“We had indications kind of early on that there were problems”
Blink 182‘s Mark Hoppus has spoken of the band’s involvement in the “shocking” Fyre Festival – as well as sharing his thoughts on the rumoured feature length movie about the failed event.
The band pulled out of the now infamous ‘luxury’ festival in summer 2017 when they grew worried that production standards would not be met. Fyre’s many failures and accusations of fraud have since been made into an acclaimed Netflix documentary.
“It was pretty shocking,” Hoppus told NME of his first viewing of the documentary. “It was shocking but not entirely surprising. We had indications kind of early on that there were problems. Our production crew was having problems getting even the most basic of answers as to staging, power and things that you would normally have well in advance of the show. That being said, us and our crew have always prided ourselves on being able to put on a good show.
“If you give us electricity and a stage then we will do our best to put on a great show. We continued in good faith, the show got closer and closer. Travis [Barker, drums] doesn’t fly so he was going to have to get on a boat for several days to get there then our production crew just said, ‘I don’t think that this is going to happen, I think we should pull out now’. That’s when we issued our statement.”
It has since emerged that Seth Rogan and The Lonely Island are looking to make a spoof feature length movie about the calamitous festival.
“I can’t wait to see that!” replied Hoppus.
But who would he like to see play the band in the movie?
“That has to be Ryan Gosling for me, of course. Matt [Skiba, frontman] would be played by someone goth-y like Crispin Glover and Travis would be played by Machine Gun Kelly.”
Blink-182
Fyre Festival was cancelled shortly after its launch in 2017 due to a number of inadequacies including the fact that festival-goers were left without running water when they arrived on site.
In some cases, attendees paid $4,000 per ticket to the ‘luxury’ festival, which co-founder Billy McFarland organised with the help of celebrity investors including Ja Rule. McFarland was sentenced to a six-year jail term in October 2018 on multiple counts of fraud.
Last month, it was reported that Fyre Festival merchandise is to be sold at auction in order to raise funds to cover the failed event’s legal costs.
The Manhattan US Attorney’s Office has reportedly decided to auction off official merchandise from the 2017 festival in a bid to pay back its punters. Reports say there is an estimated $26 million in damages to payout.
As well as opening up about his new “trash-pop” side-project Simple Creatures with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, Hoppus also told NME about what to expect from Blink 182’s “aggressive” new album.
“It’s very different to [previous album] ‘California’,” he told NME. “It’s a lot more aggressive. It’s darker in theme and tone. If you like ‘California’ to ‘Enema Of The State’ then this album is more like the untitled record where we are trying to experiment more: trying to experiment more, trying different sounds, and trying to expand upon what people think Blink 182 is.”
