I’ve always dreamed of seeing a genuine honest-to-God UFO. Like Fox Mulder of The X-Files, I really want to believe there’s something Out There in the maybe two trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
My grandparents lived just a few miles from the location of the infamous Falcon Lake Incident in 1967. Since then, I’ve been fascinated by the prospect of some kind of close encounter. I’m hoping that Star Trek will once again be prescient, and a Zefram Cochrane-like pioneer will launch the first warp drive flight (scheduled for April 5, 2061, a Borg invasion notwithstanding), attracting the attention of a passing Vulcan ship and thereby initiate First Contact.
I want there to be a black monolith with perfect proportions buried under my hydrangeas in the backyard that warns me to leave Europa alone. I dream of picking up an Alan Freed broadcast from 1955 on my little transistor radio, reflected back to us by a civilization somewhere within a 35-light-year radius (I’d prefer that to the Hitler stuff they had to deal with in Contact.) And those fast radio bursts? They’d better be actual interstellar/intergalactic WOW signals — especially this one. That would be a lot more fun than looking for hydroxyl emissions.
But alas, even though I keep watching the skies, I’ve never seen anymore more than shootings stars and passing satellites and space stations.
Lately, though, I’ve become more optimistic. First came the New York Times reports on US Navy pilots dealing with UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, the new re-branding for UFOs). Additional reporting piled up so high that this past week, whistleblowers testified under oath in front of the House Oversight Congressional Committee regarding an alleged massive coverup, claiming that “non-human” bodies and extraterrestrial technologies have been recovered from crashed vehicles.
Millions of us await the truth, including a number of high-profile musicians.
At the front of the line is Tom DeLonge, now back playing guitar with Blink-182, has been on the scent of aliens for decades, long before the group got together. Back in the band’s early days, he was known to spend hours on the tour bus looking out the window for UFOs. The band’s 1999 multi-platinum pop-punk classic, Enema of the State featured the song Aliens Exist.
It’s said that Tom’s relationship with the band — he was estranged from mates Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker for years before a 2022 reunion — was strained because of his passionate pursuit of theories and conspiracies involving aliens and UAPs.
When he separated from Blink, Tom co-wrote a number of novels and non-fiction books about “sekret machines” (His term for UAPs; I’ve devoured them all) and was behind the History Channel series, Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation. Also during his hiatus, he founded To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, a company with both an entertainment division and one seriously devoted to aerospace, ufology, and technological research. It’s stocked with academics, engineers, NASA scientists, and ex-government types, including at least one ex-CIA dude. The Academy has been relentless in demands for government transparency.
These days, he’s pretty excited about the latest revelations. On Blink-182’s current tour, bandmate Mark Hoppus has told the crowd “Tom was right.” Over at To the Stars, everyone is pretty pumped at what might be coming next. Meanwhile, if you ever have a chance to talk to Tom, ask him about his theories on “zero-point energy.” Prepare to spend a few hours on the subject.
Black Francis of The Pixies has some thoughts about aliens, too, having written songs on the subject as part of the band as a solo artist. This stems from a 1965 sighting by his mom and several of his cousins. “There was a flying saucer floating above the house for half an hour and everyone just stood there and watched it. … It was just hovering. Then the state police came and chased it but they couldn’t catch up with it. My mother’s weird but she’s not that weird. She’s got no reason to make this stuff up.” Later he commented about The Pixies’ mission: “We’ve tried to elevate the sci-fi thing, make it more opera-ish, more of a serious rock thing. We want UFOs to be an acceptable topic. They’re romantic.”
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Shaun Ryder of The Happy Mondays claims to have multiple encounters with flying saucers, saying “I don’t go looking for aliens. They find me.” At age 15, he and a mate were walking to a bus stop when “we just saw these things, zig-zagging about.” (He says he was way too young to be ingesting anything hallucinogenic.) This spurred a lifelong obsession with all things extraterrestrial — an multiple observations of UAPs (including from his own backyard) over the years. He, too, has made a documentary series on the subject.
If aliens are looking for a place to land, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones says he has it on good authority his Redlands estate in West Sussex was a landing site for UFOs back in 1968. I quote: “I’ve seen a few, but nothing that any of the ministries would believe. I believe they exist — plenty of people have seen them. They are tied up with a lot of things, like the dawn of man, for example. It’s not just a matter of people spotting a flying saucer. … I’m not an expert. I’m still trying to understand what’s going on.”
And then there’s Dave Grohl. Foo Fighters is derived from the nickname given to Allied airmen who scrambled to investigate mysterious balls of fire — feu — along the French-German front in World War II. He even named his label Roswell Records after the town in New Mexico where they want us to believe a weather balloon crashed in 1947. If you believe that, then you probably think there’s nothing strange happening at Area 51 and nothing weird stored in Hanger 18.
Sadly, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, and Lemmy of Motorhead — all believers and witnesses — are no longer with us. But wherever their spirits are now, I’d like to believe that the truth has been revealed to them.
Today, sightings are up across the board. And if you do encounter some of those bloody shape-shifting Reptilians, don’t turn your back, especially if they’re wearing a KEEP CALM AND PROBE ON t-shirt.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a man in a black suit and sunglasses who wants to see me about a flashy thing.
—Alan Cross is a broadcaster with Q107 and 102.1 the Edge and a commentator for Global News.
Subscribe to Alan’s Ongoing History of New Music Podcast now on Apple Podcast or Google Play
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