Travis Barker tells the tale of his long road back from a nearly fatal plane crash and his determination to be the best version of himself in the emotion-packed first trailer for the upcoming Hulu documentary Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear.
“Why am I here when everyone else isn’t?” the Blink-182 drummer asks in the preview of the decade-in-the-making film directed by Justin Krook and Michael Dwyer. The film tracks Barker’s rise to global superstardom with Blink and delves deep into the near-death experience in 2008 in a plane crash that took the lives of two of his friends, bodyguard Charles Monroe Still Jr., and assistant Chris Barker, and severely injured his best friend, Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein, who was found dead a year later in his New York apartment from a drug overdose.
“I had to ask myself who I was going to be after this accident,” Barker says, wiping away tears while discussing the deaths of his friends. “I had the desire to become the greatest person and father I could be,” he adds over images of him with his children.
Barker has a son (Landon) and daughter (Alabama) with ex Shanna Moakler, as well as a son (Rocky) with wife Kourtney Kardashian and a stepdaughter (Atiana) who he considers one of his own. Kardashian admits that she could “never truly understand” what Barker went through in the dark period before they got married in 2022 after more than a year of dating.
The trailer opens with Barker saying he hasn’t been on a plane since the crash — though in 2021 he flew to Mexico with Kardashian, marking his first flight in 13 years — and that when he thinks about the accident that killed four people, he has the “worst flashbacks.”
The film tracks Barker’s legendary career with Blink and includes commentary from the Roots drummer Questlove, late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, Rancid singer/guitarist Tim Armstrong, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and his longtime Blink bandmates bassist/singer Mark Hoppus and guitarist/singer Tom DeLonge. The latter describe recruiting Barker to replace their original drummer Scott Raynor — just one hour before a show — with Barker detailing the wild rocket ride to fame that led to him abusing prescription pills to such a degree that he had a dedicated security guard whose only job was to watch him sleep to make sure he was breathing.
“It was all a blur,” Barker says of the time before the 2008 Learjet crash in South Carolina, which he describes as “just fire and chaos everywhere.” After burning 65% of his body and undergoing 27 surgeries, Barker had to look deep into his soul to figure out how to rise again, with his kids sweetly describing how present he was in the years after, cooking with them, going on bike rides and making the most of their time together.
“Knowing how close I got to not being here, my appreciation for life is something I can’t even explain,” Barker says.
Watch the Louder Than Fear trailer and check out the doc’s poster below.
Courtesy of Hulu