A Conversation with Tom DeLonge of Angels & Airwaves

This is the original transcript of the interview, only minor editing has been applied for readability. This has been the basis for articles but has never been published in the original form.
Wortraub: This is your debut album as Angels + Airwaves, how was it to have a fresh start on creativity?
Tom: It feels really good, you know. It is weird, when you are painting a picture with other people your entire life, and then all of a sudden one day, someone let’s you paint it exactly how you would want to. It made me think for a while and really plan and discover who I was and how I wanted to present it. So it became quite an ambitious artistic experience and also one that was extremely satisfying.

Wortraub: You are doing a film as well. Is that the visual to the album?
Tom: Yes, it is. The album really is an autobiographical journey, I guess, about the time it took me from a year and a half ago into the creation of the band right now. I did it in the sense of a metaphor where I am really pulling together this range of human emotion, this conflict of love and war. It is a pretty deep meaning, and the idea of the movie is really to explain the conceptual depth that is behind the record even though it is not a concept but really my life. The movie will be the same kind of thing, a beautiful metaphor, very current and artistic as well.

Wortraub: The metaphor you use is World War II, it is in the of the record? Isn’t it a little pretentious to compare splitting up a band with war?
Tom: Well, you got to think of it from an American’s point of view. In America, we have this country that is not very old, that was founded on this great and beautiful idea. Ever since the forties we have been creating war. It is the only way in which we can excel the human race. Especially now, in our time, we are living under an administration that is basically building up a status quo that is against everything our country ever was founded on. From an American point of view, the World War II thing was one of these things where it is like: „Don’t we remember this last war, where we thought we would never war again, where 60 million people died“, and yet we are doing this over and over again. For me it was very much a point, when I was traveling with John Kerry, trying to get Bush out of office, the election year. I was really sick of Americans being so complacent and not understanding the facts that were happening. My brother fought in Iraque, we lost three thousand people in New York and now we killed a hundred thousand people over there. People have no fucking clue what is going on. This record is about the bi-polar opposites of human kind, it is about a conflict of love and war. It is about the idea that humans can create something so beautiful and majestic and powerful like love and at the same time we can still go around killing people as though it is only idea to fix a problem. And I refuse to believe that. So is it pretentious or presumptuous? Fuck no! It just depends as an artist what you believe in your heart and what message you want to get across. I don’t expect every one to get it, but that is the reason why we are doing the film.

Wortraub: So, the film will explain?
Tom: Yeah, exactly. The film is meant to touch on all those subjects. It is meant to be about human beings. The record is not about war, that’s imagery. The record is about human beings. I think, it is time for rock’n’roll bands to be ambitious and to take risks and to try to do something a little bit exciting, something that challenges.

Wortraub: You have stated that A+A has the „conceptual depth“ and the songs are mostly around 5 minutes long. Is that the power-pop equivalent of a 15 minute concept song in 70s prog-rock?
Tom: This band is not about the Seventies and I think that most bands when they want to get artistic, they reference the past, you know? They act like they are a big rock band from the Seventies or they are trying to claim themselves as prog but whatever man, that is not what we are all about. We are about the future, AVA is very much a band that sounds like the future to me. It is a new sound, it combines a lot of elements from a lot of my favorite bands, but no way, shape or form was I ever a prog-rock kid. I grew up listening to punk rock music. A lot of prog-rock seems very self-indulgent to me, plus: I can’t play like that. I don’t have a desire to play like that and don’t even like listening to it that often. What I loved about it was the ambition and I am inspired by the amount of thought that would go into a lot of that stuff. And I think that now, in a time that computers exist and they make it a lot easier for people to make records, and a lot easier for people to download records I think artists need to become more ambitious or in touch of who they are and invest more in their art. That is what’s going to help save rock’n’roll. AVA is very much an experiment of combining new media and technology and bringing that represents the future in music all together in one. That in itself is a very uncommon thing.

Wortraub: You compare AVA rather to bands like U2 and Pink Floyd rather than Blink …
Tom: … no, I don’t. Funny though. Every time I talk to any band they always tell me about German interviews, how it is so funny. You guys always ask these questions where it is like half jab and at the same time it is kind of charming in it’s own way. I think it is really funny that you …

Wortraub: … it is your own homepage that mentions U2 and Pink Floyd …
Tom: … it is on my homepage? There should not be such a thing. … I’ll check that, but to answer your question. Is there a U2 influence? Yeah, of course there is, I love that band. They are great. Pink Floyd? Not really. I don’t like them that much. I love what they do, the depth of their concepts and their visualization. I love that but do I ever sit down and say: „I want to listen to the Wall“? Really, never. Because it is so depressing. I inspired by what they accomplished but the music is pretty boring.

