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How did a trio of bong-huffing street rats from Northern California end up selling over 40 million albums of \u201chonest\u201d punk rock and remain best pals for five decades? In early 2020 \u2013 on the 30th anniversary of their debut and just before the arrival of Green Day\u2019s 13th album \u2013 Dave Everley joined Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tr\u00e9 Cool on the road to discover exactly how they managed it.<\/p>\n
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Words by Dave Everley<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/Green-Day-logo.jpg” title_text=”Green Day-logo” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Sharp-dressed men: Mike Dirnt (left), Billie Joe Armstrong and Tr\u00e9 Cool.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Billie Joe Armstrong doesn\u2019t want to talk about you-know-who, but there\u2019s no way around it. It\u2019s 13 December 2019, and we\u2019re speaking a couple of hours after the US House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. The grinding wheels of justice have been set in motion for the next stage in a process that could culminate in an historic decision.<\/p>\n Except Armstrong isn\u2019t so sure. He\u2019s been keeping an eye on how things are playing out, and he\u2019s not feeling confident about the eventual outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cOh man, I don\u2019t know if it looks so good,\u201d he says. \u201cThe last word is going to come from the Senate, and they\u2019re controlled by the Republican Party, the most dangerous political organisation in the world. And they\u2019re going to acquit him.\u201d He sighs. \u201cThey\u2019ve declared war on liberals. Our country is heading towards civil war. It\u2019s just fucking exhausting and depressing.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s another reason why the Commander-in-Chief of the United States is an unavoidable topic when talking to Armstrong. Trump casts a puffed-up shadow over Green Day\u2019s new album, officially titled Father Of All\u2026 but, according to the singer, really called Father Of All Motherfuckers.<\/p>\n Armstrong attempts to suggest that the phrase \u201cFather Of All Motherfuckers\u201d refers to himself, but he\u2019s fooling no one. He concedes that one man\u2019s name was the first that sprang to mind when he initially plucked it out of the air and scribbled it down. \u201cFather of all Motherfuckers\u201d might as well be Donald Trump\u2019s Twitter bio.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way I look at it, he\u2019s like this racist Yelp review of America,\u201d says Armstrong. \u201cJust shooting his mouth off, saying shit. The man must get up and look in a mirror and see Brad Pitt looking back at him. It doesn\u2019t register that he\u2019s a piece of shit. That\u2019s the definition of narcissism.\u201d<\/p>\n Green Day have been here before, 16 years ago. Back then the man in their crosshairs was George W Bush, and the weapon in their hands was American Idiot, arguably the defining protest album of the era and certainly the biggest. But this time around, says Armstrong, it\u2019s different.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s worse,\u201d he says despondently. \u201cIt\u2019s not even sad, it\u2019s frightening. We\u2019re dipping our toes into fascism. I wake up every day and go, \u2018What the fuck is going to happen today?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s a multi-million-selling punk rock lifer to do? If you\u2019re Billie Joe Armstrong, you make a 26-minute party record to soundtrack the end of history.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Green Day are America\u2019s high school band, and have been since they gatecrashed the stage on prom night in 1994, drunk and gurning and refusing to leave.<\/p>\n Between then and now, they\u2019ve cycled through juvenilia, agitation, sedition, self-destruction and redemption. They\u2019ve teetered on the edge of irrelevance more than once, but managed to pull themselves back each time via a combination of self-belief, stubbornness and an unexpected, if accidental ability to reach beyond genre boundaries.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s honest music,\u201d is Mike Dirnt\u2019s explanation. The bassist is a rock\u2019n\u2019roll fundamentalist with a terrier\u2019s physique and a hangdog face. \u201cMaking honest music, and good music, is hard. Anyone can write three chords and some lies.\u201d<\/p>\n For all their punk rock credentials, interviewing Green Day is an inflexible operation. Time with them is metered to the minute: an hour with Armstrong, Dirnt and Muppet-voiced drummer Tr\u00e9 Cool in a hotel room in Madrid, and a 30-minute phone call a few weeks later with Billie Joe. No more, no less.<\/p>\n This is partly due to the demands of time. Green Day are in Spain on a tight schedule. They\u2019re due to open the MTV VMAs and play a show of their own at tiny (for them) 2000-capacity club in Madrid. The latter will see them run through their career-making 1994 album Dookie, a record with a longer tail than most other Gen X-era blockbusters.