From fiery plane crashes to deaths in the family and debilitating health scares,
the Blink-182 drummer has had a tragic real life story. Travis Barker's lived the kind of rock and
roll life that most people can only dream of, but it hasn't been easy for the talented musician.
Gloria Barker was also known as "Cookie," and the sweet nickname seems fitting based
on Travis Barker's descriptions of his late mother in "Can I Say: Living Large,
Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums," his 2015 memoir. He wrote,
"My mom was very loving, and she was there for me all the time."
While he admitted that his mom was a pushover in the discipline department,
she never let her son slack on his schoolwork and kept him "sharp" intellectually.
In the Barker household, young Travis' passion for drumming was also a top priority,
and Gloria wholeheartedly believed that he would someday become a rock star. Tragically, Gloria
died the day before her son's freshman year of high school. In an interview with Vice, he shared,
"From the moment after my mom passed away, I really followed the last words she told me.
'Play the drums and don't care about anything else in life but doing the things you love.'
I almost felt like she was orchestrating things upstairs."
She may be gone, but Gloria Barker is never far from her son's thoughts.
One tattoo on the back of Barker's neck reads
"Mom," and the musician proudly added his mother's portrait to his body art in 2013.
In "Can I Say," Travis Barker revealed that while he never felt deprived as a child,
his lower-middle class upbringing in Fontana, California did come with some challenges.
Barker's father built their home, and the family moved in before its completion. Barker noted,
"It was like camping out: no ... bathrooms or running water.
We slept on the floor in sleeping bags."
The Blink-182 drummer also reflected on his neighborhood, writing,
"It was a tough city: there were shootings and stabbings."
Travis Barker's memoir also explores his journey to sobriety following excessive
drug use. In an interview with Vice, Barker admitted to trying a wide variety of drugs
and revealed that pills were his "scariest" addiction. The drummer
confessed to Billboard that one of his "lowest" moments occurred in 2004, saying,
"I was so addicted to Oxycodone, and I had a security that would actually
sleep during the day and then stay up at night to make sure I was breathing."
According to the Vice interview,
Barker first attempted to get sober after a therapist asked him,
"If you died today would you be the man you want your kids to remember,
right now, the way you are?"
The rock star desperately wanted to break the unhealthy cycle for the sake
of his children, but told the magazine,
"I would flush pills down the toilet and throw
cigarettes out the window. I was trying my hardest, but I was still hanging on."
A near-death experience finally propelled Barker into achieving sobriety.
After a 2008 plane crash left the musician in critical condition, he told Men's Health,
"That was my wake-up call. If I wasn't in a crash, I would have probably never quit."
Barker said in Vice that he was so committed to his healthier lifestyle that he even "refused
to use any pain medication" after enduring several months of excruciating surgeries.
With his numerous tattoos, backwards hats, and punk-rock wardrobe,
Travis Barker certainly looks like the quintessential bad boy. But
in reality? Men's Health once described the rock star as "soft-spoken and gentle," and Vice
called him "a responsible father." Barker admitted to Vice in 2015 that some people
can't get past his seemingly tough exterior and cautioned, "Don't judge a book from the cover."
Admirably, Barker manages to stay calm and respectful when faced with discrimination.
The record producer told Vice,
"If I go to a restaurant and they don't like me in a torn up Motörhead
shirt and they want me to put on a jacket, I'm gonna kindly walk away."
In an interview with NME, Barker recalled,
"I remember going to this car dealership ... the first thing the guy said to me was like,
'Sir, we don't have a toilet.' ... I was ready to buy the car but nobody would talk to me."
Some of Travis Barker's experiences with prejudice have proven to be even more disturbing.
The musician told Salon that he was often targeted by police and often pulled over. He added,
"I've been taken out of the car at gunpoint, in front of my children,
and asked if I had any weapons in the car, my gang allegiance, where I was hiding the drugs."
Travis Barker inherited his mother's fear of flying,
and it became a deeply held belief that he would meet his end in an airplane.
"I'm gonna die in a plane crash."
In September of 2008, Barker boarded a private jet in South Carolina with his assistant, Chris Baker,
his bodyguard, Charles Monroe Still, Jr., and fellow musician and friend Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein.
And while Barker always grew nervous before flying, this time was different. As the
drummer recalled to Billboard, he called his father before takeoff and told him,
"Pops, I have a really strange feeling about this one. Something just tells me
it's not right. ... I love you, and if anything happens, make sure the kids are taken care of."
Unfortunately, Barker's premonition turned out to be true. As Today recalled, the aircraft
"skidded off the runway and burst into flames after striking an embankment." Tragically,
both pilots, Chris Baker, and Charles Monroe Still, Jr. were killed upon impact.
Barker and Goldstein somehow managed to escape the wreckage.
Travis Barker's nightmare was far from over. As he told Salon,
"Sixty-five percent of my body burned, plus 27 surgeries over a four month span."
And the healing process was anything but easy. The pain became so unbearable
that Barker became suicidal and even asked a friend to end his life.
In addition to intense physical pain,
Travis Barker also suffered from emotional trauma after the plane crash. He told Salon,
"I had massive survivor's guilt for a while. ... I had to bury two of my best friends,
Lil' Chris and Che. I still see Lil Chris's son and Che's mother. I have to answer to them."
