Mark Hoppus confirms Green Day inspired the intro to Blink-182’s ‘What’s My Age Again?’

The bassist revealed the origin of the song while speaking to Less Than Jake's Chris Demakes

Mark Hoppus has confirmed that Green Day inspired the opening riff of the Blink-182 song ‘What’s My Age Again?’.

The bassist was speaking to Less Than Jake co-frontman Chris Demakes on the latest episode of his Chris Demakes A Podcast about the origin of the much-loved track, which featured on Blink’s 1999 album ‘Enema of the State’.

Hoppus said that with ‘What’s My Age Again?’, which he wrote with Blink’s former frontman Tom DeLonge, he “was just writing a funny song” and that he was inspired by the Green Day track ‘J.A.R.’ when writing its opening riff.

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“There’s a Green Day song called ‘J.A.R.’ on the [1995 film] Angus soundtrack, and it starts off with this bass intro that’s really rad,” Hoppus said. “I was messing around on the guitar trying to learn that. I kinda messed up the progression and I played it incorrectly, and I was like: ‘Oh, that’s kinda cool…’”

“That was the basis for the opening riff of [‘What’s My Age Again?’]: me trying to learn how to play ‘J.A.R.’ on guitar and messing it up, and coming up with something that I liked that was different than that.”

‘J.A.R’ was written by Green Day during the sessions for ‘Dookie’, but was only released by the band on their 2001 greatest hits collection ‘International Superhits!’.

You can hear Hoppus and DeMakes talk about ‘What’s My Age Again’, with the intro origin discussion taking place at the 18:45 mark, in the above video.

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Earlier this month Green Day shared archive footage from their 1996 European tour to celebrate 25 years since the release of their album ‘Insomniac’.

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