Tom DeLonge says he's had contact with aliens

In case Blink-182 doesn't reunite, lead singer and guitarist Tom Delonge may have a fall-back job as an alien conspiracy theorist.

In the lengthy Q&A with Paper magazine published Tuesday, the punk rocker touches on some pretty out-of-this-world topics, including an encounter with an actual alien at Area 51, how he's currently in danger and how the government has been tapping his phone calls.

Here are some of our favorite excerpts, or check out the full piece here.

On the existence of aliens:

"What's funny, two decades ago when I got into this, it was such a 'the world is flat' scenario, and here's Tom running around about UFOs and they'd just laugh it off. But now, NASA is holding symposiums on the inevitability of finding life in the universe. The Vatican is talking about, yes, there's life out there, and how it interferes or doesn't interfere with the church's view of existence.

"You have to understand, I've been involved in this for a long time. I have sources from the government. I've had my phone tapped. I've done a lot of weird stuff in this industry -- people wouldn't believe me if I told them. But this is what happens when you start getting on an email chains with hundreds of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and different universities around the country, and you start outing seniors scientists from Lockheed Martin talking about the reality of this stuff, guys that hold 30 patents, guys that work underground out in the Nevada test sites in Area 51. It goes far beyond just saying, 'Hey, that little light in the sky, that's a little green man.' That doesn't lend the right gravity to the topic.

On making contact with aliens at Area 51:

"We had two nights. We did one outside of a secret base called China Lake. And that was on the flight path to Area 51, which is known as Groom Lake. We camped out at the northern end of that, about 200 miles from the nearest staff location. We were above an area called Tonopah, which is where they test-fly a lot of different things. So if you remember, I was talking about a person that was gathering all that footage for the congressional hearing. That person was telling me that the big belief, which I had corroborated by a university professor that was in the know, by the way, that the communication of this particular phenomenon is the frequency of thought. So part of communicating and making contact is shutting your mind down and being able to project your thoughts. And this guy was telling me about it, and this whole protocol for how it works. When we went out there the first night, we decided to run through this protocol where you project your thoughts. So we decided to do it, and we were up mad late, but nothing happened. I kept telling the guys: if anything was going to happen, it would happen at three in morning, because that's the time when things like this happen. Don't ask me why. We put about four logs on the fire, and everything is illuminated by the fire, and we fall asleep around one or two. I woke up right around three a.m. My whole body felt like it had static electricity, and I open my eyes and the fire is still going, and there's a conversation going on outside the tent. It sounded like there were about 20 people there, talking. And instantly my mind goes, OK, they're at our campsite, they're not here to hurt us, they're talking about shit, but I can't make out what they're saying. But they're working on something. Then I close my eyes and wake up, and the fire is out and I have about three hours of lost time."

"I get everyone up first thing in the morning and go, 'Did anybody hear all the chatter last night? I couldn't move my body, I was stuck there. I couldn't hear anything.' And one of the guys I was with goes, 'Yes! They were all around our tent, they were talking. I told you!' And the other guy slept right through it. He had no idea what we were talking about. [laughs] It sounded like English, but you couldn't make out any words. You knew you weren't threatened, you couldn't move your body, but you were very aware of the conversation going on for a period of time. But this is the scary part. If you look up and study abductions of people, people that have had contact, and a lot of the stuff you can read from John Mack; he was [a member of] Harvard's psychiatry department. He almost lost his job because he started writing books about UFOs and people getting abducted. Harvard tried to kick him out of the medical group, but they lost. He got hit by a car in mysterious circumstances. Pretty odd, right? But when you read his books and study what he was doing, a lot of people who have these contacts talk a lot about chatter, like you're in the middle of people working. How fucking crazy is that? Nothing else. No footprints, no weird like marks or anything like that."

On whether he's had his phone tapped:

"Yeah, yeah I did. For quite some time. Years ago, there was somebody who was gathering 150 hours of top secret testimony specifically for Congressional hearings on government projects and the US secret space program. People from NASA, Rome, the Vatican, you name it, they're all on there. The top 36 hours that summarized the best parts of all of that footage, I had it hidden in my house for a period of time, and during that time I was flying this person out along with somebody that was Wernher von Braun's right-hand assistant. Wernher von Braun was a Nazi scientist that we brought over to build our Apollo rockets that got us to the moon, and on his deathbed he told this person a bunch of stuff, and I was flying them out to Los Angeles and we were taking certain meetings. At that time a lot of weird stuff started happening."

On a time his knowledge of aliens got him into trouble:

"To give you an example, one time I remember bringing up a very specific craft that I believe we're building, in secret, to emulate the phenomenon that our government has been observing for decades. So I started talking about the craft, and its magnetic slide system and how it displaces over 89% of the mass of the ship, how it ionizes the engine, how it glows -- I went through the whole thing, and this engineer looks at me, this guy is 70 years old, and he goes, 'You better be real f****** careful about what you're talking about.' And I go, 'Okay, so I'm close.' And he goes, 'I'm not f****** kidding with you. You better be really fucking careful.' And he calls me up the next day and he goes, 'I've had calls about you. If someone comes and asks you to get in their car, don't f****** get in the car.' [laughs] And that's the sh** I'm dealing with."

DeLonge recently had falling out with his bandmates Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker as questions arose about whether he was still in the band or not.

In 2005, Blink-182 went on an indefinite hiatus before reuniting four years later and releasing the 2011 album, "Neighborhoods."