THE HARDEST WORKING DRUMMER HOLLYWOOD

Travis Barker’s whole career has always veered towards the unpredictable—but even he never could have predicted his surreal new reality.

- ALEX PAPPADEMAS

THURSDAY NIGHT, corner booth at Crossroads Kitchen, a vegan restaurant in West Hollywood, just before the dinner rush. Travis Barker shivers in a threadbare Subhumans T-shirt. He could conceivably ask the staffto turn down the AC a little—he’s an investor in this place, as it happens, not to mention, y’know, a rock star—but he doesn’t. “I think I’m, like, permanently cold, because I just spent the last four hours in my underwear,” he says. Then he laughs. Even in the context of Barker’s ever-more-improbable life, this day has been a weird one. He spent the afternoon standing around mostly naked while being measured, photographed, and scanned by representatives from Madame Tussauds, where he’s being honoured with a wax figure in his likeness. When it’s suggested that he might be the first person from an American punk band to be thus enshrined—the museum has a Johnny Rotten but not, for example, a Joey Ramone— Barker says, “Very cool”, then asks if they’ve made one for Lemmy from Motörhead. (Answer: no.)