Foo Fighters drummer Ilan Rubin has recalled a strange moment from his wedding day – when Blink-182‘s Tom DeLonge whipped out his phone and showed Nine Inch Nails star Trent Reznor a picture that he said was of a dead alien.
DeLonge is famously fascinated by extraterrestrial life and UFOs. During his time away from Blink-182, he poured his heart and soul into long-term project called Sekret Machines, which included novels, non-fiction books, a documentary and music.
At one point, his work gathered so much attention that the Pentagon officially released some of the videos made public by DeLonge.
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Rubin got married in 2020 when he was a member of another DeLonge project – the band Angels & Airwaves. Naturally, his bandmate was invited. Rubin was also a member of Nine Inch Nails at the time, hence Reznor’s attendance at the nuptials.
But the drummer didn’t expect the meeting of one of pop punk’s biggest stars and the leading light of the industrial rock scene to go the way it did.
Rubin tells Go With Elmo Lovano: “We finally get down to the reception, where the first two people I see are Tom and Trent. And Tom’s a really tall guy, and he’s kind of just hovering over Trent.
“His phone’s out, and I know how this goes: ‘Hey, check this out’. And I’m thinking, ‘What is he possibly showing him right now?’
“I go straight up to them like, ‘Hey guys, how’s it going?’ Tom’s like, ‘Dude, congratulations. I’ll see you in a bit, I’m going to get a drink’.
“And then I was like, ‘Trent, what’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘That dude just showed me a dead alien’.”
Rubin adds: “Nobody else could conduct themselves in that way, and it be normal, but he’s just so unapologetically him. It’s infectious.
“He also knows exactly what he wants and what he’s after. Whether it’s within a song, whether it’s in a stage production, whether it’s an alien. He knows what he wants, and I mean this in the best way, he has this juvenile excitement, and that’s part of his thing.”
DeLonge is back in the Blink-182 lineup these days, but he is still a dedicated UFO and alien life researcher through his To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science.
