Tom Delonge is best-known for his role as vocalist and guitar player in the pop-punk band Blink-182. The accomplished musician, who also plays in the band Angels & Airwaves, is a savvy entrepreneur as well. But in addition to being a musician and a businessman, Tom Delonge is a ufologist.
Delonge appeared on the popular radio program Coast to Coast AM on Sunday, December 18. He discussed with host George Knapp his deep interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials, but explained that UFOs are more than a casual interest to him. Delonge explained that he actively researches UFOs, and has done so for years. He describes himself as an “armchair academic” in the field of ufology, and told Knapp the story of how, in the mid-90s when his band Blink-182 signed a record deal, he took the “very first check from them and bought a computer specifically to go on the Internet to research UFOs.”
As Delong got deeper and deeper into his research, he began reaching out to experts in the field. One of those experts was Dr. Steven Greer, who, as Delonge described, was a leader in the field of ufology at the time. Blink-182 was on tour then, but Delonge wanted to meet with Greer, so he flew Greer to meet him on tour. Greer brought with him a backpack containing 100 hours of video footage of UFO witness testimony from military and government officials–footage that Greer produced in 1993 as part of his Disclosure Project (Steven Greer will be a speaker at the 2012 International UFO Congress).
Delonge said he also met with Dr. Carol Rosin, a space and missile defense consultant who worked with the “father of rocketry,” Dr. Wernher von Braun, who revealed to Rosin information about conspiracies to keep the existence of extraterrestrials secret (Carol Rosin was a speaker at the 2011 International UFO Congress).
During his interview with Knapp, Delonge acknowledged that he has studied the work of several researchers, including astronomer and ufologist Jacques Vallee. He has also apparently spent some time researching the famous/infamous Roswell UFO crash of 1947. Talking about Roswell, he brought up the controversial book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base that was published this year. The book’s author, Annie Jacobsen, claims an anonymous source informed her that what actually crashed in Roswell was an advanced German aircraft, and that bodies of children were recovered that had been mutilated by Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi physician who had performed gruesome human experiments in concentration camps during World War II. The claim is that Stalin had this craft flown over the U.S., with the mangled children, to make Americans think extraterrestrials were coming, resulting in a “War of the Worlds” type mass panic. Interestingly, Knapp revealed that he too had interviewed this mysterious anonymous source years ago. Knapp explained:
I met him 20 years ago. I basically stalked him over a two year period, won his confidence, and got him to tell me the essentials of the same story. In those days, though, the story he told led me to believe it was some sort of alien origin–This craft that was out there. They even said they had beings that had come from somewhere else that spoke a language they could not understand. His story evolved, 20 years later, into this thing with Stalin and Dr. Josef Mengele, and genetic mutations, and all that stuff. So, somehow, that story that was told to me a long time ago became something different when it was told to Annie.
Knapp and Delonge conversed for three of the show’s four hours, and Knapp lauded Delonge as a “budding ufologist.” While it was Delonge’s first appearance as a guest on the show, he explained to Knapp that he is a Coast to Coast AM subscriber, and listened to the show back when it was hosted by one of the show’s founders, Art Bell. Delong was a terrific guest on the show, answering questions intelligently, and he even provided listeners with a brief overview of stories and people who were being discussed, making sure the audience had appropriate background information. His appearance on the show illustrated how well-read he is on the subject, and just how serious he is about researching UFOs.
Delonge, in conjunction with his band Angels & Airwaves, recently launched a website, StrangeTimes.com (temporarily on hiatus: 2/27/14), that features UFO and other news not typically reported by mainstream media. The site regularly features stories by Open Minds, and is worth a visit.
I wrote a story about Tom Delonge and his interest in UFOs earlier this month, and it will appear in the February/March 2012 issue of Open Minds Magazine that hits shelves in late January.
