Read Fall Out Boy’s Loving Green Day Tribute at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Fall Out Boy have never been shy about acknowledging their debt to Green Day, whether covering “Basket Case” during their 2007 tour, or citing the band as a major influence on both their initial formation and their subsequent desire to expand beyond punk rock’s four-chord template. “If I hadn’t ever had a chance to hear an album like [1994’s] Dookie, I don’t know where I would have ended up,” Pete Wentz told Time in 2013. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday night, the Midwestern pop-punk idols once again waxed effusive in praise of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool.
The two bands have shared stages before — including the 2009 Video Music Awards, when Wentz spontaneously jumped onstage (along with dozens of other audience members) during Green Day’s performance of “East Jesus Nowhere” — but there was something undeniably special about seeing the two biggest pop-punk bands of their respective generations gathered around the same podium at Cleveland’s Public Hall.
Green Day joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, alongside Lou Reed, Bill Withers, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The “5” Royales were inducted in the Early Influence category, while Ringo Starr was given the Hall’s Award for Musical Excellence.
Fall Out Boy’s induction speech for Green Day:
Patrick Stump: Let me ask you a question: What is punk rock? That seems like that should be an easy enough question to answer but kids and critics argue about it with the fervent and furious devotion of opposing religious sects, political parties, or Star Wars fans. So I guarantee that someone somewhere will be pissed off (and come on, what’s more punk than pissing people off?) when I say that one of my all time favorite punk bands is Green Day.
So, I remember the first time I heard Green Day. Give you a little background: I was a little bit of a music snob when I was a kid. My dad was a Chicago folk singer and he was very psyched to see all the punk bands of the day. And he played a lot of fusion jazz when I was younger, so you can imagine I was pretty out of step with my friends who were punk fans. So one day some friends got me to sneak out of class, and mostly we just went home and listened to this cassette tape that one of them had. It was Dookie. So the thing that struck me right off the bat was how musical it was. It was all the things that you’d expect from punk rock: it was angry, it was loud, it was fast, but there were these subtle hints of an awareness of music theory and music history that was wise beyond its years. Now, other kids had Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana and all those things later. 1994, none of that was good. This, this one I was like, “This is mine.”
After that, I was all over it. I tried to dress like them, I tried to play my dad’s music real low like Billie Joe did. I followed every interview, I watched every TV performance. And the more immersed into the world I got, the more I thought that this band was one of the greatest. You have to think to yourself, “Wow, how’d they get all these guys in one band together?” The thing that kills me is how in so many bands, you feel like maybe there’s some dead weight…you want to see them in the Hall of Fame but maybe they had that one guy who was just along for the ride…maybe that one guy who wasn’t so great at playing but he always volunteered to drive the van or whatever. But with Green Day, every player, every sound that came out of these three guys was as important to the entire thing, including the one guy.