1972
3/15/1972: Mark Hoppus is born to Tex Hoppus and Kerry Wernz in Ridgecrest, California.

 
1975
11/14/1975: Travis Barker is born to Randy and Gloria Barker in Fontana, California.
12/13/1975: Tom DeLonge is born to Thomas and Connie DeLonge in Poway, California.

 

1976

2/24/1976: Matt Skiba is born to Joan and Thomas Skiba in McHenry, Illinois.
 
1978
5/23/1978: Scott Raynor is born.
 
1979
Undated: Travis receives his first drum kit from his mother, which will be his only kit until he is 15.
 
1980
Undated: 

• Travis begins taking drum lessons with a drummer named Thomas Hogan, who would expose him to many different playing styles. At this time, he also began taking trumpet lessons.

• Mark, then aged eight, witnesses the divorce of his parents. It had a “drastic, unsettling effect on” him, he told Kerrang! in 2012. After their split, he and his sister Anne shuffle between their parents homes for two years.

 

1982

Undated: Mark moves to Monterey, California, where his father is pursuing a postgraduate degree.

1983
Undated: 

• Tom, then in the third grade, begins skateboarding. His love of the sport later becomes integral to his friendships in high school, which helped create Blink.

• Mark, then in fifth grade, purchases his very first album: Michael Jackson’s Thriller, on cassette.
   

1986

12/25/1986: Tom’s parents purchase him his first musical instrument, a trumpet, for Christmas.
Undated: 

• Mark moves with his father to Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington. D.C.

  • Unsure of the date on this, but this Rolling Stone feature from 2000 lists his parents divorce as occuring at age 14—which would have been during this year, but we’ve got multiple sources that their split occured earlier. It further states he moved to Fairfax shortly after, which we can assume happened around this time.

 

1987

Undated: 

• Tom, then a seventh grader, visits a friend in Oregon who introduces him to punk rock through bands such as Stiff Little Fingers, Dinosaur Jr. and the Descendents.

• Shortly thereafter, DeLonge attends a church camp. At the camp, he discovers another kid is keeping a guitar in his bunk—which prompts his interest in the guitar.

• Tom buys his first album, Horse Bites Dog Cries, by D.I., on cassette.

  • It’s unclear if this was in 1987, 1988, or 1989, but we can reasonably assume it was after his friend introduced him to punk rock music, so I’m placing it here.

• Mark is introduced to the Cure when a friend, Wendy Franklin, plays him “Just Like Heaven”. She loans him a cassette of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. From there, he discovered Dag Nasty, They Might Be Giants, and the Descendents. “One song, Silly Girl, made me want to play music as opposed to just listen to it,” he later said. “It was like punk rock meets The Beach Boys – it was catchy and about things I cared about, like food, girls and having a good time.”

1988

3/4/1988: Mark attends his first-ever concert: They Might Be Giants at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.

6/1988: During the summer between his sophomore and junior years of high school, Mark develops an interest in the bass guitar. His father takes him to a shop in Annandale, Virginia and purchases him a black Mako bass—visible in many early Blink photos. As a reward for helping him paint his house, he also gifts him an amplifier. Mark begins learning the instrument playing by ear while listening to the Cure, Bad Religion, and the Descendents. After learning the bass, Mark puts together his first garage band, and performs for the first time at a small nightclub. “Probably 30 of our friends came,” he remembered to Kerrang!. “We had no original songs so we did covers by the Cure, Social Distortion, the Descendents, and Jimi Hendrix.”

11/13/1988: One of Mark's earliest bands, The Attic Children, records a demo tape of several songs -- mostly covers of the Cure -- so that Mark can "send it back to Virginia." It surfaced online in 2004/5 from longtime fan daveyjones, who received it from close friend of the band, Kerry Key.

Undated: Mark returns to his hometown of Ridgecrest. At this time, he is playing in a band named Of All Things with friends, covering songs by Descendents and Bad Religion.
 
1989
4/27/1989: 

• Tom attends his first-ever concert: the Dead Milkmen at SOMA, in San Diego, California.

• It’s unclear if this is for sure the date of this concert, but Tom remembers in a 2019 interview that it was at a local San Diego club and he was “mesmerized by the lights, the jokes, the circle pits… changed me forever.”

5/1989: Travis's mother is diagnosed with cancer.
8/1989: Travis loses his mother to cancer one day before first attending high school. On her deathbed, she encourages him to keep playing the drums.

Undated: Scott Raynor forms a band with friend Ryan Kennedy to perform at a school competition -- "a kind of 'show and tell' thing."
 
1990
5/1990: Mark graduates from Burroughs High School. Here is video footage of Mark during his senior year, and possible footage of him performing "Silly Girl" by the Descendents at their graduation party.

 

1991

Undated: Having spent several years “directionless and stupid”, Mark decides on a career for his future: he aimed to become a high school English teacher. He had had a teacher in high school who taught Shakespeare and really made an impression on him. “It would have been cool to be the kind of teacher that inspires people to actually care about stuff,” he told Kerrang! in 2012. He plans to attend Cal State San Marcos, which prompts his move to San Diego, where he meets Tom and Scott.