<\/p>\n It\u2019s partly also down to the fact that Green Day are a gang, in the rock\u2019n\u2019roll sense of the term. Two junior school buddies (Armstrong and Dirnt) and a third they met in their mid-teens (Cool), they keep the circle around themselves tight. It works as a defence mechanism, but it\u2019s even more elemental than that. \u201cWe\u2019re a teenage rock\u2019n\u2019roll band in our mid-40s,\u201d says a black-clad Armstrong, sitting in the centre of an arc of chairs in the band\u2019s Spanish hotel suite, Cool and Dirnt either side of him. \u201cAnd that feels great.\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong at 47 looks much the same as he did at 22: like a character who\u2019s just stepped out of a Beano strip and headed for the nearest tattoo shop. He has the air of a man who didn\u2019t get much sleep. It emerges that he landed in Spain yesterday to discover that members of his eldest son\u2019s band, Swimmers, were involved in a bus crash back in the US. He\u2019s been up all night with worry. (His son, Jacob, wasn\u2019t involved, but Swimmers\u2019 singer was admitted to hospital.)<\/p>\n Father Of All\u2026 is the perfect album to kick off an already-explosive new decade. Green Day have made a deliriously terse record, infused with soul, R&B and glam rock and spasming with defiance and despair. Armstrong says he set out to make an album that sounded like \u201cthe history of rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u201d, and that\u2019s what he\u2019s done. It arrives at a point when neither guitars nor rock\u2019n\u2019roll are front and centre in the cultural conversation. It\u2019s a decision that is either insane or fearless. \u201cOr just dumb,\u201d says Armstrong. Either way, it\u2019s in keeping with the spirit of the times.<\/p>\n Father Of All Motherfuckers may be a throwback, but it\u2019s not redundant. Like all the top-tier Green Day albums, there\u2019s a point to it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a party record, but it\u2019s also depressing,\u201d says Armstrong, pointing to the fucked-up buffoon crawling along a dancefloor, looking for their lost phone in the marvellously titled I Was A Teenage Teenager. Nor is it a political record with a capital \u2018P\u2019 \u2013 even the title track swerves tub thumping or finger pointing. \u201cThere are political moments, but I don\u2019t want to beat on the drum that everybody\u2019s beating on. They\u2019re beating it to death.\u201d [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n The idea of three middle-aged malcontents having anything approaching a sustainable career in 2020, let alone one as successful as Green Day\u2019s, seems ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the notion of a trio of bong-huffing street rats from Northern California having anything approaching a career in the first place. Yet the evidence is on record: Dookie and American Idiot, released 10 years apart, have combined sales of 36 million.<\/p>\n But success shouldn\u2019t just be measured in spreadsheets or longevity. There\u2019s also the way a band fixes its place on the cultural landscape, their influence trickling down onto subsequent generations. And in that respect, Green Day have cleaned up.<\/p>\n The 1975\u2019s Matty Healy credits them with making him want to become a musician. \u201cI was in Green Day for five minutes,\u201d Healy tells Q. \u201cYou know when they pull kids out of the crowd to play onstage? They did that with me in Newcastle. I played the bass. Changed my life.\u201d<\/p>\n That was in 2003, when Healy was 13. It was, he says, their undiluted approach that chimed with him. \u201cIt was a realisation of that punk idea, but that was at that point filling arenas. I was, like, \u2018Fuck, you can actually do this shit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Matty Healy isn\u2019t alone in holding up Green Day as an inspiration. Wolf Alice and Post Malone have both covered their songs: the former stripped bittersweet break-up ballad Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) of its caustic edge, the latter turned 1994 single Basket Case into a stoned acoustic campfire singalong (and taught Armstrong how to play beer pong backstage at a gig). Like Healy, Lewis Capaldi and Ed Sheeran both also cite gigs by the band as formative flashpoints. Sheeran told Armstrong as much when they met. \u201cHe fan-girled out pretty good,\u201d Armstrong recalls, laughing. And then there\u2019s Billie Eilish. A few weeks before we meet, Billie Joe Armstrong was interviewed alongside the 17-year-old pop wunderkind for Rolling Stone magazine. \u201cI can\u2019t believe I\u2019m in the same room as the guy who was on my wallpaper,\u201d enthused Eilish, necessitating an explanation to a confused 47-year-old punk rocker that she meant the wallpaper on her phone. \u201cIt\u2019s so genuine what you did,\u201d she said of Green Day\u2019s music, which she\u2019d come across via her older brother, Finneas.