're crazy?
I had an interaction with a major film studio—I can't say who it is—where they thought I was lying to them. Or maybe it all sounded so crazy to them or made them so fearful that they shut down and wouldn't have any more communication about it. It was really odd. The walls have been built up in people's hearts and minds about this subject, and some of them are really big. That's because of the way the government's dealt with the subject matter over the past 60 years. For some people out there, it's going to be a difficult thing for them to swallow when they hear about this stuff. Whether [it's] from this project or other things that are coming.
How has it been juggling varied different artistic mediums, from feature films to books and more?
It's tedious work. It's exhausting work. But I'm not a stranger to stress. I've always been pretty good at juggling a lot of things. I think I operate better that way. Fortunately things aren't all going to happen at the same time. But that might change here soon. I'm not trying to torture myself by any means. But by the nature of what I'm doing these are really ambitious things and they take a minute.
Have you had time to process leaving Blink-182?
I reflect on it all the time. I love Blink. I started that band. I named the band. I found the members. I put that whole thing together. I never meant for it to be the only thing in my life. I also never meant for it to ever not be in my life. But I am an artist, and I find pleasure in challenging myself to understand and learn, to create new types of art, and prove myself worthy of people's valued attention and admiration. It's what any artist desires. So when the challenge isn't there, then I find myself in a difficult position.
You felt like Blink had run its course.
I feel like it's our job as artists to compete for people's attention. That is valuable. With Blink, it was never boring. It never was like we couldn't challenge ourselves artistically. There's just a lot of differences in how to be challenged or how to attack the challenge. There's a lot of downtime. And in that downtime, I was always doing other things. I've always been that way—always will be that way. A lot of people are satisfied with just having that one thing in their life their entire life—and I envy them, by the way. I wish I was wired that way because it would make my life and relationships much easier. But I don't get off that way. I'm wired to really challenge my mind.
Though I imagine music will always be a huge part of your life in some capacity.
I love music. I love the challenge of creating new forms of it. I think if people listen to my last Angels and Airwaves record, The Dream Walker, it's the best music I've ever made it my life. And the most complex. And the most mature. It's up there with the best couple things I've done in my life as far as music goes. I'm still trying to do my best work, but the cool thing is I don't have to see music as a job. And that's what I don't want it to be. I just don't want to do something I care about as a means to an end. I want to do it because it's bringing me joy.
