Featured Essay: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket - 25th anniversary

by Will Sisskind

I remember raiding my older brother’s CD rack when I was ten years old and finding a copy of Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. My innocent little mind went, “What kind of a name for an album is that?” My older brother certainly wouldn’t tell me. 

He was an initial source of musical inspiration, and perhaps the most lasting. My mother introduced me to the great songwriters of her generation: Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Barry Manilow, Carole King, and so on. My father was more rock-oriented: I remember the delight of him telling me he used to jam out to Jethro Tull. My sister brought me into the world of Broadway, singing me “Adelaide’s Lament” from Guys and Dolls on a regular basis.

But my brother, a fantastic drummer, had all the loud music: Big band jazz, second-wave emo, and many different subgenres of punk, along with smatterings of college acapella for variety. This reflected my brother during his high school years, at least as I saw him: A social butterfly, whip-smart, but full of angst, often getting into spats with my parents over trivial matters which would make me - the timid and definitely on-the-spectrum baby brother - run to my bedroom.

I didn’t understand my brother’s state of mind until listening to Blink-182’s music, and I guess that applies to understanding any teenager on the cusp of adulthood. My brother was sixteen years old when Take Off came out. I was just about to enter those awful developmental years which my brother had already experienced for some time. He was going through the transitions which I had yet to know. His friendships had already shifted, his priorities had rearranged, he had gone through heartbreak and anxiety and periods of questioning who he was and wanted to be in the world.

To me, all of those dilemmas seemed far in the future. But I had a feeling they would sneak up on me, much like I’d watched them sneak up on him, and much like adulthood would sneak up on us both in the years to come.

I listened to Enema of the State, Blink’s album before Take Off, second: Even at my younger age I realized the record sounded younger, more comfortable in its immaturity, more fun overall. Take Off was leaning into the darkness, clinging on to youth but aware that it had long passed. Tom and Mark had been playing music together as Blink-182 for nearly a decade by then: They had begun as teenagers, had gone through their twenties rising to the top echelon of pop punk, and were standing on the precipice of (shudders) their thirties when they released Take Off. These were married men with jobs singing about - at face value, anyway - first dates and break-ups and blaming their parents. 

The transition from young adulthood to near-middle age was as much commercial as it was personal: Blink-182 was a multi-million dollar venture in 2001, with the band responsible for entire production teams. They were key to MCA Records’ quarterly success, with the company pushing them to release the follow-up to Enema well before the band was ready. Yet the big business depended on Tom, Mark, and Travis retaining their goofball image, forcing three grown men to keep up their childlike antics far past the point of parody.

It’s for this reason that most who listen to Take Off Your Pants And Jacket take it at face value and not as a farewell to adolescence. “The things that happen to you in high school are the same things that happen your entire life,” Hoppus said in an interview with the now-long-defunct MH-18 magazine in 2001. “Anthem Part Two” sounds like teenage accusations of parents causing all their problems, but at the core it’s a damnation of corrupt power structures. “Online Songs”, a song about “the thoughts that drive you crazy” after a breakup according to Hoppus, could apply to anyone of any age, either a teenager after their first relationship ends or a thirtysomething after their second divorce.

Even the songs that sound particular to high school problems have meaning to those facing middle age. “First Date”, “Reckless Abandon”, and “The Rock Show” can spark romantic feelings in anyone from age 19 to 90. “Story of a Lonely Guy”, despite being about rejection from the prom, can be about getting jilted from any opportunity. And despite what some folks say about getting more conservative with age, “Give Me One Good Reason” - about nonconformity - can apply to plenty of folks who never cared about fitting into society, no matter their age.

The songs of loss especially hit hard even past adolescence. The trauma of dealing with divorcing parents never goes away (“Stay Together For The Kids”), and it can lead to future fears of abandonment or a sure thing dissolving (“Roller Coaster”). The album ends with a testament to the real difficulties of growing up on “Please Take Me Home”, written about a friendship becoming something more, and chronicling in simple lyrics the difficulties that compound as all the different parts of life - especially love - become more serious.

(And then, of course, there’s “Happy Holidays, You Bastard”, which is just fun. In fact, it’s probably one of the greatest lyrical masterpieces ever put to paper. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.)

There was so much more depth to Take Off Your Pants And Jacket than most thought, with most critics continuing to harp on Blink-182’s juvenile antics or lamenting the band’s turn towards a more processed pop punk sound. However, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone perhaps had the finest review of the record: 

“As they plow in their relatively un-self-conscious way through the emotional hurdles of lust, terror, pain, and rage, they reveal more about themselves and their audience than they even intend to, turning adolescent malaise into a friendly joke rather than a spiritual crisis.” 

And while it’s true that the band wanted to share more of their vulnerability and real feelings about growth on the album, and while they did want to make their record accessible to their current and potential new fans, their crisis was indeed brewing. The stress of creating the record and wanting to “get it right” led to fractures beginning to form between the three band members. Tom experimented more with the slower and more emo sound the band had played around with more on Take Off, and the results became the Box Car Racer album, on which Travis played drums. Mark felt left out because of this, and while the band wouldn’t go on hiatus until 2005, the immediate fallout from the Take Off album was the end of an era for the band. 

But if not for the album and the fallout, would we have gotten Box Car Racer? Angels & Airwaves? The other great music that Tom, Mark, and Travis would create after reuniting not once but twice, which showcased not just that the band could make great art after going through so much, but still have fun?

Listening to Take Off now, I still relate to its songs, but then again I’ve always loved Blink’s music. I remember hearing One More Time… - which came out when I turned 32, after the band’s two hiatuses and Mark’s cancer diagnosis - and becoming overwhelmed with the songs’ themes on loss, regret, mortality, and rekindling relationships even after so many years and so many bumps in the road. And I realized those were themes that had been present on albums like Enema of the State and Take Off, but after two decades of health issues, patching up misunderstandings, and learning how to navigate the real-world winding pathways of business and relationships. The things you care about so much in high school don’t go away; they just change a little bit.

I think about my brother, who turned forty last year, has a beautiful house and a good job, and raises two girls with his wife. On the surface he looks like your average suburban dad. But he can still play the drums loud like he did when he was sixteen. And I know that he still thinks back to the days of that CD rack, when life was simpler but not, just like I think of those days of innocence before I ever knew what Tom and Mark were singing about. Despite us both growing up, just like everyone else, we still feel that want in our hearts to get loud, to let everything out into words or music.

And while I don’t need him to tell me what the title Take Off Your Pants And Jacket means, in this day and age, we can probably both have a good laugh about it.

Will Sisskind is a Boston-based writer for Start-Track.com and a singer-songwriter who performs under the name the Paris Buns. 

Bluesky handle: @willsisskind.com