Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear’: Six Things We Learned About the Drummer’s Hard Life — Rolling Stone

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Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear’: Six Things We Learned About the Drummer’s Hard Life — Rolling Stone | AIPROPX

Travis Barker didn't want to do this documentary . He'd been filming Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear since 2017, chronicling his life dealing with the debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder since surviving a plane crash nine years earlier. In an incident that made national headlines at the time, the Blink-182 drummer and three friends were in a private jet, heading home from Columbia, South Carolina, when the landing gear burst into flames. Two of his best friends were killed. A third passenger, his close friend and collaborator DJ AM, died a year later of an overdose. Barker was in intense emotional and physical pain. He was suicidal. He wasn't sure he'd ever make it back.

The drummer had already been scared of planes, so after the 2008 crash, he simply stopped taking them. In fact, the documentary starts with Barker in his room on the Queen Mary 2 , sailing across the Atlantic, since that's the only way he could tour Europe. But this symptom of his PTSD created a strain between the film's producers and their subject: The natural way for the documentary to end would be to have Barker get on an airplane for the first time in years. But, as Barker has explained in recent interviews, that was not an option at the time. It wasn't until his now-wife, Kourtney Kardashian, surprised him with a trip to Mexico in 2021 that he went back in the air. A few years later, he decided it would be OK to take another leap, and return to Louder Than Fear , which premiered at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, and is now available on Hulu and Disney+.

Barker, 50, has taken a lot of leaps, and he's also had to pick himself up plenty of times. From his early days as a trash collector in Laguna Beach, California, to his wild touring era with Blink, to becoming one of the most sought-after drummers in punk , rock, and rap, Barker has battled trauma and addiction — and it's all laid out in the documentary, which also includes thorough interviews with family, friends, and fellow drummers, and is set largely to a soundtrack of Barker on his kit. Here are six things we learned about the prolific drummer from Louder Than Fear. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

"As a kid, the first thing that got me interested in drums was Animal from the Muppets. He was wild and always looked like he was having such a good time behind the kit," Barker says in the documentary. "Everyone else was just whatever; Animal was what I was drawn to." Barker's father, Randy, who is also extensively interviewed in the film, remembers him pulling pots and pans out of the cupboards to play on the kitchen floor. So Randy and his wife, Gloria, got their four-year-old a kit — Muppets-themed, of course — and put him in lessons. And as Randy put it, "he just beat the daylights out of it."

Still, he was young, and concentration didn't come naturally. "When I was a kid, I really didn't enjoy practicing," Travis says in the doc. "At that age, you don't really wanna do anything, you just wanna go play with your friends. I'm really fortunate that I had a really disciplined schedule with practice."

He studied jazz drumming, and eventually joined the high school marching band. "My mom, she would sit in the room with him while he practiced — she would tape his drum lessons so she knew exactly what it would sound like, and what he was supposed to be doing," his sister Tamara Barker remembers in the film. "My mom learned to read music with me," Barker says. "She could pretty much play what I could play. And she knew whether I was practicing or not." Tragically, though, Gloria died in 1990, when Travis was 14, so she never got to see what a successful drummer he would one day become.

These days, Barker is known for the art that covers nearly every square inch of his body. But, as he explains in the documentary, his father was adamantly against him getting any kind of body art. "I got my first tattoo when I was 15," he explains in the doc. "My dad always said, the day you get a tattoo, I'm gonna kick your ass and kick you out of the house. So I was kinda shook, but at the same time, my mom had just passed away, and in my head things couldn't get much worse." Randy was, as expected, pissed. Travis remembers his father calling him an "idiot," and saying that he'd never be able to get a job. But Barker didn't want to get a regular job — he wanted to play drums. "I figured, if I get tattoos all over my neck, and all over my body, all over my hands, I can't get a job, and I won't have a plan B," Travis says. "To me that was perfect. My goal was to have enough money to eat, to have somewhere to sleep, and to play the drums." Related Content Travis Barker Fights Through the Pain in ‘Louder Than Fear’ Trailer New Doc Will Depict Joe Jackson’s Life in Collaboration With Marlon Jackson ‘A Toxic Love Story’: 5 Things We Learned From Netflix’s New True-Crime Doc '1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story' Isn't Available in the U.S., but We Found a Way to Watch

After a stint in the local punk band Feeble, Barker joined the Aquabats, a ska outfit that wore elaborate Martian-surfer getups onstage — something Barker didn't realize until he was getting ready to go onstage for his first show. "I show up the day of the show, and I know all the songs, and I do sound check," he recalls in the doc. Aquabats singer Christian Jacobs picks up the story from there: "I gave him his costume, and he's like, 'Wait, what?'" Despite the miscommunication, Travis spent two years in the band, touring in his rash guard, cape, and goggles, and practicing on pads in the bus every chance he had.

Around 1998, the Aquabats were set to open for pop-punk up-and-comers Blink-182, whose original drummer, Scott Raynor, had to leave for a family emergency. He suggested that they try out Barker, who he'd heard was killer on his kit. "Mark [Hoppus...