Wortraub: Well, you are not going to like the next question then, it is a quotation from you. You call AVA the „absolute biggest band in the world“ … are you a megalomaniac or just super-confident?
Tom: I said that, yeah. But that is rock’n’roll, man. That is entertainment. The funny thing is, that I spend 13 years in interviews telling people to fuck off and I fucked off and all that crazy shit and then one time I say anything like this and they totally listen. I thought it was funny. To me it was the question of how far I could go with this. People are finally fucking listening and I can say whatever I want. It is rock’n’roll, it is entertainment. The one thing I did get was everyone’s attention. It is so funny. The reality is people hate comments like that, but at the same time they are massively intrigued by them and I am smart enough to know how to market a band if I want to. I have learned a lot in my career in this business and marketing is a pretty interesting thing. At the end of the day people really do want something exciting and grandiose in nature, whether or not it is going to be the biggest thing in the world or whether or not people are going to like it, it is going to be based on the merit of the music and not on what I say. I always knew that but at the end of the day I got everyone’s attention.

Wortraub: Well, here in Germany we have a band called „Die ƒrzte“ who promote by calling themselves the „best band in the world“…
Tom: Yeah, you see, that is like Oasis, saying they are better than the Beatles and all that stuff. Americans actually thought that was really funny and loved it. How everyone got really pissed, like: „How could they say that, but fuck they are pretty good?“ I don’t know. There is no possible way that everyone in the world is going to like my band. Fuck no. Do I think it is a good record? Yeah. But I am sure that you and I like different movies too. I’ll tell you that some movie is good, you’ll probably think it sucks. That is how art is. That is so funny about the comment in general because it really makes no sense. Who is going to argue one painting over the other?

Wortraub: But still it shows that you are either a big jack-ass or that you are really confident at what you do …
Tom: … I am very confident at what I am doing, number one. Number two, I sold twenty-five million records, so I have had success in this industry. I do know a meter of the quality of my art and number three: I have very high hopes and I think big. If you don’t think big, then you are not confident of what you are doing and you are still leaving yourself a lot of room to get to a point to where people are looking at you seriously. The other thing is, that at this point in my career if I am not thinking big, what the fuck are you guys paying attention to me for? I’ve sold so many records, why should I not be thinking big? The last tour I did, I sold out arenas across the world. If I don’t try to make a record that’s gonna move people, that is gonna do something different, then what the fuck am I doing it for? I don’t want to think small.

Wortraub: It sounds confident. Well, you do realize that I have to ask from a provocative point of view, right?
Tom: You know what, the funny thing is, I really love this interview. And I love the fact, that you ask me these questions because you know what, every other fucking time I get asked the same old bullshit, like: „How did you guys get together?“. I love it and I appreciate it. And trust me, every little thing that I have done with this band, there are a lot of reasons for it, and I think you are starting to figure it out.

Wortraub: You stated on your myspace-page that you want people to take 50 minutes of low-heart rate to listen to the album, that it is a piece of escapism?
Tom: Yeah, I think it is the same thing with the movie you know. People work on that two or three years, what they ask is the same thing. You sit down and you pay attention and the film takes you somewhere. AVA is very much the blend of visual and sonic media. Everything we do has a visual medium. We are doing short films for every song, we are doing a theatrical release. It is the same reason: we want people to take the time to try and understand what it is. If you want to listen to it on the radio and sing a chorus, you could do that with every song, and you can do that with ours as well. It is cool. I don’t care. But what would be really cool, if people really wanted to experience it the way we experienced it when we created it. The way it came across in the studio. How important it was to us, when we did that. At the end of the day, if a tiny fraction of people really try and let the music speak to them the way it spoke to us, then they might have the same experience. I would love that.

Wortraub: But on the other hand you speak of hymns for the rock stadium … isn’t the contradictory?
Tom: Do you never go to a rock show and feel fucking in a different place?

Wortraub: Actually, the last time I went to a rock show, I was so bounced around by people jumping, that I felt like I was in a different place physically, but that is not what you mean …
Tom: Yeah, I see what you mean. I grew up obviously listening to punk rock music and I was running around and bouncing off people. But it is different if you go to a show where you really love the band, love the way they sound. You are focused listening and watching. It is a different deal. It doesn’t happen with every band. It might happen with one out of hundred albums in your collection. I have had about four experiences like that in my life. All four of those bands I really love. That is what this band is meant to do, no matter how big the fucking place, whether it is a thousand people or a hundred-thousand people or whatever. It does not matter. It is about what is happening at that moment. It is more the will of the person attending, if they want to have that feeling. This is what this band is all about. I see it every night from the stage. It is not about what is cool, it is not about what is punk and what is not, it is not about ego, it is not about critics coming here. This is a different thing, and if you want to come to our show and be part of a movement and change the way you think about the yourself and the world around you, then let yourself do it. If you want to be here to sing along to a catchy chorus, then do that too. But this is about something different and people get it. There are people crying at the shows, singing every single song. I promise you, if you wanted to be a part of it, and you are not just a spectator you might just have a good feeling.

Wortraub: Last time that has happened to me was with Tool…
Tom: … there, you see. That is what I am saying. And Tool is fucking epic. That band, talk about fucking prog for the new millennium. I can’t do that. I can’t write music like that, that is fucking awesome.

Wortraub: Thanks for the interview. It was short, but very informative.