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The Tom Delonge Thread


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Clarke, do you live in a world where Green Day doesn't exist? Dookie is about as mainstream as you could get, sold 2x as much as Enema, and came out 5 years prior to that. Same for Offspring. Same for fucking Nirvana. The pop scene was already induced with "punk" sounds way before blink.

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27 minutes ago, Clarke said:

Again, I'm not saying Tom invented these things. I'm also not saying he was the first to do them.

 

Im saying he took these ideas, developed his own way of doing them, brought light to them, and managed to get to a whole new level of success. The magnitude of blink is way greater than the other bands that you listed. It seems that a lot of your argument is based off of these earlier bands doing it "better", and to tell you the truth, I don't buy that. Yes there were people that did these things first, but Tom was the one to spearhead them into the pop scene. As in, Tom was the one who managed to bring these to the mainstream of our culture because of how good he was at doing it. Call it business? So be it. Doesn't change a thing. Tom was the one who had the ability to develope these into a way that could be introduced to the rest of the world on a bigger level. It would be another thing if other people did this and brought it to the same level before Tom, but that's not the case.

 

This whole notion that blink blew up because of other things rather than their music is too far-fetched, Kay. Yes, there are many things about the dynamic of blink that are a huge selling point. But at the end of the day, most people will tell you that blink's ability to write songs (not to be mistaken with their talent at their instruments) is ultimately what made them great and listened to by so many.

Ok, Clarke. I've had a realisation.

Not to mock you for your age, but you definitely were too young to see what happened when blink blew up around Enema time. They went from punk band no one in the UK had even heard of, to teen heart throbs, splattered in magazines around the world, and very little of it had to do with their actual music. Enema is a great album, but it isn't the album by itself that got them there. it was marketing, and thats kind of glaringly obvious if you were actually around when it happened, but I suppose if you're only seeing it from hindsight then maybe you wouldn't see it. 

I think Davey would be great to weigh in on this, as he was there well and truly. blink were good at selling themselves, and that got them to the people who could sell them even better. thats what it came down to.

There's a reason that there are countless pop stars with zero talent but worldwide recognition - it's business, baby. cold hard business. you can romanticise Tom's impact all you like, but the core of it is marketing skills and money, money, money. 

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3 hours ago, GrimCityGirl said:

Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, GrimCityGirl said:

Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, GrimCityGirl said:

Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, GrimCityGirl said:

Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, GrimCityGirl said:

Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, GrimCityGirl said:

Clarke. goddammit Clarke. the levels of wrong you are... jesus christ Clarke...

Basically, all of those elements you are claiming Tom 'pioneered' / 'brought to the table' are like Speedo said, done previously and better by actual punk bands. Tom didn't pioneer shit, but he got famous from it and thats why its so influential. Blink managed to make their approach of pop punk (which again did exist before blink) more on the pop side, making it more marketable. That is why blink blew up, that is why so many people were inspired to play guitar because of Tom. it has literally nothing to do with him being a particularly capable or inventive guitarist in any way whatsoever - His simple approach made their music easy to appeal to the masses, making them a goldmine in the eyes of a record company. Cute boys with a snotty sense of humour and a catchy chorus?! damn thats the perfect package to sell to teenage girls!

I love blink but that is why they got where they got. Having someone like Finn on board to make the music even more polished and perfect and the right amount of label know-how is ultimately why blink got mainstream. It's the business side that got them where they are, not their raw talent or songwriting. I love the dudes I really do and always have but the bits that made them stand out aren't their musical capabilities (except for Travis, obviously) it was their humour, their friendship, and their goddamn marketing team. Up until that point though, their success was a mixture of good songs and hard work, and ironically it was also when Tom's parts were technically at their most complex and interesting from a guitar perspective. 

Hell his signature one volume knob guitar that you're so fond of? that is literally because he's too ignorant of his instrument to fully understand what the goddamn tone knobs even do! its a great simple design for 'get up and go' but its purely out of laziness, not some kind of revolutionary thinking. 

There is a drastic difference between influencing people and actually being the 'pioneer' of something. 

 

Also no one take this as me smashing Tom unnecessarily, Mark is a goddamn awful bassist, always has been, but at least he's never pretended to be anything but that. 

 

Nailed it. You are a brilliant man. Also, it's good to know I'm not the only person who over analyzes blink and their whole existence lol.

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I actually agree with Clarke here, yes Blink knew the business, they knew their market, and they knew how to craft an image that would sell.

But without the songwriting abilities, they would have gone nowhere, and Tom/Mark knew how to write amazing material, they knew how to craft great pop/punk songs.

