Octopuses. Legendary Pokémon. blink-182 smileys. Mark Hoppus has never been one to shy away from a custom bass guitar, but now he’s made one of his favorites available to the wider world.
His latest signature model with Fender, the Stoned Fruit Jaguar Bass, replicates the bass he played on blink-182’s blockbuster 2023 reunion tour. But there’s a key difference: the wacky artwork by Burrito Breath – aka Ohio artist Phil Guy – is included as a set of stickers, rather than the finish itself.
The idea of a custom bass that’s different for every player just hit different for Hoppus, who himself had slapped stickers all over his early instruments.
“I just thought it was a genius idea that people could customize it themselves,” he tells Bass Player. “It could be something similar to the one that I have, they could just leave it off or put one or two stickers on. It seemed like a whole project rather than just a single bass in a certain color.”
Even if it was just a one-off color, it’s a looker. Guava Green is exclusive to this model, and comes with a matching headstock. It’s highly limited, and only available for – yes – 182 hours. And, along with Hoppus’ previous signature Jag, it has the privilege of being one of the only – if not the only – guitars to simply say ‘Fender Jag’, not ‘Jaguar’ on the headstock.
“I always called it a Jag, and Fender just put it on the headstock like that,” he says. “I think it's cool because the shorthand made it from our parlance onto the headstock itself.”
Like his previous basses, the new Jag comes with Seymour Duncan SPB-3 Quarter Pound split-coil P-Bass pickups mounted in reverse formation – the key to Hoppus’ distinctive tone.
As he explained to us previously, that gives the E and A strings more bite and punch, while the D and G get a deeper, fuller tone.
That’s important to Hoppus, because, as he tells us in this candid interview, he views his role in blink-182 as not just a bassist but also a rhythm guitarist – and that has shaped the way he collaborates with Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker in one of pop-punk’s most iconic bands.
The new model is a Jaguar bass. What are the biggest differences between that and your P-Bass?
I love the P-Bass. When I first started playing, the P-Bass was the bass that I always wanted. That was my dream bass guitar. Then [producer] Jerry Finn and I started tinkering with that, and we moved to a Jazz Bass body with a P-Bass neck, and then I moved to a Jag body with a Jazz neck and Jaguar neck.
First of all, the Jag looks a little more punk rock than either the P-Bass or Jazz Bass body. I just like the angle on it. And when I started playing Jag basses, it just seemed like they had a little more midrange cut-through, which is what I'm always striving for in blink.
I play bass kind of as a bass guitar and kind of as a rhythm guitar, so I want that midrange to cut through and support what Tom is doing on the guitar, but also separate from the sub frequencies and sub bass in modern recording. I am always searching for that midrange punch, and I think this body does that.
The Stoned Fruit Jaguar Bass made its first appearance on the 2023 reunion tour, which kicked off with a surprise set at Coachella. What was your mindset when you first walked back out onstage with Tom and Travis again after all that time?
It was so weird because we had just come out of Covid, and then I got cancer and was down for another six months. I got the all-clear at the end of 2021. January of 2022, we started getting in the studio and putting songs together. And then my first show back at all, and the first show back with Tom, was Coachella.
The first weekend was a surprise gig. I think we played in front of like 60 or 70,000 people, and then Frank Ocean cancelled for the second week, and they're like, “Hey, will you just headline the entire festival?” And so my second show back was headlining Coachella.
It was really like being thrown right back into the deep end of the pool, which was great, but very intimidating to step back on stage. I hadn't played on stage in a number of years, and after being sick, and then with Tom in the band, nearly a decade without Tom in the band, and coming back out, it was a dream come true. It was awesome.
It was so overwhelming in terms of the size of the crowd, but I didn't think that anybody would stick around for blink-182. It was weekend two of Coachella, almost the end of the whole festival.
I was just like, “Oh, there's really no pressure because it’s just blink going up there.” I thought that people would be like, “Oh, we're gonna go home. We're gonna beat the traffic. Frank Ocean canceled. We're gonna get back to L.A., get a good night's sleep, and go back to work.” But the whole place stayed. It was really an amazing experience.
You mentioned your cancer treatment. How did playing bass help you through that time?
Yeah, totally. Playing my bass through COVID and through cancer and having instruments around and being able as a musician – not being able to tour sucked – but being able to play my bass in my home studio and work on singing stuff and people would send files around.
We were lucky in that we could still continue to throw ideas back and forth, but obviously it's not the same as when you're in the room with people. Nothing will ever replace being in the room with other people making music. But it was great to just be able to play my bass like I always have.
How has your guitar and bass partnership with Tom evolved over the years?
Tom is such a great songwriter. I think that as far as songwriting goes, the three of us really challenge one another and really back each other up. What Tom does, I don't have the ability to do, and a little bit vice-versa. And then Travis is this X-factor that comes in and changes both of our ideas.
