“Being a punk rock dad is awesome.”

Read the Q&A here

With another Blink 182 album and a FUSE television show under his belt, Mark Hoppus is one busy guy. And now the rock star and new London resident is adding another project to his agenda, the movie The Other F Word. The documentary, out this month, follows Hoppus and other punk icons as they embark on their craziest adventure yet: fatherhood. NYLON’s Willemijn Barker-Benfield spoke with Hoppus about how Blink has changed over the years, why he’s too fickle for tattoos, and the reason he hasn’t ditched his punk attitude with parenthood.

So I hear you moved to London?

Mark Hoppus:  I did.  It’s great, it’s very different from what I grew up with.  I grew up in the middle of the desert in California, and London is the polar opposite of that.  I live in Mayfair now.  Not a bad spot, we’re very happy with where we live.

How did you get involved in The Other F Word?

I was asked a few years ago if I wanted to be a part of it.  I don’t know how exactly it came about, but I knew it was based on the book that Jim Lindberg had written called Punk Rock Dad.  It seemed in the past few years, men that are in bands that have children are proud of that fact, and I used to talk with Dave Smalley from Down By Law, about doing a band that was all dad’s that were punk rockers, so I definitely wanted to be a part of it from the first time I heard about it.

How did the punk lifestyle change for you when you became a dad?

It really focuses your world view into a very small area.  You really want this life to be something good, and you want to be a good person and you want to be a good role model.  Growing up punk rock you just wanted to say “Fuck you!” to the world and make a lot of noise.  Then when you have a kid, you want to say “fuck off!” and make a lot of noise in a much better, positive way… It’s interesting to see how different people are as parents, even though we all come out of the punk rock scene.

It’s refreshing to see that everyone’s different.

I think that being a punk rock dad is awesome.  I think that being a father and coming out of the punk rock scene, which isn’t necessarily just about “Fuck everything”, I think the ethos that I took away from punk rock was question things, don’t just take everything at face value. Find your own way in life, and I think that if you have a good foundation – this is what I look at for my son.

So you have your TV show at Fuse in New York City, (Hoppus on Music), how did you get involved in TV?

Fuse called about a year and a half ago, and they said they were wanting to produce a cool music talk show.  Something that was funny, irreverent, that focussed solely on music, and I was a little suspicious at first, I didn’t know what that meant. They wanted to do cool, brave, different things and it felt like a good fit so I said absolutely, so I’ve been flying out here every week for the past year and three months or something.

How do you find the transition from being a musician, and doing that still, to interviewing musicians?

I love it because it’s so different from what I do in my normal job, and I love promoting new bands and talking to other artists about music, and I love to be silly and funny and chop it up about music.  We always have great guests, we always have great performances.  Yesterday we had The Joy Formidable here who just blew doors off the place.

Tell us about your new Blink 182 Album, Neighborhoods.

The new Blink album is great- knock on wood-everyone reacted really well to it; I’m really pleased with the way everyone responded to it.  The tour we’ve just finished was one of the best tours we’ve ever done.  I’m very excited to go and tour the UK and Europe next summer.  We leave tomorrow night, I film the show here, fly to LA and then the next day we shoot a video for our song called ‘After Midnight’, and we’re continuing to work on new Blink stuff as well.

How did the new record change from the last Blink records, was there a different process to how you’ve made it?

This one we didn’t have a producer because our dear friend and producer Jerry Finn passed away a few years ago, and there wasn’t really anybody that could fill his shoes in our minds, and I think that it was very necessary for us to produce it on our own, as part of our own internal band healing process.  We recorded together in a studio and also in separate studios.  Tom lives in San Diego, he has his own studio there, Travis and I at the time were living in LA, and Travis and I had a studio in Los Angeles, so we would get together work out song ideas and arrangements, and then we’d break apart and work on different things, then come back together and compare notes.  It was good in that I feel like great things happen when the three of us are in a room, but at the same time I feel we need individual time to explore different ideas and then come back.  So it was different then before where basically everybody was sitting in a room waiting for their chance to play.

Do you have a tour ritual that you follow before a show?

Before I go on stage I brush my teeth, that’s the last thing I do before I walk out on stage.  I start stretching an hour before, I start warming up my voice, I start listening to music, I have a drink about an hour before I walk on stage, and that’s my routine.

What kind of music do you listen to before you go on stage?

I listen to Ministry, because you need something to really pump you up.  I listen to a band called Far, I was listening to The Naked and Famous on this last tour, sometimes Genuine, sometimes Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, sometimes The Descendants.  Upbeat music that makes me want to go out and make a lot of noise and be weird.

Tattoos go hand in hand with the punk scene; did you feel pressure to get tattooed?

I didn’t get tattoos for the longest time, and I only have two tattoos.  I have my sons name on one wrist, and my wife’s name on my other wrist, and I’ve contemplated getting tattoos, but I’m so fickle in what I’m into at any given time, that depending on what period of my life I was in, I would have tattoos of Star Wars, of pirate ships, of haunted houses, of weird art, it would have just been a mess.  It’s interesting when you look at people and you see they’ve got one sleeve done at one point in their life, and a bunch of different stuff done at different points in their life, and it must be a great scrapbook of memories for them, but to me it looks like you didn’t think it through at all.

