Green Day and the Palace of Wisdom

So in 2003, when it came time to make a new record, they decided to add one thing to their daily band-practice schedule: mandated weekly conversation time. It was Armstrong's idea, and it worked. "We bared our souls to one another," says Dirnt. "Admitting that we cared for each other was a big thing," says Cool. "We didn't hold anything back." They don't want to talk about the grievances they aired, just the results. "Before, Billie would write a song, get stuck and then say, 'Fuck it,' " says Cool. "The imaginary Mike and Tre in his head would say, 'That song sucks. Don't waste your time on it.' He stopped doing that and became totally fearless around me and Mike."

For Armstrong, that meant leaving behind the bratty attitude of early Green Day songs such as "Basket Case" and "Geek Stink Breath." "I felt like I was too old to be angry anymore," he says. "I didn't want to come across as the angry older guy. It's sexy to be an angry young man, but to be a bitter old bastard is another thing altogether."

In an effort to find a new groove, they recorded polka songs, filthy versions of Christmas tunes, salsa numbers. The goofs opened up the way to real songs, and after four and a half months at their studio in Oakland, California, they had twenty finished tracks. Then one day they came in to find the masters were stolen. "We were really pissed," says Armstrong. "But it ended up being good because we were readying ourselves to go where we hadn't gone before."

But first Armstrong took off for New York to get more wasted than he'd been in a long while. He left his wife and two young sons for a month and "drank a lot of red wine, and vodka tonics," he says. "I was searching for something. I'm not sure it was the most successful trip."

"He was really questioning what he was doing," says Adrienne Armstrong, his wife of ten years. "It was scary, because where he had to go to get this record wasn't a place I'm sure I wanted him to be." And it wasn't until Armstrong came home and the hangover haze began to clear that he found his subject, while watching TV footage of U.S. troops invading Iraq: politics.

[Excerpt From Issue 968 — February 24, 2005]