It's been 35 years since Green Day released its debug album, “39/Smooth,” yet, even after decades of milestones — a Tony-winning Broadway musical adapted from the blockbuster 2004 album “American Idiot,” a 2015 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and, most recently, a coveted headlining spot at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — accolades that acknowledge its impact on music still manage to resolve.
Lead singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong said it was a May 1st win on Hollywood Celebrity Tour. "It's always exciting. Now we're in a time when our kids have a day. When people walk and have those dreams and look down at the stars, we can bow our heads and say, 'Hey, I'm stepping on my face now!' It's cool."
Trio - Armstrong, bassist and support singer Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré -Cool - have come a long way since the punk band played in Berkeley in the 1980s. Throughout their career, they received five of 23 Grammy Award nominations in 2006 and won five of their 23 Grammy nominations, including the coveted annual record of the 2006 Broken Dream Boulevard.
All of this boils down to the core of what gives Green Sun lasting power: respect for the art of songwriting. "Trends come and go. For us, we always wanted to write songs that sounded like yesterday's recording," Armstrong explained. “The key is always to write good songs. I think we’ve done it.
But, besides its sound, it has a huge rock of punk spirit, so hook-driven popular broadcasts can’t ignore it – the Green Days have spoken to the times with the lyrics of political consciousness. Songs like “American Idiots” and “Minority” position the band as outsiders who find a Taiwanese-style radical idea that expresses frustration with the world around them. This is a common theme in punk music, and their roots surface, but few bands amplify it globally in the same way and manage to maintain it. In this sense, Green Day has been an open political act, with its message consistently permeating popular culture and influenced criticisms that influenced countless musicians in the following years with clear rally cry and criticism.
Of course, the band’s ambitions start on a smaller scale. Armstrong remembers falling in love with the spirit of punk when he was young, and his interest in music began very early. (He recorded his first song "Look for Love" at the age of 5.) He started working with Dirnt after meeting in fifth grade, and two years later they formed a heavy metal band that played songs by Ozzy Osbourne and van Halen before discovering punk groups like Minnesota's Hüsker Dü and Ramones.
They founded their first official band, Sweet Children, in 1987, with two other members, inspired by punk and its nurturing community. "I was on a music journey trying to find more and more music that could be raw and real, and I think it just made me start listening to punk sounds because it seemed to be displaced music," Armstrong recalls. "I felt that was where I fit the most. It was real. When I got into punk, everything felt disguised for me or something."
Sweet Kids performed in 1987 at Rod's Hickory Pit, a restaurant where Armstrong's mother worked in Vallejo, California. The performance was then steady in Berkeley, with a foundation show at 924 Gilman Street, a band that included Jawbreaker and Rancid. There, they meet Larry Livermore, the owner of Lookout! Records and Rock Group member The Lookouts, which it considers as a drummer.
Livermore signed the band’s imprint and released its first EP, “1,000 Hours,” under its newly cast name Green Day, mentions cannabis. They then released "39/Smooth," adding cool performances to the Green Day lineup after drummer John Kiffmeyer left the band in 1990, creating their status as a trio.
As the stock of the punk tour and 1991 sophomore album "Kerplunk" began to rise and became a mainstream wave, major record companies began to be interested in the group, and a bid followed. In the punk community, doing business with large companies is considered a big taboo, but Armstrong and his band members feel they are at a crossroads, taking the green day to the next level. “It was a very terrible moment because it was definitely done or died,” Armstrong said. “But we practice every day and we just want to set the best record and end up being a 'dookie'.”
The Green Days eventually signed with a re-record established by Frank Sinatra, then a subsidiary of Warner Records – a “dookie” documented with producer Rob Cavallo. The backlash from the punk community was strong - they were banned from performing at 924 Gilman Street, which they later addressed on the song "86" - but they knew they needed professional muscle to give them the push they needed.
