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For David Fricke's feature "Green Day Fights On" check out our new issue, on stands now. |
The
scrappy punks who became superstars 15 years ago with
Dookie are now America's most ambitious rock band. For our
new cover, David Fricke visits Green Day at
home in Oakland to get the story behind their epic new punk opera
21st Century Breakdown. In the first of three
exclusive Q&As with each bandmember, Fricke speaks with
singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong about the group's darkest
days and leaving it all onstage. (Read
Mike Dirnt and
Tré Cool's Q&As.)
Last night, I saw you perform all of your new record and
an entire second set of hits. How have you changed as a performer
from the band's early days — when the sets were shorter and
the songs more simple?
It's developed over time. When Tré first got in the band, we
thought we were pretty tight. But we weren't communicating fully.
There was a self-consciousness onstage. We ended up going to Europe
for the first time in '91, and there was a language barrier. We're
playing in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain. We played in
Poland. And there was no communication at all. We played 64 shows
in three months, all on borrowed gear. At that point, we started
getting good. Because it became, how do you communicate with the
crowd without talking to them? We started going up there, wearing
dresses, anything to get a reaction out of people, get them
engaged.
You do your best under wartime
conditions?
Yeah. By the time we got back from that tour, playing for 300 to a
thousand people, we had mastered that. We got really ambitious
around Dookie. Things were starting to happen. But then
this guilt complex came in, around Insomniac. I didn't
know what our ambitions were. Or we felt like we weren't allowed to
have ambitions. That period, '94, '95, was all about the
introverted rock star struggling with his demons. I couldn't relate
to that, but somehow I got caught up in it, and it didn't work for
us at all.
Then around Nimrod, we started playing festivals more. As a performer, as a lead singer, I wanted to project. That goes back to the Gilman Street days [the legendary Berkeley punk club and co-op]. There was a lot of rock theater going on there: people heckling, street theater, trying to get worlds to meet.
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Was there a moment during the show last night when you
asked yourself, while performing the new album, "Did I go too far?
Why did I have to write 18 songs? Why not 12?" Did you need every
song on the album to tell your story?
If I want to align myself with the tradition of really creative
records and great musicians, then I want to make sure there is no
stone left unturned and we are getting the most out of the moment.
There are no regrets whatsoever. At the end, last night, we played
"Homecoming" [the mini-opera on American Idiot]. We were
scratching our heads: "Should we do it after 'Minority'?" We knew
the crowd was burnt at that point. But I've often felt deprived of
doing the thing I love most. We haven't played live for so long,
and I have a lot of love and enthusiasm for what I'm doing.
Do you get stressed as you write, trying to keep up the
momentum?
I love the moments of inspiration, when you feel pretty good about
yourself and things are okay. It's the shit in between, when you're
blocked — you have a melody in your head and no words for it.
It drives you fucking crazy. I had the melody to "Restless Heart
Syndrome" [on 21st Century Breakdown] for a year. I had
nothing to write about. I would be sitting there: "I feel stupid."
"Little Girl" and "21 Guns" were the same way. But you have to
stick with it. It's the patience that drives you crazy. But the
moments when you nail something — that's when you're most
free. There is no outside stress. You're just in the zone.
Mike Dirnt told me that music is enormously important to
you — that if you didn't have it, you'd still be a great
husband and father but with a big hole in your life.
When things were boiling over in my household, as a kid, I started
to depend on music. I remember coming home from school and just
playing guitar for hours in my room. Music was an escape on all
levels. I could put my headphones on and listen to an album, front
to back. I loved the feeling when the hair on your arms stood
up.
What records were a particular refuge for
you?
When I started getting into rock, it was Van Halen, Women and
Children First. Then I started getting into punk. I would
listen to the first Operation Ivy record. There was one band called
Rich Kids on LSD. And Hüsker Dü — Warehouse:
Songs and Stories hit me like a ton of bricks. It took me to a
different place. I was getting into the Beatles, the way they
affected me. Music would take me over. I always had an emotional
response to it.
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Mike was also talking about the period after the
Warning album, when your sales were slowing down and the
crowds getting smaller. He said it was a dark time for him —
and for the band.
We had to question ourselves deeper than we ever had before —
investigate our relationships, how we feel about each other, how we
get on each other's nerves. We had to step it up about 10
notches.
The interesting thing about that time was we were playing live shows better than we ever had before. We were playing like we did last night, when nobody was noticing. We're like, "We know that we're a great band. Why isn't anybody else noticing?" But we had never had a monumental record, where we did that on record. "We can't listen to the record company. We can't do things the way they are now. Bands are listening to A&R guys who say you don't have a single, who are hearing that from the radio stations." I don't want to play that game. I want to make sure we're making an album that is pure, bold — a statement with one song that leads to the next, and each song is an experience in itself.
You've done that with 21st Century Breakdown.
But you are addressing demons — in songs like "Christian's
Inferno" — from a position many would consider comfortable:
success, a nice house, a good family. Why are the demons still
there? And why put them out in public?
They're just photographs of what goes on inside my head — and
wanting to connect with yourself, and your audience too. I'd like
to write something more about joy and happiness. But for me, that's
the release, putting it out there. To put it out there and create
some kind of human connection and strive for something that's about
humanity. It's like trying to battle past all those demons, your
confusion and chaos, to reach something on the other side.
I don't know why I'm like that. I've always felt desperate in some way.
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For David Fricke's feature "Green Day Fights On" check out our new issue, on stands now. |
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