AVA Empire

Tom DeLonge gave  interview to Alternative Press website. You can read it here, on our site by clicking on Read more button.

Since the recording of your first album was filmed, I'm guessing you had intentions to release a documentary from the outset of the band's formation?
Yeah, we had intentions to do a documentary on the making of the album. What happened was, along the making of the record, it turned into a much larger story where, oddly enough, I was really into this story of trying to change the world as someone sees it through their own perspective and doing the story and coming up with it and making the record. I kind of went through that exact same situation myself with...[sighs]...drug addiction and losing friends and starting up a whole new life. For the documentary of making a record, it was basically catapulted into much more of an odyssey of a story. 

It was done by one of my closest friends, Mark Eaton. He was someone that we all grew up with and we were all very comfortable to have him around just film everything. We just said, "Make it true. Make it real." I had nothing to do with it. I didn't even "OK" an edit of it. So it's not like...[I'm] trying to make myself look bad or good or whatever. It was finished without any kind of oversight from the band at all. 

In the initial stages of the band's formation, you said how you wanted to change how music was pushed and made and marketed. Now, with the I-Empire film and such, it seems like you're doing that. Did part of the inspiration come from the fact that the music industry is in such terrible shape?
Yeah. I came from a successful band and trying to redo it all over again with a brand new band in an industry that was collapsing, I knew that I wanted to be more ambitous than I've ever been. So, I was thinking, How am I gonna do this with no support...when the record labels have nothing to offer...? So I did a couple things; first was the documentary. We always wanted it to be well-made, but I just explained what happened with that, and that thing grew and grew. Then we started the motion picture for I-Empire, and we're pretty much almost finished filming that and we're in the editing process; there's a few more things to film. And I started creating a thing called Modlife ([as in] modern). Modlife is an operating system that lets a band become more creative, or lets any kind of artist become more creative with their art using all these digital tools that are in one package that allow [them] to basically become [their] own broadcasting network with films, pay-per-view, live broadcasts and selling [their] own album or [their] own movies. So we started that two and a half years ago and we just finished it. It's transferring over to the main serving platform tomorrow actually, and starting next week it's open for business-and Modlife...we expect it to be one of the most exciting things that could happen on the Internet over the next few years. 

So when I said I wanted to come out and change all these things and revolution[ize] all these things, people were laughing and they were like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" They didn't know. I couldn't talk about Modlife at the time. Everyone thought I was high and I was never gonna make a movie, but that actually happened. [Laughs.] I'm trying to come through with all my big statements that I said I was gonna do these things. And I understand. It's been hard. I would've laughed like everyone else, I guess. I'm really excited to be able to pull through with all these things.