In 2021, Barker tattooed the words "survivor's" and "guilt" onto his arms — and it's just one
of several tributes inked onto his body. He shared with Men's Health,
"I have memorials on my legs for everyone that I lost in my plane crash,
friends that have passed over the years, and my mom."
The crash also left Barker with severe PTSD.
He told Men's Health that he was in a dark place after coming home from the hospital and added,
"I couldn't walk down the street. If I saw a plane [in the sky],
I was determined it was going to crash, and I just didn't want to see it."
The musician used therapy and family support to regain his mental health.
In 2008, Travis Barker and Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein formed TRV$DJAM,
a musical collaboration project. The pair performed a show together in Columbia,
South Carolina, before boarding the ill-fated jet that was meant to bring them back to Los Angeles.
The two sole survivors of the crash were close before the tragic accident,
but afterwards their bond grew even deeper. Barker told Billboard in 2015,
"He was my best friend. It was beyond friendship. It was like there was only
one other person in the world."
The plane crash was Barker's initial motivation for working toward sobriety,
but the musician credits Goldstein for keeping him sober, telling Vice,
"Adam was my rehab. I would go to a meeting with him or sit and talk,
have dinner. He would take me away from my normal routine. He was a big influence."
Sadly, the tragic accident had the opposite effect on the then-sober Goldstein,
who began using drugs to cope with his new fear of flying.
Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein died from a drug overdose in August of 2009, a year after
surviving a deadly plane crash. Barker told Salon the news "destroyed" him. He shared with Vice,
"That was really hard for me to accept. Just hanging out with Adam you wanted to
be a better person, he would rub off on you. Man, I looked up to him in so many ways."
Travis Barker had survived a plane crash, lost his closest friends, endured multiple reconstructive
surgeries, and has been open about his struggle with drug addiction and journey toward sobriety.
Unfortunately, the drummer encountered two more major challenges in the summer of 2018.
Earlier in the year, Blink-182 announced they were headed to Las Vegas for a residency.
The band had only played a few shows when they announced via Twitter in June that Barker was
"suffering from blood clots in both arms" and that upcoming shows would be rescheduled.
A few days after Blink-182's announcement,
TMZ reported that Barker was also dealing with cellulitis and a staph infection. His condition
was so serious that Blink-182 eventually canceled the remainder of their residency.
To make matters worse, several weeks after his medical issues began,
Travis Barker was involved in a major car crash. The day after the accident he told E! News,
"My car is totaled but I pretty much walked away. ... A school bus ran a
red light. It was insane. I have a really big 4x4 G-Wagon and if I wasn't in that,
it might have been different but it held up pretty well."
"Yesterday I was in a pretty bad car accident, but I came out unscathed, which is pretty awesome."
On their 2005 MTV reality show "Meet the Barkers," Travis Barker and then-wife
Shanna Moakler displayed PDA that would make a teenager blush. And like a teen romance,
their union was passionate but short-lived. A source told People,
"The relationship was always dysfunctional, they were always love and hate. It was volatile."
Barker filed for divorce in 2006. The couple's volatility was on full display
over the next several years. Accusations of infidelity were made by both parties,
and as Us Weekly recounted, the two traded insults over MySpace. After a few brief reconciliations,
Barker and Moakler's divorce was finalized in 2008. The former spouses continued to
spar over custody of their two children and slammed one another's characters in court.
Another health complication that Travis Barker has struggled with is trigeminal neuralgia.
According to WebMD, the condition impacts facial nerves and can cause bouts of intense pain
resembling "an electric shock," as well as uncontrollable twitches, usually on one side.
Barker opened up about his condition during a 2019 appearance on the "Joe Rogan Experience," saying,
"It's called 'the suicide disease,' 'cause basically all of the nerves in
your face are firing all at the same time. So it almost feels like what you feel when
you think you need a root canal or you have a tooth that's messed up."
In 2021, the drummer launched his cannabinoid-based wellness brand,
Barker Wellness Company, which sells a range of vegan and cruelty-free creams
and tinctures to promote wellness. The THC-free products are supposedly what
have helped alleviate the symptoms Barker experiences from his various health issues,
including trigeminal neuralgia. He told iHeart at the time,
"Even before I made my own, I was so dependent on them for a healthy night's sleep and just
recovery. I feel like all of the creams, the pain relief creams, I was using constantly.
After years of abuse of my body, I just figured out what works for me, recovery-wise,
and that's what led to this whole wellness thing."
"I haven't really had anything for 10 years."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. No alcohol, no weed, no nothing."
About five weeks after the Blink-182 rocker officially tied the knot with Kourtney
Kardashian in a lavish Italian ceremony, Barker was rushed into Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center in Los Angeles to treat what was later reported to be pancreatitis on June 28, 2022.
Medical professional sources later told TMZ that the drummer's condition may have been
"triggered by a colonoscopy" he'd undergone recently. Soon after Barker's hospitalization,
his teen daughter, Alabama Luella Barker, took to TikTok to post an image of him lying
on a hospital bed as she held his hand. While Alabama later deleted the post,
she shared a similar one on her Instagram Stories, writing, "Please send your prayers."
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the
Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness
helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website
or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).