Tom DeLonge’s UFO Obsession

If the stories can be believed, one of the things that caused a schism between Tom DeLonge and blink-182 was his personal mission to discover the truth behind UFOs, aliens and the worldwide government coverup. The Sacramento Bee/Washington Post has this feature on Tom.

Of all the pop-punk bands to emerge in the 1990s, few achieved success like Blink-182. Massive hits like “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things” fueled its distinct brand of cheery-cum-snotty adolescence. By October 2001, the band could draw 15,000 eager fans to Maryland’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. There the crowd watched as Blink-182, then composed of Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker and Tom DeLonge, performed in front of a giant four-letter word set ablaze.

But all flaming swear signs must burn out. The band went on hiatus between 2005 and 2009. In 2015, four years after the New York Times declared that, “no punk band of the 1990s has been more influential than Blink-182,” guitarist and vocalist DeLonge walked away. Hoppus and Barker, in a statement to Rolling Stone, said that DeLonge had left Blink-182 “indefinitely.” The band continued without him.

A different kind of stardom – space, and the aliens who lived there – seduced DeLonge.

Now 41, DeLonge has found success in his post-punk pursuit. In February, the Arizona-based International UFO Congress, which each year holds the largest convention of UFO investigators in the world, awarded DeLonge its UFO researcher of the year award. In March, DeLonge published a book, “Sekret Machines: Gods, Man, & War,” with occult historian Peter Levenda. The book, DeLonge said, marked the first nonfiction entry in a sweeping project that includes science-fiction novels, concept albums and movies.

All of those works are related, in one way or another, to a subject DeLonge calls “the Phenomenon.”

More than 20 years of research and reflection led to the new book. DeLonge’s perspective turned to the heavens in early adolescence, he told The Washington Post in a recent phone interview, after witnessing the conflict between his mother, a devout Christian, and his father, who was “not religious at all.” He began to wonder if something sinister was at work.

You know you want to keep reading. The truth is out there, you want to believe, etc.