There is a lot of negative to be said about Tom, but people who try to diminish his songwriting abilities prior to 2005, are taking it way too far.

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No one is questioning their songwriting abilities. Tom was a GREAT songwriter. What is being questioned is the idea that Tom pioneered anything on the guitar. He pioneered hilarious dick jokes fused with music yeah, but not sure he pioneered anything like guitar tone or playing methods lol.

 

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21 minutes ago, Ghent said:

No one is questioning their songwriting abilities. Tom was a GREAT songwriter. What is being questioned is the idea that Tom pioneered anything on the guitar. He pioneered hilarious dick jokes fused with music yeah, but not sure he pioneered anything like guitar tone or playing methods lol.

 

Depends on the definition of "pioneering". Did his guitar playing change the face of music? No. But he certainly had a unique sound, Custom Fender with 1 Seymore Duncan pickup, Mesa Boogie amp,  that was different, and Unique. It inspired tons of people, most of them were just Tom wannabees, but it's impact can't be dimished.

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5 minutes ago, petros said:

If I could I'd like @_Kyle_'s and @GrimCityGirl's posts! Blink where great at making pop-punk music imo the best band in the genre but it's their image and the way they and their team sold them in the public that got them as huge as they were.

That is just about ever single popular band that ever existed though. Name a band who didn't have an image help sell them....

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3 minutes ago, Olidamus said:

That is just about ever single popular band that ever existed though. Name a band who didn't have an image help sell them....

Well they were mentioned before and came to my mind first, green day in 1994 with dookie and till warning didn't really have a specific image like blink. Except if you count the "brat-punk" image they had, even though they had it before they became famous too.

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10 hours ago, Clarke said:

 

 

I agree with this last part.

 

I also have had a rant built up about "pop punk". This, in my opinion, is about to piss off a lot of people, but here we go:

 

Blink came about and many people in the music world deemed this new sound to be "pop punk". Okay, cool right? It's pretty awesome to be credited with influencing a genre. BUT then New Found Glory and other bands came about, and they openly labeled themselves as "pop punk" too. And then a wave of bands followed these New Found Glory bands and labeled themselves as "pop punk" as well. Weird, especially since they don't sound like blink it all. Reality shows that the bands that copy New Found Glory just absolutely suck. They're terrible.

 

The worst part about it, is that blink doesn't even sound like New Found Glory or those other bands. Those bands in a sense stole "pop punk" and then killed the scene. This is why I don't consider blink to be "pop punk". I mean if Man Overboard (the band) is pop punk, no way in hell is blink pop punk. This is mostly the reason why I hate New Found Glory. They took something great and then killed it. If NFG didn't market themselves as blink's genre, I wouldn't hate them so much.

 

I honestly now would just consider blink to be pop songs disguised as alternative/punk rock songs. It's pretty obvious that when these songs are broken down to their acoustic roots, they aren't punk at all.

Oh parts of blink and Enema and TOYPAJ especially are absolutely pop-punk.  The only difference is that blink is one of a very few bands that ever got the sound just right.  Bands like New Found Glory and those that have followed have only tried to emulate what blink did, but in my opinion, more often than not, fail.  Pop-Punk doesn't so much mean a fusion of pop and punk sounds specifically but more like pop and rock in general.  But who wants to call it Pop-Rock?  Everything about that is dumb, its the name of a candy.  They're pop songs with a full rock band of some sort playing instruments and singing, that's all it is, but that's all pop-punk has ever been.  I've never seen anyone claiming that the majority of pop-punk is actually poppy punk music.  Having said that, I'd argue that some of the things that blink did on Untitled could actually be labeled as what you're getting at with the poppy punk idea.  A song like Obvious or Stockholm Syndrome very much feel like punk songs, but they've got the catchiness and hooks of a pop song.  Thing is I don't consider that pop-punk, I consider that alternative or indie-rock.  

Point is, I think you're viewing the label of pop-punk as too literal, when its never really been what that literal definition would imply, and I thought everyone just kind of recognized that.

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24 minutes ago, Olidamus said:

Depends on the definition of "pioneering". Did his guitar playing change the face of music? No. But he certainly had a unique sound, Custom Fender with 1 Seymore Duncan pickup, Mesa Boogie amp,  that was different, and Unique. It inspired tons of people, most of them were just Tom wannabees, but it's impact can't be dimished.

Actually a TON of bands in punk/rock/metal/whatever were using only one knob and just turning the tone knob off and never touched the pickup selector. Fender just made a custom pickguard and saved money by cutting out all of the extra shit Tom and a bunch of other bands didn't want.  

