Guitarist Tom DeLonge has spent the two decades since on one of the wildest paths in rock history. In the mids, DeLonge left Blink to start an an ambitious space-rock band called Angels and Airwaves. He then started seriously investigating space himself, launching To the Stars Academy in , an organization devoted to researching UFOs.
Last week, another major UFO story hit the Times, detailing strange, highly advanced objects that were spotted daily over the East Coast between and He pointed to the work he has done at To the Stars as directly responsible for uncovering the possible sightings. This is real. Maybe Tom is not so nuts after all! Investigation , which airs Fridays at 10 p. He appears in the show with former military and government officials such as Elizondo, Lt. In this interview, DeLonge also discusses new music by Angels and Airwaves and the state of Blink, and why he hopes to return to his former band someday.
What was the initial reaction to Angels and Airwaves when the band debuted in ? It was so different from Blink I think Angels and Airwaves has always been a little bit ahead of its time. For a kid that grew up on a band like the Ramones like me, these are complex sounds and compositions. People thought I was nuts for not being in the band to go chase little green men. What did it feel like to see the latest article in the Times? A few weeks ago, there was another article that leaked on the Times that Congress is putting together a formal reporting mechanism to the Navy on UFOs.
Our show Unidentified is us doing that. Taking these specific pilots to Congress, influencing legislative language for oversight committees and for the appropriations committees. In that process, it leaked and came out in the papers.
But our show is what this article specifically is about. So that UFO footage that the Times posted — explain what that is. You will see an outline of a plane. They have blurred edges. They have observability. They have positive lift and all these different factors that the government has identified. Any one of these things — they call them these five observables, and any one of them, if a country were to get one of these five, it would be a paradigm shift.
A game-changing national-security issue. And these craft have five of them. Whose footprints are those? Something with this technology is in charge.
And think about the technology of these, too. Think about World War II when we were the only ones that had the nuclear bomb. You could take over the world. This is so far beyond nuclear power. They talk about civilizations, the Type 1, Type 2, Type 3 civilizations. A Type 1 civilization can control the power of the planet, and Type 2 can control the power of the sun and a Type 3 civilization can control the power of their own galaxy.
There was one person in that Times article, Leon Golub, a senior astrophysicist at Harvard. The two guys that went on the record are Top Gun graduates — these are the best in the world.
The system that recorded this stuff is called the Spy-1 Radar, which is the single most classified radar system in the world. And the Princeton [a Navy ship which spotted objects in , which the Times reported on in ] was a radar ship. The entire ship was an array of hardware that can get degree views of an entire combat awareness. Another general was in charge of 5, of our nuclear warheads. He was the commander of this stuff. These guys are not idiots. I think people need to think a little bit more before they say disrespectful comments like that.
When you said that To the Stars was responsible for the footage in the Times, what did you mean? The video had gone declassified and To the Stars Academy were the ones that received it. The Times then was able to go out and find another copy of the video. So somebody at the Pentagon gave the Times the video.
Do you see Trump talking about this? I do know that because of our efforts, the White House has been definitely informed of some things. Do you think the Space Force is a good idea? It make sense to me because when we wanted to deal with oceans, we created the Navy. We created the Army to deal with land. We created the Air Force to deal with the sky.
Space is a real thing now; we can get there. Commander Fravor [a retired Navy commander who reported the U. Princeton incident] was sent by this guy and he watched craft come in from space over a four-day period. One hundred! Over the coast of San Diego. So they came in, they hovered and they would drop in. Do you realize how fast. Maybe they want to. Maybe they consider space like the ocean or something. Yeah, it was weird because at the time I broke my back and I had surgery and I had a disc that was broken and tangled up in the largest nerve in my body.
I got all addicted to painkillers at that time. I was also dealing with coming out of a really big band. It was a rebirth of who I was, and [my] identity, and insecurities and all that kind of stuff.
I learned a hell of a lot about myself at the time. But creating Angels and Airwaves and having that issue in my life, at the time, allowed me to hyper-focus and really go deeply into what I was creating. What I want is to bring back a lot of those atmospherics and soaring landscapes. And we are doing that. The big crescendo when it builds and all that kind of stuff. The fans needed a minute.
This next one is going to be very similar in the sound and the landscape. I think everyone will like where this ends up. When do you think the Angels album will come out? I co-wrote a movie and it goes into production in just a few weeks. That will kind of dictate the second half of the album. Both of those will come out together somewhere around the tour or shortly thereafter. What do you expect from this tour? This is really for the fans that have been so supportive of us. In a different way than Blink.
Do you remember the first time you knew there was more to your life than Blink? Probably when I created Box Car Racer.
But really it was about me and my friend David Kennedy, who plays in Angels and Airwaves. He grew up in hardcore bands, I grew up in punk bands, and we wanted to do something that blended both of those styles. But it was kind of scary because Blink became such a big monster at the time, that you kind of get stuck in this feeling that you need everyone in the band to be good at what you do.
Because we really did need each other to do what Blink did. I was super excited to challenge myself. And it was actually pretty cool. And I thought it was really good especially for who I was at the time and where I was at musically. I was curious what led you to sing in that different voice. I kind of learned how to use my voice. I never learned how to sing, so I was always trying to sing like the Descendents. When I got in Angel and Airwaves, the tempo was slower, the melodies were written differently.
And then, rather than nasally staccato, it became more like violin, more like a stringed instrument. The notes flow together.