The 26 Best Travis Barker Quotes

Travis Barker is the King of Pop-Punk music.

Back when his groundbreaking band Blink-182 hit the airwaves in the late ’90s and early 2000s, this may have seemed like a stretch for the tattooed drummer. But he’s made it work and today is seemingly both on every pop-punk song or album and even runs his own labels with the likes of Avril Lavigne in its proverbial stable.

The 46-year-old, California-born Barker, who recently married Kourtney Kardashian, can do it all.

But what does the percussionist have to say about the world at large outside of his many songs? What are his thoughts on life, love, business, his craft, and more?

That’s the subject of this inquiry here today. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the 26 best Travis Barker quotes.

1. “I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself.”

2. “Playing my drums is therapy.”

3. “Then I tried out for the Fontana High School drum line, in Riverside, and I did really well. I got second chair, and played snare in that drum line for three years.”

4. “Oh, I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books.”

5. “I used to have friends come on tour and work as my drum tech, but they get bummed out when I have to tell them what to do. This time I’m just going to fly them out and let them hang. It’s all good.”

6. “I practice every day, I warm up before I play.”

7. “I can play punk rock, and I love playing punk rock, but I was into every other style of music before I played punk rock.”

8. “A lot of people think that punk rock musicians don’t know what they’re doing.”

9. “The whole time after you record an album, you’re just waiting for the release date. You’re waiting for fans to hear it and stuff.”

10. “We never worry about the big things, just the small things.”

11. “I try to do an hour of cardio on the days that I have off, and then I’ll do 30 to 45 minutes on show days. That’s the first thing I do when I wake up, I have breakfast and then I’ll hit the gym.”

12. “Once in a while, I’ll slip and get off my vegan diet and have egg whites in the morning, that’s a good source of protein while I’m out on the road. If I can feel my body starting to tire, those are good to keep you healthy.”

13. “I guess YouTube is the new destination spot for music videos. That’s where I go.”

14. “We just wrote songs that seemed good to us. We wrote the album in like two weeks. We could have had more time, but we accomplished what we needed to in the two weeks.”

15. “In the hospital, I promised myself that if I ever walked again, that I would eat well and swim every day.”

16. “I have my kids every Friday through Monday, and I don’t leave them the whole time I have them.”

17. “I hate planes.”

18. “I don’t like traveling, period. I like being at places and I like going places, but I don’t like forms of transportation.”

19. “My mom died when I was 16. I had a rough childhood, you know what I mean, but it made me strong.”

20. “I’m a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you’d tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.”

21. “When I look at music, everything is blurred, and I like it that way. I grew up like that, hanging out with different types of people who listened to so many different types of music. I never wanted to be part of any one clique. I loved it all.”

22. “On tour, you never have a home, you don’t get used to anything, and you’re always super busy.”

23. “And I played in jazz band as well during all three years in school.”

24. “I looked Death right in the face.”

25. “Usually, if I’m coming to Europe, I’m on a boat for seven days, so I spend the seven days doing a bunch of things. I’ll do cardio for an hour or an hour-and-a-half and weights, just light weights.”

26. “I think putting your relationship out there for people to interpret and have their own opinion about, I think it’s crazy.”

Photo by Jeff Kravitz/MTV VMAs 2021/Getty Images for MTV/ViacomCBS