"Will you sleep tonight? Will you think of me?
Will I shake this off, pretend it's all okay?
That there's someone out there who feels just like me?
There is."
Box Car Racer is an album about 9/11. Tom DeLonge was so overcome with the attacks of September the 11th that he poured his soul and bodily health into an album dedicated the trauma of it. An album that came out so fully formed, and had such immediate impact, that it blew an irreparable hole of jealousy in the original band that Tom loved, Blink-182.
Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket released on June 12th 2001, almost three months exactly before the attacks. Musical touring was postponed when the towers fell, and postponed a second time due to Tom Delonge herniating a disc in his back. The 6’3 Tom having spent the past ten years hunched over a tiny Stratocaster on stage each night.
The roiling media hysteria following the attacks, two buildings being flattened like atomic weapons in the middle of a Tuesday, ongoing back pain, getting jammed up on medication and isolation from no longer being on the road, lead to Box Car Racer. Tom’s mind gripped with thoughts of Armageddon, salvation, conspiracy, the Enola Gay. Somewhere along the way Tom became a Freemason, an identity he would wear proudly during Blink’s reunion days. Esoterica and knowledge were how Tom would make sense of this suddenly confusing, spinning world.
Box Car Racer is on the surface a concept album about a boy (presumably the one running one in the album artwork, which invites parallels to the burned-out shadows of A-bomb victims) living at the middle of the end of the world. And without being too twee, that little boy may as well be Tom.
“The idea of family life being disrupted with relationships with one another is something that happens to so many different people but the idea that there is a grand purpose for the world we live on and it’s kind of heading in a sour way is something not everyone understands and thinks about,” - Tom Delonge, Billboard, 2002
Much is made by Tom of the post-hardcore influence on this album, and my pet-project with Box Car is biopsying its influence on 00s-Emo. I believe it was Tom, during the TOYPAJ and Box Car years who popularised the swoopy “Emo Fringe.” The song titles drip with diary stained half-phrases: “And I”, “There Is”, “I Feel So.” Videos are moody and smeared in shadow. The band pelted with rain, water running off their young(ish) pouty lips. Box Car embarked on a tour with The Used and Taking Back Sunday, two bands on their way to becoming corners of the mainstream Emo scene. Formulating the science of influence is difficult, but Tom was a big guy (Box Car debut at Number 12), an influential guy, and his album came with such brooding force and conviction at a cultural turning-point. It has to be there somewhere.
“I watched the fed, saw them panic
As the fire grew
I saw Virginia get rid of Langley
And its secrets too”
9/11 followed Blink. The above image is something of an iconic one to me. Tom proudly waving an American flag during their shows after the attacks. The band’s Untitled record would continue Blink’s focus on the interpersonal- but more disorientated, delving deeper into family history, trauma and recurring memories. Blink would also undertake a USO tour, playing for troops aboard the USS Nimitz during the Iraq War. None of this was post-9/11 chest-puffing, it was a scary time and they were sincere. Tom was truly processing his anguish with three chords and his words, just as he’d always done.
One man's response to the day the world changed for all of us, forever.
