In the summer of 2001, three Californians shoved the first punk-rock number one through the Billboard charts with an album whose title is a masturbation joke. Today, exactly 25 years later, Blink-182 are putting their fourth record out again. A look back at an album that wanted to be dumb and tore down a barrier on the side.

Anyone who wanted every song on “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket” in 2001 had to pay three times. Blink-182 pressed their fourth album in three versions, for the first million CDs. The only way to tell them apart was the sticker, a red plane, a pair of yellow pants, a green jacket. Each motif hid two different bonus tracks. “Time to Break Up” and “Mother’s Day” came only with the plane, “When You Fucked Grandpa” only with the jacket. They had lifted the idea from NOFX, whose “Punk in Drublic” already carried different songs depending on the format. A collector’s trick, an inside joke, a bit of cheek aimed at their own audience. Very Blink.

The title fit right in. “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket”, said fast, turns into “take off your pants and jack it”. As the story goes, guitar tech Larry Palm caught the phrase when a mother told her soaking-wet kid to finally take off his pants and jacket back at the lodge. Whether that actually happened, nobody really knows. It sounds like Blink-182, and that was recommendation enough.

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The pressure after the breakthrough

Behind all the silliness sat real stress. Two years earlier, “Enema of the State” had turned the trio from Poway near San Diego from skatepark punks into a multiplatinum band. “All the Small Things” played in every mall on the planet. The follow-up was supposed to repeat that, and all three were pulling in different directions. Tom DeLonge wanted the guitars dirtier and harder. Travis Barker, who had only joined on drums for “Enema”, pushed hip-hop and metal into his parts. Mark Hoppus wanted to hold on to the catchy formula that had just worked. Hoppus has since said they sometimes had to leave the room mid-argument to cool off.

Jerry Finn produced again, the man behind Green Day and Rancid, over roughly three months in late 2000 and early 2001, the bulk of it at Signature Sound Studio in San Diego. Barker tracked some of his parts separately in Los Angeles. Then there was the label. MCA leaned on the deadline because the record was meant to land in a particular quarter. DeLonge recalled the MCA president penalising the band “an obscene amount of money” because the album wasn’t going to be ready in time. The result was an album with two faces, glossy hits next to darker, more serious songs.

A summer hit out of spite

The single that carried the whole thing supposedly came out of irritation. The manager felt the first cut of the album lacked a catchy summer hit, so Hoppus and DeLonge wrote the cheesiest, catchiest throwaway song they could manage, out of spite. Hoppus is said to have written “The Rock Show” in ten minutes. The spite song climbed to number two on the Modern Rock charts and became the engine of the entire album. “First Date”, inspired by DeLonge’s first date with his future wife, followed at number six. “Stay Together for the Kids”, DeLonge working through his parents’ divorce, also landed in the Modern Rock top ten and gave the joke trio a depth a lot of people hadn’t credited them with.

The album came out on MCA on 12 June 2001. In its first week it moved 350,000 copies, enough for number one on the Billboard 200. That was new. Before Blink-182, no punk-rock record had gone straight to the top of the US album chart. A band that cracked jokes about body parts and named songs after sex with grandparents suddenly stood where Mariah Carey and Eminem usually stood. By later accounts the album has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide. The RIAA certified it in May 2002.

The start of the first ending

The reviews were split, and they stayed that way. Some praised the unguarded directness with which the band sang about puberty, parents and heartbreak. Others heard formula and calculation. The two weren’t far apart, because the album was both. It was the sound of a band trying to grow up without dropping the joke.

That exact split between dumb and serious is what eventually became the problem. After the September 11 attacks halted the tour, DeLonge pushed into harder territory with Box Car Racer – in 2002, with Barker on drums but without Hoppus. The mistrust that grew out of it fed into the band’s first breakup years later. “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket” sits right at that turning point, the last purely playful Blink album before things got complicated.

On the record’s 21st birthday, Hoppus summed up his relationship with it in one sentence that holds the whole band. “Happy 21st TOYPAJ, you little freak”, he wrote. “First punk rock album ever to go #1 on the @billboard charts. You were so much fun to write and record and tour.” DeLonge added, dryly, that they had worn Dickies and helped make that stuff awesome years ago.

Today, on the 25th anniversary, the band is putting the album out again, this time through Geffen, with six bonus tracks they jokingly call “boner tracks”. They are exactly the six songs that were split across three covers in 2001. Anyone who wanted them all back then bought three times. Anyone who wants them today buys once. After 25 years, the red plane, the yellow pants and the green jacket stand together on a single record for the first time.