From a very early age, my wife and I told our son that there are times and places for everything. I told him, look, when you're in class, you have to be quiet and listen to your teacher, but when you go out to the playground, you can scream and be silly.

Make yourself do something stupid so when you really do something stupid you won't feel so bad

Hard work, studying and perseverance will get you no where in life......it's all about kissing ass

I never thought of punk rock as the absolute act of rebellion for the sake of rebellion. There's a lot of that in there, but for me I think punk rock was always about questioning things and making decisions for yourself, which is a great message to pass on to your kids.

Once I was in the Blink-182, going to Iraq was really touching. It was kind of emo for me, going and meeting soldiers who were, like, 19 and hadn't even met their kids... Or dealing with depression. Just being with those soldiers and traveling with them in helicopters and people with M-16s. It was an eye-opener.

We never really set out to talk about California on the album ['California'], it was something that we noticed that was happening about three-quarters of the way through the recording process. We were looking at which songs we thought would make the record and we realised that there was this theme coming through. I think it's just a product of being in California for as long as I have.

I kinda like the duality of California and the dark side, the underbelly of California, and I think that's what this album ['California']feels like - there's endless hope and optimism but there's also a darker side.