Mark Hoppus loves Mike Dirnt

They both made the history of punk and there couldn’t be a better relationship between them. Let’s talk about Mark Hoppus of the Blink-182 and of Mike Dirnt of the Green Dayboth bass players and great friends: according to Hoppus, Dirnt would always be “the beating heart of low frequencies”.

Dirnt was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Bass Magazine Awards, where Hoppus performed for a crowd at the Santa Ana Observatory, California.enthusiastic ode to my colleague:

I feel like everyone here has their own personal story of how they fell in love with this bassist and this band. And even though they’re all very different, I’m willing to bet that they’re all basically the same. So I want to tell you my story. In the early ’90s, I was attending community college and playing bass in a garage band, and I dreamed of one day going into a studio and recording a song, maybe even a demo or a single. And at the time, one of the bands I couldn’t get enough of was this East Bay stoner trio called Green Day. They were amazing. A friend of mine lent me ‘Kerplunk,’ and it was like: Ramones meets Descendants, kind of weird, Gilman Street-type stuff that I didn’t understand, but I loved.

He praised Green Day’s songwriting and melodies, as well as Dirnt’s effort on the 1991 album. Hoppus then reflected on moving to San Diego, meeting Tom DeLonge, and forming Blink-182 who, in their early days, were “still learning how to write songs and practice our punk rock jumps in front of the mirror.”

“We went to a club called Soma to see Green Day in a 1,200-capacity venue. A sweaty, gross, fucking amazing night. They started the songs, played them at the top of their lungs, broke them down, abandoned the script, improvised, and all the while, the beating heart of the low frequencies was this killer bassist“.

Hoppus also recalled the release of Green Day’s famous album “Dookie“, describing how he ran all over San Diego looking for a copy in 1994. “Dookie it drove me crazy. It didn’t surprise me that the song that broke through and made punk rock mainstream success was Longview which, of course, starts with Mike’s iconic bass line.”

Concluding his tribute, he summed up Dirnt as “a bit rockabilly, a bit punk rock, damn gentle, bluntly, a master craftsman and a great friend. And always, the beating heart of low-end music.”