For our new issue, David Fricke got Green Day to open up about their most emotionally explosive album yet, the new 21st Century Breakdown. In our second of three exclusive interviews with each bandmember, bassist Mike Dirnt recalls the dark, drunken days after Warning when the band’s future was in question, and how they got back on track to make a record he thinks tops their Grammy-winning, multiplatinum punk opera American Idiot: “I wanted to be in the biggest fucking rock & roll band in the world — and the best.”

• Mike Dirnt on Green Day’s Dark, Drunken Path to Rock & Roll Glory