Blink-182 star Travis Barker was thrilled to hear his band had pulled out of the doomed Fyre Festival, because it would have taken him over a week to get there.
The punk trio became the first act to abandon rapper Ja Rule’s Bahamas event in 2017 when it started to become clear it would be a disaster – and the drummer was more than a little relieved.
Barker, who refuses to fly after surviving a 2008 plane crash which claimed the lives of his friends, reveals he was packing for a marathon trip to the Bahamas from his home in California when bandmate Mark Hoppus made the decision not to perform at Fyre.
“I would have had to drive five or six days to Florida and then get in a boat and then get over to the Bahamas,” he said during a recent appearance on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast. “I was literally on my way there.”
Travis hasn’t been on a plane since narrowly escaping a Learjet 60 business jet crash at Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina over a decade ago. He almost lost his foot in the accident and was lefty severely burned after the plane burst into flames.
The drummer admits he will fly again some day if his kids want to hop on a plane, and he misses being able to tour in Australia and Japan – because he can’t get there anymore.
“I love Japan,” he told Rogan. “I wanted to move there.”
Barker has a bus that gets him to all Blink-182 shows in North and South America and he sails to shows in Europe on board the Queen Elizabeth II – because he’d rather go down with a cruise liner than in a plane.
“I’d rather be on the raft than fucking plummeting into the ocean at 100 miles per hour, or whatever,” he adds, revealing he has come to treasure life on the road with his kids: “The kids and I get to see a lot of stuff we don’t normally see.”
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