Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 might have just rolled out his brand new signature model, but he’s not exactly sitting home writing songs on it. In a recent interview with Fender, DeLonge revealed that his true test of a song is whether or not he can make it sound good on a shitty acoustic guitar.
“I just have a little shitty acoustic in my house,” he said. “It’s probably worth like 200 bucks. Everything gets written on that, and if I can make it sound good on that, I’m like ‘it’s gonna sound really good once it’s on an electric guitar.'”
DeLonge later explained his songwriting process, saying: “Whenever I write anything, I try to figure out what’s the most simple, repetitive way to play this, and hopefully it’s a little clever in some spots. You know, a lot of people grow up, you’re like, you can be really good at guitar or maybe you can like work your whole life and be a really great singer. And I was like, eh, maybe I could be decent at both, ’cause I just wanted to write my own songs. That’s all I cared about.”
“Our guitar riffs are no different than the way we rewrite our vocal melodies and stuff. Everything’s really kinda simple. And I used to always say it was like nursery rhymes on meth, and everyone likes nursery rhymes, because you can whistle it, and usually you can go up with your two fingers and play it on piano… a lot of the Blink melodies are that way.”
