Travis Barker of Blink-182 (and 974,799 other bands) hosted a special pay-per-view event this weekend and his Blink bandmate, Mark Hoppus, made an appearance – his first since being declared cancer free.
Filmed in “a haunted estate in the hills of horror,” Travis Barker’s House of Horrors is a “first-of-its-kind PPV fest” presented by NoCap. In addition to Hoppus, Barker is joined by Machine Gun Kelly, Blackbear, Avril Lavigne, JXDN, Lil Huddy, Iann Dior, and more.
This was Hoppus’ first live performance since announcing he was cancer free in September and he donned a Batman costume for the event. With Barker on drum duty, and guitarist Kevin “Thrasher” Gruft, the trio played Blink-182 classics “What’s My Age Again?,” “The Rock Show,” and the beautiful love song, “Family Reunion.”
Hoppus announced his diagnosis of stage 4 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in June and was only able to pick his bass up again in July. On a Twitch stream, he played and said, “Not only is this the first time that I’ve tried to play these songs in well over a year, this is the first time that I’ve felt well enough to play my bass since I was diagnosed. This is the first time I’ve picked up my bass in a few months, even.”
After months of chemo, Hoppus announced in September, “Just saw my oncologist and I’m cancer free!! Thank you God and universe and friends and family and everyone who sent support and kindness and love. Still have to get scanned every six months and it’ll take me until the end of the year to get back to normal but today is an amazing day and I feel so blessed.”
Barker told NoCap that Hoppus’ cancer-free declaration was, “The best news all year… That’s my brother. Mark doing this and us playing a few songs is just incredible, and I’ve been with him through this whole process and he’s just been so strong and resilient and tough, and I just told him ‘elbows up and fight, it’s time to fight’, and he did.” (Barker also got engaged to Kourtney Kardashian recently, so a big year for him as well.)
Obviously we don’t want to push too much, but could there be a Blink-182 full reunion? Former bandmate Tom DeLonge recently said he and Hoppus had repaired their friendship and talk daily. “The way the universe works is strange because I reached out to Mark because I needed him to sign this piece of paper that had to do with my divorce,” DeLonge said. “Only because of that call did I learn he had cancer. And he told me on the phone. I was like, ‘Wait, what?’ We weren’t really talking much at all, maybe once every couple of months, a little text here and there. But now, we talk multiple times a day. We’ve been able to completely repair that friendship and really cut to the depth of who we are as people and what this is all about.”
We certainly hope that even if a full Blink show never happens, the guys remain healthy and friendly from here on out.
