Tom DeLonge on UFO research: 'I wouldn't have left Blink-182 for something pie in the sky'
Saturday 5 September 2020 09:09, UK
Rock star Tom DeLonge has spoken to Sky News about his work on UFOs, saying he would not have put music on the backburner to "chase monsters and ghosts" and that research into the subject could "change the world".
The musician, best known as the former guitarist and vocalist with US pop-punk band Blink-182, helped set up the To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science in the US in 2017, and features in the TV series Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation.
Earlier this year, three videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) that had been released by the organisation in 2017 and 2018 were declassified by the Pentagon.
The black and white videos were recorded by Navy pilots - one in November 2004 and two in January 2015, the US Department of Defence said.
DeLonge is still the frontman of his other band, Angels & Airwaves, but left Blink-182 at the beginning of 2015, after headlining the Reading and Leeds festival in the UK the previous summer.
He claims he has seen too much evidence to not believe and would not have left that life behind for something "pie in the sky".
"I personally have seen enormous amounts of data," he tells Sky News on a Zoom call from San Diego, California.
"You've got to understand, the last show that I played before I started To The Stars Academy was actually in the UK. My band headlined Reading and Leeds.
"You know, it's like, there's a hundred thousand people there. 'And you decided to just leave that to go chase monsters and ghosts?' You know, I'm not stupid, I'm a pretty savvy guy.
"I've been brought into a group of people and I'm a big part of a mechanism that is absolutely profound and [has] already started changing the world. And it's going to do a lot more.
"Would I leave rock and roll just to go do something that there's no data for and it's just, like, pie in the sky and we're just imagining things? No! Why would I? I mean, that's insane.
"But would I leave it for something that I truly think can change the world and have a positive impact and make it a better place, and something that needs to be dealt with, something that's serious?"
DeLonge, 44, says he realises the theory of UAP might be "unnerving" and "hard to digest" for some, but that he wants to be "in the front seat of something that's going to come out and be the most revolutionary subject".
Following the launch of Unidentified last year, the show is now back for a second series.
Investigators followed in the show include former military intelligence official and special agent in-charge, Luis Elizondo, and former deputy assistant secretary of defence and intelligence, Chris Mellon.
Elizondo, who is also on the Zoom call, headed up a top secret $22m project - officially called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) - tasked with investigating the possible threat of UFOs, from 2007 to 2012.
He says the topic is "fraught with taboo and stigma… because most people jump immediately to the conclusion of tin-foil hats and, quote-unquote, 'Elvis being on the mothership.'"
He continues: "All of a sudden, lo and behold, the world finds out we actually had a real programme with $22 million of taxpayer money to actually look at UFOs, but nobody wanted to talk about it."
Elizondo says DeLonge is "not afraid to take a topic that is controversial and hit it head on" and that his involvement is helping to get people talking about it.
DeLonge says he first experienced stigma himself in the earlier days of Blink-182, which he co-founded with Mark Hoppus and former drummer Scott Raynor in the early 1990s. Current drummer Travis Barker joined in 1998, a year before the release of their third and biggest album Enema Of The State, and the band now perform with Matt Skiba following DeLonge's departure.
"It's funny, the first stigma that I experienced was actually in my band, Blink-182," he says.
"We didn't have iPhones when we were travelling around in a van so I was reading these books on unidentified aerial phenomena... it's kind of something that's been hiding in plain sight, but people never really looked for or read or took seriously.
"Here I am in the back of the van and I'm reading this stuff and I remember I was just like, 'oh my God, oh my God, did you know this?' I remember my band members just thought I was crazy and I was just hounding them.
"It kind of became a joke that we all played off of, where I was always talking about it and they knew that was kind of my thing, but that was just the beginning of me really realising that... you know, it's really hard for people to digest because we're stuck in very physical science.
"Like, what is the temperature of that, or the density of that, or the provable this or that, when things to do with unidentified aerial phenomena might be using forces of nature... in a way that we don't readily study every day, or we're just beginning to.
"I mean, 20 years ago, it was very much like, these are craft and they must be from a planet, or they're an alien, and that's kind of where I was when I was in my early 20s in the van.
"Over time, as science moves and it evolves and we're starting to take these things more seriously and understand some of the other parameters about it, I just think that we're gonna find - I assume, I don't know - but my gut is that we're going to find out there's a lot more to this.
"But the only way we get there is if the stigma is gone and we get the best scientists involved and we get the best facilities and the government working together."
DeLonge says the Pentagon officially releasing the three videos earlier this year "was a big deal" after "a lot of work behind the scenes from To The Stars".
He continues: "Those steps are just gigantic. I mean, nothing has happened in, like, 70 years on this topic that's substantial… I'm looking back and going, oh my God, I might have started a spark."
Elizondo and Mellon, as well as To The Stars co-founders Dr Hal Puthoff and Jim Semivan, "took that spark and threw jet fuel on it", DeLonge says.
"I cannot be more proud. It gives me the chills to think about what we accomplished in such a short period of time."
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The star's interest in the subject "started decades ago", he says, and Unidentified was set up to provide a "doorway" in for other people.
Elizondo claims it is a "topic that involves potentially every human being on this planet".
Speaking about evidence he has seen, he says he cannot talk publicly about a lot of it as he is "bound by my nondisclosure agreement".
However, he says there are politicians in the US who are "willing to put their reputations or credibility or even their re-election on the line to pursue this issue…
"So that should be a pretty clear indicator that this is a serious topic."
Series two of Unidentified airs on Sky HISTORY on Tuesdays at 9pm from 1 September, with all episodes available on catch-up