<\/p>\n Generation gap aside, the pair deal in the shared currency of anxiety and alienation. \u201cWhen I saw her live, it was this beautiful moment where all these kids \u2013 all these young women \u2013 were singing along to these dark bedroom anthems,\u201d says Armstrong. \u201cIt felt like kids were singing soccer anthems, but it was really dark. All that stuff is universal.\u201d<\/p>\n Eilish isn\u2019t the only contemporary artist to have caught Armstrong\u2019s attention. He cites Kendrick Lamar as an oblique influence on Father Of All Motherfuckers in terms of \u201ctruth-telling\u201d. But then the current wave of hip-hop and Green Day aren\u2019t hugely removed from each other in Billie Joe Armstrong\u2019s head.<\/p>\n \u201cPost Malone, Tyla Yaweh \u2013 a lot of it is really internal and insecure with its feelings,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very emo. Like, \u2018Fuck, this sounds like Basket Case.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/Green-Day-6204-Final_RT-scaled.jpg” title_text=”Green Day-6204 Final_RT” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n The reign in Spain: three\u2019s company at Madrid\u2019s La Riviera<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n A few years ago, when Billie Joe Armstrong was feeling low and adrift, he wrote a letter to himself in the voice of his father, Andy. In it, he told himself not to take life too seriously, to enjoy where he was at. \u201cI\u2019m proud of you,\u201d wrote Billie Joe-as-Andy. \u201cAnd I\u2019m proud of my grandkids.\u201d<\/p>\n Andy Armstrong looms large in his son\u2019s life, even though he has been absent for most of it. Armstrong Sr, a jazz musician turned truck driver, died of cancer when Billie Joe was 10, an event poignantly memorialised in Green Day\u2019s 2004 song, Wake Me Up When September Ends.<\/p>\n Losing his father was understandably tough for the young Armstrong. He found an escape in music: hard rock and \u201980s metal at first, but soon tired of it and graduated to punk. \u201cThis was raw shit,\u201d he says now. \u201cRock\u2019n\u2019roll at its most basic. It sounded real and lo-fi, not slick and processed.\u201d<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t go so far as to say that punk saved him, but it did educate him. \u201cThat\u2019s where I made my first friends who were anti-racist, anti-homophobic, queer kids, teenage runaways. It became a family to me. I feel like I was adopted by punk.\u201d<\/p>\n The sense of community he found in punk rock, particularly at legendary Berkeley underground club 924 Gilman Street, is something he says that he still carries with him. It\u2019s that which prompted him to travel to New Orleans to help rebuild houses in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, hammer and nails in hand. \u201cWe\u2019re up on the roof with these volunteer kids and they\u2019re going, \u2018I didn\u2019t expect to be here with you,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n When the 14-year-old Armstrong and Dirnt formed the earliest version of Green Day in 1986, they had no clue as to what the future would hold. They had an idea of what it wouldn\u2019t hold, though: fame, money or any of the material trappings of success \u2028they saw on MTV.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we started, punk was not part of the pop culture conversation,\u201d says Armstrong. \u201cI jumped into this style of music that I knew damn well was never going to be big. I don\u2019t know if that was being pessimistic or if it was empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Dookie that ruined his plans for obsurity. Released in February 1994, two months before Kurt Cobain\u2019s death, its bug-eyed-Banana-Splits energy was brighter and buzzier than grunge\u2019s shop-soiled grimness, its internal psychologies less overtly self-flagellating.<\/p>\n Dookie filled the hole left by Cobain with something superficially shinier \u2013 a platinum-coloured balm that propelled the three dazed musicians who made it to superstardom and turned punk from cultural curio in the US into a musical gold mine.<\/p>\n More than 25 years later, it stands as a touchstone for musicians who weren\u2019t even born when it was released, from Billie Eilish to genre-mashing British maverick Rex Orange County.<\/p>\n \u201cDookie was the first record I ever bought from HMV,\u201d says Bea Kristi, aka rising grunge-pop star Beabadoobee. Kristi, who featured in the BBC\u2019s Sound Of 2020 longlist, is 19; she discovered Green Day via a schoolfriend when she was 14, instantly pivoting away from One Direction. \u201cIt was pop, but it was angry.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the simplicity of their songs that grabbed her attention. \u2028\u201cIf a band can make great music with just power chords, you know they\u2019re not shit.\u201d But there was something else that provided a through-line to a record more than 25 years old.