Tonight, Blink 182 return to the venue where they played their final show prior to a four-year hiatus that had fans wondering would we ever see them again. Well, in the way that the old Point Theatre has been regenerated in the interim, so too have Blink. The boys from San Diego are playing with smiles on their faces again, which is good to see. They seem genuinely happy.
Right from the off, with their renowned audience rapport turned up to 11, they have the crowd eating out of the palm of their figurative hand. Opening with an evenly balanced mix of tunes from their latter three albums, subtle differences in the dynamic become clear: songs like ‘What’s My Age Again?’ gain a new level of poignancy, now that the original listeners, mostly in their teens when the song emerged first, are now 20-somethings or possibly even in their 30s.
‘I Miss You’ arrives early and sets the tone for the next six numbers, which are all of a much darker variety. ‘Stay Together for the Kids’ is revealed by Tom as being about a band and their audience: the song depicts a couple in turmoil, constantly fighting and gives first person accounts from the pair, with a third party (presumably drummer Travis) commenting on the situation: “Their anger hurts my ears/ Been running strong for seven years/ Rather than fix the problems, they never solve them/ It makes no sense at all”. It suggests that cracks had emerged in the band’s inner working relationships far earlier than anyone might have imagined.
Their breakthrough single, ‘All The Small Things’ is another crowd pleaser.
Blink give it everything they’ve got and the O2 crowd more than match them, bellowing every last word; at times, the sound that the 14,000-stong throng produce is positively stunning. Tom DeLonge’s voice holds together remarkably well, despite his reputation for being a bit of a Dylan when performing live. The incredibly beautiful ‘Josie’, a tune resurrected from the ‘before they were famous’ back-catalogue, leaves those who know the song in awe and the rest of the crowd suitably intrigued.
Having finished the set with ‘Anthem Part II’, Travis emerges to perform a gravity-defying four-minute drum solo, during which he is harnessed into his seat and plays at fully 20 feet in the air, on a kit which rotates both vertically and horizontally, meaning that there are times when he’s playing impeccably, totally upside down. Quite a spectacle! The encore continues with two Blink oldies ‘Carousel’, a song they once promised they’d never play again, and finally, amid confetti explosions galore, the wonderful ‘Dammit’. It’s refrain “Well, I guess this is growing up…” makes a suitable counterpoint to ‘What’s My Age Again’ from the start of the evening.
That really is the night’s story – of a band and an audience, both very much grown-up, but obstinately fighting it for at least one more gloriously fun-filled evening.