Travis Barker on Jamming His Way Into Box Car Racer With Billie Joe Armstrong, and Why blink-182 Never Rehearsed for the Pop Disaster Tour

The drummer tells Broken Record’s Justin Richmond about the joke his own son didn’t get, building an empire out of a Riverside skate warehouse, and gearing up for the Ramones’ 50th-anniversary tribute at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Travis Barker has spent three decades stacking side hustles on top of a day job as one of pop-punk’s defining drummers, from a clothing label he refused to sell to Puff Daddy to a beat he cut overnight for Bun B. Barker sat down with Broken Record’s Justin Richmond to walk through the accidental origins of Box Car Racer, the last-minute scramble behind blink-182’s biggest album, and why he still doesn’t fully understand the myth of a Green Day feud.

A Joke Nobody Gets Anymore

Barker still can’t get over how many people missed the joke buried in the title of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, blink-182’s 2001 follow-up to Enema of the State. “Even my son just hit me the other day, he’s like, ‘Dad, I just got Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. I never got the joke,'” Barker said, adding that plenty of adults have told him the same thing. The album very nearly shipped without its biggest singles. “We turned in the album and it didn’t have “First Date” on it, it didn’t have “Rock Show”, it didn’t have “Stay Together,” he said. Their label balked, telling the band they were missing hits, so blink-182 went back in and wrote all three in a matter of days. The record has since been reissued for its 25th anniversary.

Building an Empire Out of a Warehouse

Long before it became a nine-figure brand, Famous Stars and Straps started as a reaction to the era’s boy-band takeover of MTV. “There was nothing that was lifestyle for kids,” Barker said, describing a scene split between skateboarding, punk rock and hip-hop with no single label to represent all of it. He turned down licensing money from established action-sports labels to start his own: “I said, ‘I’m going to start my own brand.’ That’s how I started Famous,” describing screen-printing shirts out of a Riverside warehouse and giving away stickers by the thousand. When the company ballooned into a $60–70 million operation, Barker turned down an acquisition offer from Sean “Diddy” Combs. “No fucking way is anyone buying my brand,” he said, “because I know what they’re going to do to it.”

From a Beat for Bun B to Bloody Valentine

Barker’s production career started in hip-hop almost by accident, when Skinhead Rob asked him to build a beat for Bun B’s solo album on a day’s notice. “He’s like, nah, he wants you to do the beat. You got to turn it in tomorrow,” Barker recalled of the track that became “Late Night Creeping.” Years later, after avoiding rock production because it felt “too on the nose,” Barker linked up with Machine Gun Kelly, and the two wrote “Bloody Valentine” together, the song that kicked off the sessions for Tickets to My Downfall.

What Jerry Finn Taught Him

Barker credited producer Jerry Finn, who oversaw Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket before his death in 2008, with shaping his ear for arrangement. “He was very adamant about what snare drum you used on what songs,” Barker said, describing marathon sessions where he’d track an entire album’s drums in six or seven hours before leaving for another tour.

Debunking the Green Day Myth

Richmond pressed Barker on the long-running narrative that blink-182 and Green Day secretly resented each other during 2002’s Pop Disaster Tour. Barker’s version has nothing to do with rivalry and everything to do with inexperience. “We didn’t even have a fucking banner,” he said, recalling how outmatched blink-182 felt next to Green Day’s pyrotechnics. What actually happened backstage, he said, was nightly jam sessions with Billie Joe Armstrong that eventually pulled in Mike Dirnt and Tom DeLonge. “That’s kind of how Box Car happened, really,” Barker said of the side project, Box Car Racer, that grew out of those dressing-room hangs.

Barker is currently rehearsing to play Ramones songs alongside Armstrong, Tim Armstrong and C.J. Ramone for the band’s 50th-anniversary tribute at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a show Rolling Stone covered as a reunion of pop-punk’s family tree.

Listen to the full conversation on Broken Record.