Tom DeLonge Q&A

MTV News caught up with former blink-182’s Tom DeLonge and asked him about the controversy surrounding remarks he’s made about his new band, Angels & Airwaves, which he says is the greatest thing he’s ever done musically. “It’s not like I’m taking this lightly. I’m not an egotistical a**hole,” DeLonge responded. “But I do consider myself to be a pretty intelligent person, and I know that when I had previously sat around and thought about taking Blink to another level — like when I did Box Car Racer [his more mature side project with Barker] — I always knew exactly what I wanted to do and what direction to push the music in. And with this thing, I spent a long time thinking about what I wanted to do. … I started writing this [A&A] album the day we finished recording [Blink-182], because I knew I had to beat it. So I’ve been thinking about this sh– for years, and before Blink took its break, I knew that Angels was going to be the biggest band in the world. We knew that we were the only band that could do something like that. Besides someone like Coldplay, I don’t know of any rock bands that could do that. We want to take this project to that Police level, that Joshua Tree level. And I already had the songs to do it. So when Blink went on hiatus, I’m sitting around going, ‘OK, I know I have the material; how do I put it all together in my own way, without having to compromise at all?'” The full transcript at MTV.com has since been removed.