Tom Delonge
Thomas Matthew DeLonge, Jr. (born December 13, 1975), is an American musician, best known as one of the founding members of, and guitarist/singer in, bands blink-182 and Angels and Airwaves. He lives with his wife Jennifer, daughter Ava Elizabeth (born July 15, 2002), son Jonas Rocket (born on August 16, 2006 [2]) in Rancho Santa Fe, California. Tom DeLonge was raised by his mother and father in California. He has an older brother, Shon, and a younger sister, Kari. In 1990, on Tom's fifteenth birthday, he received his very first guitar from a friend who had found it lying in a dumpster. Tom was expelled from Poway High School during junior year after being caught drunk at a school basketball game. As Tom went to another school, he met Anne Hoppus, Mark Hoppus' sister, which led to the beginning of blink-182. When he returned to Poway High School during his senior year, the students voted him Prom King at his senior prom.
blink-182
Tom's first band, Big Oily Men, was just for fun. After getting expelled from his old high school on accounts of teenage drinking at a basketball game during his junior year, Tom met Anne Hoppus at his new high school. She had overheard him making a prank phone call to a dentist's office, and found him hilarious. They soon became friends. Tom constantly expressed his desire to form a serious band, so Anne introduced him to her brother, Mark Hoppus, who had recently moved to Poway, California. The night they met Tom was skateboarding with a bunch of friends in a plaza parking lot and to impress Tom, Mark climbed a lamp pole and jumped from the top, cracking both heels. They started a band called Duck Tape, which soon transformed into Blink. In need of a drummer, Tom tapped 14-year-old Scott Raynor, whom he had known from a Battle of the Bands contest. In 1992, the trio created a demo tape entitled Flyswatter.
Their first concert took place at a bar. Since they were underage, they were only allowed to enter when it was time for their set. They bought 50 tickets to sell but no one came to see them. After only one song Blink was kicked out. After the show, the bar manager came up to Tom, bought him a Snapple and said, "You deserve it." Blink eventually got more popular, and on their first real tour, Tom DeLonge was arrested for underage drinking. As they reached newer heights of popularity, they were forced to add a "182" to the end of their name due to threat of legal action by an Irish band already operating under the name Blink.
In an interview with Mark Hoppus, it is stated that the reason for blink-182's indefinite hiatus is that Tom DeLonge quit the band