Thanks to wwwblink182hu for posting it on Youtube.

This week: Mark Hoppus, bassist-vocalist for pop-punk vets Blink-182, which are currently crossing the country on the Honda Civic Tour and preparing for the September 27 release of Neighborhoods, their sixth studio album and first release in eight years. Hoppus — a former SPIN.com columnist – also hosts a TV series on Fuse called Hoppus on Music.

We now have a set list. I think everyone coming to the shows will be very pleased. You want old? We got it. You want new? We got it. You want medium? We got that, too. You want Nickleback covers? Sorry. We don’t have that.

Last week was a big one for Blink-182 … and their fans. Not only did theband debut “Up All Night,” their first new song in almost eight years, but they revealed the title of their much-anticipated new album, too:Neighborhoods.

Of course, while all of this was happening, Blink bassist and vocalist Mark Hoppus was e-mailing MTV News, first to express his excitement about the new music, and then to reveal just how “Up All Night” went from being a rehearsal favorite to Blink’s official comeback single.

And now he’s at it again, this time talking about the inspiration behind the album’s title. As is the case with everything involving Blink these days, it seems the Neighborhoods name owes much to the long road Blink have taken since going on indefinite hiatus back in 2005.

“As Blink-182 reformed, we came to realize that, as close as Travis [Barker], Tom [DeLonge] and I are, we are all very different people. With very different tastes. Travis just released a hip-hop album, Tom always talks about U2, Coldplay and the Police, and I listen to obscure indie rock stuff,” Hoppus wrote. “We each bring a very different aesthetic, talent and sound to the band. And in the differences between our ideas, the struggle and edge of all the different directions, is where the good things happen when we write together.

“So we’re each like different neighborhoods in a city. Everybody in the world thinks of something unique unto themselves when they hear the word ‘Neighborhoods,’ ” he continued. “To some it is a big city, others a small town, others suburbia, everything. The world is wide, exciting and very different. That’s what Neighborhoods means to me.”

Blink-182 will return to the road alongside My Chemical Romance on the 2011 Honda Civic Tour, which kicks off August 5 in Holmdel, New Jersey.Neighborhoods is tentatively due in stores on September 27.

Monday morning by Mark Hoppus

Sure, there’s already been a reunion tour, but Thursday, Blink-182 officiallyreturned with “Up All Night,” their first proper single in nearly seven years.

And while the song recalls elements of Blink’s past (not to mention all those side projects), it’s by no means nostalgic. With its darkly undulating electronics, churning chords and Barker’s mighty mashing, it also represents a new Blink for a new millennium.

And that’s even more impressive when you consider that the song’s actually been around for more than two years now, ever since Blink-182 first resumed jamming together in early 2009. During that time, it’s undergone some rather drastic changes, but it’s always remained core to what the band hoped to do on their new album, Neighborhoods. How do we know all this? Because Mark Hoppus told us, in an email Friday morning (July 15), just hours after “Up All Night” nearly broke the Internet.

” ‘Up All Night’ was the first song that we started writing when the band got back together,” he wrote. “The foundation of the song remains largely the same as when we first began, but over the past two years, as we’ve been recording others songs, coming back to this one, working on something else, coming back to this song, it’s gotten harder and heavier than its original incarnation.

“Initially the chorus had much more air. It was a lofty, synth-y chorus, but we wanted the first song that people heard to be much more of a rocker. We changed a bunch of the instrumentation, recorded heavier guitars and bass, and Tom [DeLonge] wrote the progression that the guitars take on in the chorus,” he continued. “Then Travis [Barker] took it over and the drumsreally solidified the rock element of the track. The half-time intro of the last section was all him, and I think punctuates the song very well.”

After all that work, you can imagine how thrilled the guys in Blink have been by the song’s initial reception. But that’s just the first part of their return. As Hoppus wrote, the next step is letting fans hear Neighborhoodsitself. He’s beyond excited for that, too.

“I’m so glad to finally have new music out, and cannot believe how well it has been received,” he wrote. “[Our website] crashed out several times, my Google-plus account crashed out twice, and blink-182 was a top trending topic worldwide. Totally amazing. Now, I can’t wait for the album itself to be released.”

1230 at night here in los angeles. sitting on the floor of my hotel room, listening to the first mix of the first track to come back from the new album. stoked beyond words to be listening to new music from our band. on the OTHER side of the creative process. listening to the songs not to figure out what and if it needs more of. listening just to hear the music. i love this song, and the mixer did a great job, it sounds amazing. i can’t wait until this album comes out, and i hope that when it does you all are as excited as i am sitting here by myself in the middle of the night, cross-leeged on the floor of a hotel room, with headphones on, listening to this song over and over. thank you for supporting our band. blink-182 life, for life.