Fahrenheit-182: A Memoir

by Mark Hoppus

Staring back at us was a stack of porno magazines. We had no idea what we were looking at. When I got home, I told my parents we had discovered “pictures of naked ladies exercising.”

Carlin had his famous “seven words you can never say on television” bit, which I gleefully committed to memory—shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits. I recited them to anyone who would listen, and plenty who wouldn’t.

But with that desire to please people comes the fear of letting them down. I am constantly worried about being the source of friction. I want everyone to get along. I never want to put my own needs forward in case they upset a precarious balance. This dynamic is what made me the person I am. It gave me the good parts of my personality, as well as the darker parts. It gave me compassion and patience. It also gave me anxiety, hypervigilance, and the constant need for reassurance that everything is okay. Is everything okay? Really?

Such a simple thing, but so enormous I could hardly comprehend it. Long ago, in a Brooklyn apartment far, far away, two guys got together and wrote some songs. They went to a studio and recorded those songs, and a label put them onto albums and shipped them to stores. I went to the store and bought the album, and now here I am. Here everyone is, listening to them play those songs. Just for us. And it’s only right now. Right this second. Soon, the moment will be over and done forever. Everyone will go home, and the band will move on to the next city. But right now, we’re here, and it’s happening.

Why is this tall dude standing in front of me when I’m clearly already standing right here?

Punk was all I wanted. Hey ho, let’s go.

It was punk rock’s forbidden fruit, akin to selling your soul to the Devil. Signing to a major label was the absolute worst, most abhorrent thing a punk band could do.

After the show I ran up to one of their singers, this clean-cut guy named Jim Adkins. “Holy shit, man, great set! Can we trade tapes or something?” We talked for a bit, and he handed me a copy of their new album that hadn’t been released yet called Static Prevails. They had also just signed to a major label, Capitol Records, and this was their debut. That cassette was all we played in the blink van for the rest of the tour. We couldn’t get enough of it. The guitars sounded lush but sharp, and everything felt huge. This is what we wanted our major-label debut to sound like, so we booked time at the same studio with the same producer, Mark Trombino.