Angels and Airwaves Interview - Uncut and Uncensored

Wish you could have a Woodie? Although college students can't win a Woodie — a MTV-U’s music award — they are the ones behind who does receive one. The Woodie Awards are the only awards voted on by college audiences. Top nominees for this year’s 3rd annual Woodie Awards include the Arctic Monkeys, Imogen Heap, Atmosphere, Gym Class Heroes, Hellogoodbye, Taking Back Sunday, The Academy Is… and The Fray. Also nominated was the band Angels and Airwaves. Drummer Tom DeLonge sat down with The Batt to answer some questions about getting a Woodie:

TOM DELONGE-

How do you feel about Angels and Airwaves being nominated?

TD: Oh, it's amazing! I never really think that any award is ever valid unless we really get nominated. I must say this is one of the most important awards in music. That and the Grammys, but we've never been nominated for a Grammy. (laughs) I think it's exciting and I’m honored. A&A is a new band, so we've had an incredible few months with our album. It's been a roller coaster ride, which is really cool because it’s a validation of something I truly believe in; which is what this band stood for and what's its about. Being nominated for an award helps make me feel pretty good about the decisions I've made in my life to be here.

How does it feel to be a father and be on tour?

TD: It's difficult, but I’m fortunate now, because with A&A to even get to this point in my career, to be comfortable and be with my family more often. It was a lot more difficult with blink-182, when we were first starting in our career. I’m much more fortunate now, where I can pick and choose when and where, how I want to go out so I can be the father that I need to be. Which is a pretty fucked up father! (laughs) There's not too many other fathers like me running around the house naked and my kids telling me to put my clothes on. I love it. It makes me a better person.

How would you measure success?

TD: If A&A can have a similar effect on the listeners as it did on me creating the music, if I can truly use my music to effect change in peoples’ lives and around the world, then I think that would be beyond a meter of success. That would be what I’m dreaming of for this band right now.

Do you think you can make it through the award show without cracking a joke about the WOODIES?

TD: Ha-ha! You know, not now, because you are giving me ideas. I’m wondering what the award looks like. The funny thing is, as everyone knows me as being with A&A, it’s really a complete picture of who I am, where the big jokes do fit in sometimes. I can also be political. I can be optimistic and inspirational as I want to be. I love the idea of inspiring people to do things or think a certain way. I get to be as much as a 16-year-old as I want to be.

When you tell a story from one of your songs, how much of it comes from personal experience?

TD: It really depends on what's happening. 90 percent of the songs that are about relationships or love are real. They were things that were happening to me. It was the only way I could draw lyrically …what's going on. There is so much hope, and I’m so inspired by certain things around me, I have to put them lyrically into a different kind of arrangement. It’s like when you watch a movie and you can relate to the visuals and movement and pace, you start to get a feeling the chills up your arm. You leave the theater feeling something different. And that’s kind of how I attack A&A. So sometimes it’s not necessarily about a story, but it’s about creating an overwhelming feeling between the visuals and music and how it’s presented in a live show — to create an emotional dent in someone. It's hard to describe. I’m in a different point in my art to where songs aren’t just about a made-up story or a story that just really happened with me, it’s kind of a mixture of the two.

Go now and vote for your favorite artist at MTVU.com. The 3rd Annual MTV-U Woodie Awards premiere at 8:00 p.m. Nov. 2.