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Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus recalls slow realisation the Fyre Festival was falling apart
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 3 April 2019
For many, the first sign that anything was wrong with the now legendary Fyre Festival was when Blink 182 pulled out of the event at the last minute. Now the band’s Mark Hoppus has spoken about their slow realisation back in April 2017 that they shouldn’t travel to the Bahamas for the show.
Shortly before the festival was due to begin, the band put out a statement saying that they were “not confident that we would have what we need to give you the quality of performances we always give to fans”.
Now, speaking to the NME, Hoppus explains: “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”, he continues. “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”.
Still, the full extent of the disaster that Fyre Festival was always going to be only became apparent to Hoppus when he watched the Netflix documentary about the event when it came out earlier this year. “It was pretty shocking”, he says of watching that film, although based on his experience, he adds that it was also “not entirely surprising”.
So now you know how Blink 182 forged ahead with plans to play Fyre Festival, despite all the warning signs, and how they ultimately made the decision to pull out. Of course, this isn’t the first time a member of the band has spoken about this. You could, if you want, continue to believe that Matt Skiba brought the whole event to its knees using witchcraft.
