Former Blink-182 member Matt Skiba reveals When We Were Young Festival line-up was "a Fyre Festival kind of stunt that worked"

In a new interview with Vulture, Matt Skiba, who played with Blink-182 from 2015 until this year when Tom DeLonge rejoined the band, spoke about the unconventional, Fyre Festival-inspired strategy that Las Vegas' When We Were Young Festival used to get the 2022 line-up together.

The Las Vegas festival will be headlined by My Chemical Romance and Paramore, and will include performances from Bright Eyes, Avril Lavigne, Bring Me The Horizon, Alkaline Trio, Manchester Orchestra, Taking Back Sunday and many more but Skiba has claimed the festival started advertising the event with some of the big names before any bands were on board, "You want to hear something? Whether I’m supposed to, or not supposed to say anything, I guess, is immaterial," Skiba said. "It makes the conversation more fun. But that festival - initially, they announced all those bands playing before anybody said yes. It was a Fyre Festival kind of stunt that worked."

"And I only know that because my band was on that initial flyer, with every other band from our whole ilk," he continued. "And they almost expertly started advertising it before they had a single band on the bill. And somehow, all the bands agreed to do it. I’m not making this up. Somebody may correct me, but I know that Alkaline Trio, we hadn’t confirmed anything. And when we read that, we called other bands that were playing, and nobody knew about it."

He added, "If that’s an accident or a fluke, then it’s like two particles of sand meeting each other in space. It had to have been planned. And they weren’t wrong. Whoever did that, I’m not even mad. You took a shit in the fridge and ate the whole wheel of cheese? I’m not even mad. It’s like, holy shit, dude. Congratulations to whoever masterminded that, the Lex Luther of promoters. And I think everybody, including us, is really pumped about it. It’s going to be a great time."