Travis Barker is revisiting one of the most traumatic chapters of his life, nearly two decades after surviving a plane crash that killed four people and left him with devastating injuries.
The Blink-182 drummer, 50, becomes emotional while recounting the September 19, 2008, accident in his new documentary, “Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear,” which premieres August 13.
DisneyBarker and his longtime friend and collaborator Adam “DJ AM” Goldstein were the only people to survive the accident initially.
The Learjet 60 crashed during takeoff in South Carolina after a tire blew out. Both pilots were killed, along with Barker’s personal assistant, Chris Baker, and his bodyguard, Che Still.
Travis Barker Breaks Down Recalling the Deadly 2008 Plane Crash
Barker said he already felt uneasy before boarding the plane and even shared his fears with his father.
“I said, ‘ If something happens, make sure everything’s cool with the kids,'” Barker recalled, as per The Daily Mail. “That was definitely emotional for whatever reason. I just said, ‘I have a weird feeling.”
Once the plane began moving, Barker remembered hearing “loud, gunshot-like noises” before the aircraft caught fire.
“The plane attempted to take off and go into the air, and then we’d go down, go into the air, go down, and we end up hitting an embankment. Just fire and chaos everywhere,” he said.
Barker escaped through an emergency exit, but his body caught fire after he jumped into an area covered in jet fuel.
“I’m running, and the fire won’t go out. I stop, drop and roll, and AM came out, and he patted my feet off fire. 10 seconds later the plane blows up.”
Travis Barker Says He Was Suicidal During His Recovery
The physical toll was staggering. Barker suffered third-degree burns across 65 percent of his body, broke all of his ribs and fractured his back in four places.
He spent months hospitalized and underwent 27 surgeries.”I couldn’t see my kids because 65 percent of my body was an open wound. I was handling that miserably,” he recalled.
“I was suicidal in the hospital, and I was there for another three and a half months and had 27 surgeries,” Barker said.
During that period, he said he was in such despair that he offered friends money if they would end his life.
Travis Barker Struggled With Survivor’s Guilt After DJ AM’s Death
The trauma did not end when Barker left the hospital. Goldstein, who had also survived the crash, died from an accidental drug overdose in August 2009 at age 36.
GettyBarker said losing the only other survivor left him struggling to connect with anyone who could understand what he had experienced.
“After AM passed,d it was beyond difficult to relate to anybody. I really had no one; I would exhaust post-traumatic doctors, and I would hit walls constantly,” he said.
Barker also wrestled with why he had survived when so many others had not.
“I definitely had feelings of survivor’s guilt; I was beating myself up, why am I here and everyone else isn’t? I had to believe I was still here for a reason.”
He told People that fear followed him everywhere after the crash, even when he traveled by bus. “I would just hide out. I was so afraid. I was just waiting for impact in the bus. I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m next. I’m going to go anytime.’”
Travis Barker Credits His Children With Helping Him Survive
Barker ultimately found the strongest motivation in his family.
The musician credited his children, Landon and Alabama, as well as stepdaughter Atiana, with giving him the strength to keep moving forward during his recovery.
“My kids really kept me together,” Barker said. “It was the best thing for my recovery and to give me strength. I flushed my painkillers down the toilet – I was not going to fail my kids.”
The experience also changed Barker’s relationship with his father and forced him to confront grief he had carried since losing his mother, Gloria, when he was 13.
Years later, Barker’s memories of the crash remain painful. But the drummer said surviving eventually gave him something else to hold onto: the belief that he was still here for a reason.