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought, \u2018This sounds familiar, even though it isn\u2019t familiar. I know I never grew up in the \u201990s, but it\u2019s got this nostalgia thing. It\u2019s super-timeless.\u201d \u201cI felt like Green Day became something important,\u201d says Armstrong of that period. \u201cBefore, we had songs about masturbation. Now we had this song that was inspiring people. I didn\u2019t see it as negative. I saw it as joyous.\u201d<\/p>\n American Idiot also opened doors that were jammed shut before. In 2006, they collaborated with U2 on Hurricane Katrina benefit single The Saints Are Coming \u2013 a tacit Papal blessing from Bono. Weirder still, Facebook founder and Green Day fan Mark Zuckerberg asked Armstrong to play at his wedding in 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing I could take back\u2026\u201d says Armstrong now.<\/p>\n Facebook, he says, has shifted from social media network into propaganda machine. \u201cNothing against him personally, cos he seems like a nice guy. But he\u2019s got a beast on his hands and he\u2019s got to tame it.\u201d<\/p>\n On the plus side, Zuckerberg did set up Armstrong\u2019s first Facebook account for him. \u201cIt\u2019s a secret one,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody knows I\u2019m on there.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n While he was writing Father Of All\u2026, Billie Joe Armstrong came across a tweet referencing the recent spate of deaths in hip-hop: Lil Peep, Mac Miller, XXXTentacion. \u201cThis kid said, \u2018Death has become the best marketing tool for the music industry.\u2019<\/p>\n I was, like, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s so true.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The tweet inspired a line in the track Junkies On A High. In it Armstrong sings: \u201cRock and roll tragedy\/I think the next one could be me.\u201d He denies it\u2019s autobiographical, but it\u2019s hard not to draw parallels with his own life.<\/p>\n In September 2012, a drunk and riled-up Armstrong smashed a guitar and stormed offstage during a very public meltdown at a gig for streaming service IHeartRadio in Las Vegas. Unluckily for him, it was captured on camera. Worse, the timing was lousy \u2013 it happened days before the release of Uno!, the first in a grand trilogy of albums that were ultimately sunk by the singer\u2019s flame-out.<\/p>\n In the hairshirt interviews that followed, Armstrong admitted that the incident was a product of an out-of-control addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. He gave up booze and substances, and spent the next few years crucifying himself for it in the media. Today, he\u2019s pivoted 180 degrees on that view.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was more negative than it was,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, I think it was one of the most punk rock moments of the last 10 years. I should have taken it as that instead of a nervous breakdown. I know it gets pretty dark for other people that were involved, like my wife and my kids, but as a piece of theatre, it was pretty amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s sure he still would have gone through what he went through if he\u2019d been a truck driver like his dad and not the singer in a world-famous band. \u201cProbably not in front of so many people,\u201d he says. \u201cI did it on a massive scale. But judging from other family members, there were a lot of issues. Was it hardwired into me? Yeah, I think it was.\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong puts his problems with drink and drugs down to a need to deal with \u201canxiety issues\u201d. Presumably those issues haven\u2019t gone away?<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d he says. \u201cI just have to deal with it. I have moments [laughing]. Middle-aged moments.\u201d<\/p>\n There were other reasons for self-medicating. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of PTSD that\u2019s happened in my life. Growing up in difficult circumstances, without parents around. But I\u2019m dealing with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Did the suicides of peers like Chris Cornell and Linkin Park\u2019s Chester Bennington affect him? Was he on that same path at any point?<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so. I don\u2019t think I have those kind of dark tendencies where I would kill myself. Self-destructive, yeah, but I\u2019m not going to take myself out.\u201d<\/p>\n Is he still sober? He shrugs non-committally.<\/p>\n \u201cI try to choose my moments more nowadays,\u201d he says, which means \u2018no\u2019. \u201cI\u2019m not Mr Sober or anything like that, but I lay off anything that\u2019s kind of a \u2018down\u2019 narcotic. I did have five years where it was nice just to clear my head out.\u201d<\/p>\n Is he worried about slipping back into bad habits?