At the time he started using Mesas they were literally the NEW BIG THING in amps, kind of like how Orange amps are the "trendy" thing right now. Tom has an awesome style and is a great songwriter but he didn't really pioneer anything, at least tone-wise.

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5 minutes ago, petros said:

Well they were mentioned before and came to my mind first, green day in 1994 with dookie and till warning didn't really have a specific image like blink. Except if you count the "brat-punk" image they had, even though they had it before they became famous too.

Of course they marketed an image, the brat punk style was their image, from throwing mud at Woodstock to Billie getting naked, they are one of the biggest image driven bands. You could say that they had all that prior, and I wouldn't disagree (blink did too), but that still doesn't mean they aren't using that image to sell albums.

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Just now, Olidamus said:

Of course they marketed an image, the brat punk style was their image, from throwing mud at Woodstock to Billie getting naked, they are one of the biggest image driven bands. You could say that they had all that prior, and I wouldn't disagree (blink did too), but that still doesn't mean they aren't using that image to sell albums.

Well ok then I agree with you.

Although in my eyes blink's image changed a lot from dude ranch to enema and of course from enema to take off, that's why I mentioned green day as not changing from before they were famous.

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4 minutes ago, JarJarBlinks said:

Actually a TON of bands in punk/rock/metal/whatever were using only one knob and just turning the tone knob off and never touched the pickup selector. Fender just made a custom pickguard and saved money by cutting out all of the extra shit Tom and a bunch of other bands didn't want.  

At the time he started using Mesas they were literally the NEW BIG THING in amps, kind of like how Orange amps are the cool thing right now. Tom has an awesome style and is a great songwriter but he didn't really pioneer anything. 

But when one is able to take all that and get millions into it, IMO that is pioneering it. If you "signature guitar" is flying off the shelves faster than the assembly line works can make them, then you are a pioneer, maybe others did it first to some degree, but no shit, I mean The Beatles got it from somewhere, everyone gets bits and pieces of stuff from somewhere.

People still try to argue who invented Rock and Roll, because you keep going back and back, and when you think you found the person, soon it is discovered that someone before them kind of was the first.

 

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2 minutes ago, Olidamus said:

But when one is able to take all that and get millions into it, IMO that is pioneering it. If you "signature guitar" is flying off the shelves faster than the assembly line works can make them, then you are a pioneer, maybe others did it first to some degree, but no shit, I mean The Beatles got it from somewhere, everyone gets bits and pieces of stuff from somewhere.

People still try to argue who invented Rock and Roll, because you keep going back and back, and when you think you found the person, soon it is discovered that someone before them kind of was the first.

 

*like*

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10 minutes ago, M!ke said:

Oh parts of blink and Enema and TOYPAJ especially are absolutely pop-punk.  The only difference is that blink is one of a very few bands that ever got the sound just right.  Bands like New Found Glory and those that have followed have only tried to emulate what blink did, but in my opinion, more often than not, fail.  Pop-Punk doesn't so much mean a fusion of pop and punk sounds specifically but more like pop and rock in general.  But who wants to call it Pop-Rock?  Everything about that is dumb, its the name of a candy.  They're pop songs with a full rock band of some sort playing instruments and singing, that's all it is, but that's all pop-punk has ever been.  I've never seen anyone claiming that the majority of pop-punk is actually poppy punk music.  Having said that, I'd argue that some of the things that blink did on Untitled could actually be labeled as what you're getting at with the poppy punk idea.  A song like Obvious or Stockholm Syndrome very much feel like punk songs, but they've got the catchiness and hooks of a pop song.  Thing is I don't consider that pop-punk, I consider that alternative or indie-rock.  

Point is, I think you're viewing the label of pop-punk as too literal, when its never really been what that literal definition would imply, and I thought everyone just kind of recognized that.

Wow I've always thought that about pop-punk never saw anyone saying it though. Nice post!

That's why I never understood how a band like Busted back were considered a pop band but blink and many other bands were pop-punk. That's just the way they were labeled because in US the term "pop-punk" was hot but in UK not.

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2 minutes ago, Olidamus said:

But when one is able to take all that and get millions into it, IMO that is pioneering it. If you "signature guitar" is flying off the shelves faster than the assembly line works can make them, then you are a pioneer, maybe others did it first to some degree, but no shit, I mean The Beatles got it from somewhere, everyone gets bits and pieces of stuff from somewhere.

People still try to argue who invented Rock and Roll, because you keep going back and back, and when you think you found the person, soon it is discovered that someone before them kind of was the first.

 

 

The very definition of "pioneering" involves being the first to open avenues for others to explore. If Tom wasn't the first to invent it, he wasn't a pioneer of it.

 

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