The way that Tom approaches guitar and songwriting is very different. Tom is always pushing things off to the extremes. Whatever it is that Tom is into at the time, be it U2 or The Police or a band like [Massachusetts post-metallers] Astronoid, he pulls from. And then I'm always trying to pull things back towards a pop, clean sensibility. And then Travis just comes in and hits everything with a sledgehammer and makes it really cool.
I'm always trying to write basslines that back up what Tom does on guitar and back up what Travis is doing on the drums. I really spend a lot of time with Tom's melodies and Travis' kick patterns.
You’ve also played guitar on blink albums over the years. Are there any parts you’ve recorded that would surprise fans?
On Neighborhoods, on the songs that I sing on, I pretty much played guitar on all of them. Generally speaking, the songs that Tom sings, he writes, and the songs that I sing, I write, and that's probably correct about 80 percent of the time.
There's times when Tom will write something, and he'll say, “I think this is perfect for your voice,” and vice versa. But on Neighborhoods, I was writing stuff on guitar and performing it, and then sending it to Tom, and he'd be like, “Well, why do I need to replay those guitars? They sound great.” And then Tom would come in and do stuff, as well.
I wrote the guitar riffs for Dammit and What's My Age Again?, and a lot of the guitar stuff that I write, Tom will replay or he'll do it better. I write songs on guitar rather than bass because I think that the guitar is another human voice, almost.
When Travis joined blink-182, it marked a turning point for the band. How did he up your game as a bass player?
When he first joined the band, he was more bringing in this totally different style of drumming than we had been used to before. I was playing eighth-note downstrokes on all the songs. Then Travis came in and would do these Latin beats in a punk rock song, or heavy metal beats, or turn the beat around, and I was trying to match that.
We were trying to make our version of Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or Dark Side of the Moon
Travis joining the band definitely made Tom and I level up our playing and live performances. And then as we started to take it more seriously, we did Enema of the State with Travis, which was straightforward blink-182 with Travis coming in, making things a bunch better. Then we did Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, where we explored a bunch of post-punk influences.
And then on the untitled record, I feel like that's where we were really all together throwing ideas back and forth and changing things around, and that's when my bass playing really locked in with what Travis was doing, and it was way more than just playing punk rock songs.
We were trying to make our version of Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or Dark Side of the Moon. We were really trying to reference these amazing albums that influenced us so much, and we were trying to make something that we thought was important.
That's when I really started changing my bass more to like, “OK, what's Travis actually doing here? What can I learn from him as far as the rhythms that he's bringing?”
You’ve previously talked about using the Quad Cortex in your live setup. Is that still your go-to?
We played a show a few months ago, and I was like, “You know what? I really miss having a working speaker cabinet on stage.” The modelers – the Quad Cortex, the Kempers – are so good right now. They sound literally like having an actual Ampeg 8x10 cabinet mic'd up in the studio. With my Quad Cortex next to it, nobody can tell the difference, so it has made that part of it a lot easier. And it has all my tones: my Silvertone, my AC30. It has all these great tones in it. But I just miss actually making noise.
So what I have now is my Quad Cortex going into a power amp that's actually powering an 8x10 cabinet on stage. Just because I want to push air. I want to make actual noise, not simulated noise. And even though it's convenient and it's tidy and it's perfect to have the Quad Cortex running everything, I can have all my stuff in there. I still want to make actual noise.
Doing the next record, I want to actually set up amps and get the tones and and commit to sounds and and put them down. And not have a DI channel that a mixer can do what he wants or put a plugin on or whatever. Like, “No, this is the bass tone that I want on this song that we've all agreed to, and now you have to mix that.”
That leads us neatly onto the next blink album. How is that shaping up?
We have a new record deal, and we are starting to talk about dates for future tours and things like that. And we're all starting to itch to get back into the studio. I have stuff that I want to show Tom and Travis. I know Travis has ideas. I know Tom's getting his studio back up and running again, and starting to dive in. So we can't wait to get in and see where it takes us.
Because I always want to keep writing new music and touring, and introducing new songs into the set. I don't ever want to rest on our laurels and be like, “Yeah, you know, we wrote Enema of the State back in ’99, so I think we're cool.” If we’re touring, I want to be touring new music and be excited about new projects.
Is there any specific direction the material you’re writing is taking at the moment?
This past couple years, I've listened to a lot of Sonic Youth and Devo and Bad Religion, and really going back to music that excited me back in the day. So my stuff is a lot more stripped down, punk rock-sounding.
I don't know what happens when Tom and Travis get their hands on that, but for me, it's really back to basics: “What do I love about music? What do I want to say?”
I feel really inspired. There's been times where I'm like, “I don't even know what I want to write about,” or I’m searching for what I’m trying to say. But this year, I feel a lot more focused and a lot more excited to just cut to the chase and write some kick-ass, thrashy songs.
- The Mark Hoppus Stoned Fruit Jaguar Bass is available for 182 hours from Fender.com.