<\/p>\n \u201cI go through cycles where I\u2019m really healthy, then I\u2019ll get that feeling where I\u2019m not\u2026 having enough fun. There\u2019s a fine line between partying and celebrating and I definitely walk it sometimes. It\u2019s something I\u2019m always gonna end up dealing with, \u2028drugs and alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/07\/Green-Day-2160-Final_RT-scaled.jpg” title_text=”Green Day-2160 Final_RT” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Bowl with it: Green Day stay in their respective lanes at the Bless Hotel, Madrid, Spain, 29 October, 2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n The drink and the drugs and the onstage tantrums plug into rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u2019s great overarching mythology. And these 40-something teenagers are nothing if not in love with the myths of rock\u2019n\u2019roll.<\/p>\n Despite all their success, there\u2019s something anachronistic about Green Day in 2020. With their talk of \u201chonesty\u201d and \u201cauthenticity\u201d, they feel like a holdover from a different era. Mike Dirnt, particularly, brandishes the unswerving but currently unfashionable view that guitar music is the pinnacle of modern culture like a Bible.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are ministers in the church of rock\u2019n\u2019roll,\u201d says the bassist. \u201cI believe in this shit. It\u2019s important. A lot of popular music is not important to me. But rock\u2019n\u2019roll speaks to me. It\u2019s a religion.\u201d<\/p>\n In fairness, music provided even more of a lifeline to Dirnt than his bandmates \u2013 he was raised in a troubled household by a heroin addict mother.<\/p>\n The 2000 people packed into the La Riviera club later that evening are on-board with those same sentiments. As promised, the first half of the set features Dookie top-to-tail in all its angsty, bamboozled glory. The second half is a run-through of their greatest hits, culminating with American Idiot\u2019s twin highlights, the seething title track and the nine-minute punk rock opera Jesus Of Suburbia. The former has never sounded more on-the-nose. It turns out that Green Day wrote the ultimate takedown of Trump\u2019s America 16 years ago.<\/p>\n Armstrong is still trying to work out how he\u2019ll deal with the oncoming political trials of the next 12 months. He\u2019s onside with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and wants to get involved \u201cif I can figure out how to do it the right way, without trying to shove a rock star\u2019s opinion down people\u2019s throats.\u201d The answer, he thinks, is \u201ctrying to have something in common with people who feel slighted, who live in places like Kansas, not California.\u201d<\/p>\n Barring a judicial miracle, he\u2019s got time to work that one out. And if the worst does come to the worst, Green Day are going out dancing.<\/p>\n This article originally appeared in issue 409 of Q.<\/em><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-names” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Words: <\/strong>Dave Everley Images: <\/strong>Michael Clement<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three Imaginary BoysHow did a trio of bong-huffing street rats from Northern California end up selling over 40 million albums of \u201chonest\u201d punk rock and remain best pals for five decades? In early 2020 \u2013 on the 30th anniversary of their debut and just before the arrival of Green Day\u2019s 13th album \u2013 Dave Everley […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-mojo-interview"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
But the best thing about the album is its brevity. It\u2019s the perfect fit for digital-age attention spans, its 10 tracks flash by like a train. Only one, the pulsing Junkies On A High, hangs around for more than three minutes. Here and then gone. If only the man in the Oval Office would do the same.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen we started, punk was not part of the pop culture conversation. I jumped into this style of music that I knew damn well was never going to be big. I don\u2019t know if that was being pessimistic or if it was empowering.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Billie Joe Armstrong<\/h3>\n
Yet none of those are as odd as the alleged fandom of reclusive director Terrence Malick, who reputedly edited his 1998 war epic The Thin Red Line with the sound turned down and a Green Day album playing in the background.<\/p>\n
If Dookie turned Green Day into a successful band, then American Idiot turned them into a vital one. The incendiary title track touched a nerve. Some loved it for its rabble-rousing spirit. Some decried it as unpatriotic. Millions bought both the single and the album it came from.<\/p>\n\u201cWe are ministers in the church of rock\u2019n\u2019roll. I believe in this shit. It\u2019s important. A lot of popular music is not important to me. But rock\u2019n\u2019roll speaks to me. It\u2019s a religion.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Mike Dirnt<\/h3>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a teenage rock\u2019n\u2019roll band in our mid-40s, and that feels great.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Billie Joe Armstrong<\/h3>\n