"Before that, before Nirv, anyone who had tried to move from an independent record label to a punk view, and that blows up in their faces," Armstrong said. "They ended up making a record that sounded like shit, sacrificing the sound. At the time, there was no way we could do it. … We wanted to be as big as Fugazi, but especially in the Bay Area, from the largest Rocknroll and Gilman streets in (punk Zine), and people had their own influence on the main tags and companies, and they had a big impact on them and companies, and people were not happy with their identities and people were not happy with their identities.
However, gambling paid off because “Dookie” resonated with audiences around the world. Released in 1994, “Dookie” is now considered one of the greatest albums of all time, becoming a commercial champion with over 20 million records sold worldwide and winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album. That year marked a turning point for the band, whose career-defining performances at Woodstock '94 and grafted their melodic punk rock brand to the rankings.
"Everything was going up and getting bigger, the first time I heard myself on the radio, the first time I saw myself on MTV. ... Woodstock was the final game, igniting the place where it exploded," Armstrong recalled. "We were competing with the 'Lion King' soundtrack, which was the biggest record for this week, a month or anything else. It was out of control. So it was really exciting, and it was really scary because we went to something that we grew up to be the things we launched."
As Armstrong said, “You’ll make your first record in your life, like they said, but it’s 18 months” to write a follow-up album. Green Day attempted to strike in the iron of 1995's "Insomnia," a record consistent with the electrified rock of "Dookie," but then smeared the sound edges of 1997's "Nimrod" by trying new textures and songwriting methods. It produces softer, more inside and outside fares – the ballad “Good Barrier (the Time of Your Life) is a cultural force that gets enhanced by key synchronization in the final episode of “Seinfeld”, showing the versatility of the band.
By the beginning of the millennium, Green Day had conquered pop culture and became one of the few punk rock bands, etching a position along with the sleek, polished pop music held in the late 1990s. They reached a turning point: after the 2000 "Warning", the Green Days regrouped and took their ambitions to new heights with the height of the 2004 concept album "American Idiot". The band approached "rock opera" as "rock opera" because Armstrong described it as "rock opera" and achieved his goal in the current event with lyricism.
"We're writing more songs, more thematic, more politicized, especially after the George Bush administration," he said. "This is the first time in our lives that we've seen (the state) go to war for fictional reasons. We don't trust the government; we don't trust the president, and after 9/11. So there's a lot of stuff in the culture, when we write this record, I want to be in my mind. I think there's a topic at any time, and if you do it right, it's going to last forever."
"American Idiot" is a great hotel work, while musically defining them while talking about the times. It attracts a new generation of fans while revitalizing the relevance of Green Day in the ever-changing popular landscape. The smashing singles, including "Book of Broken Dreams" and "Awaken Me at the End of September", "American Idiot" has a long headwind, and in 2009, the album's musical adaptation debuted in Berkeley before moving to Broadway, where it ran to over 400 performances. Even today, fans still discuss the long-lost version of the movie, which can still be on the horizon.
"There should be (a movie), but it never gave up," Armstrong said. "I'm sure something will happen. The musicals are doing well, they do well in Australia, Italy, Germany, the UK...it's traveling very well. I think it will happen eventually."
Green Day tries to win the "American Idiot" success in 2009 with its second concept album "21 Century Beckdown" and won Best Rock Album at the Grammy Awards.
The band has been pushing the scope of its creativity for years - they abandoned three albums "Uno," "Dos," and "Tré" in 2012 - and then, they continued a pattern that essentially released an album every four years, most recently in 2024's "Saviors," which is with the International Stadium Tour.
"You have to live a life," Armstrong said. "I do like to spend time browsing the lyrics to make sure they project with their feelings, internalize their lives and what's going on in the culture. It's important. It's important. We live in such a crazy world. Now, everything is open. So I think it's the speed every four years, but now you're playing a song or EP, lp, and a lp and and and and nate and nate nat and stream necremprover'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
For bands that have remained relevant for decades, Green Day is true to its values, and its members attribute their legacy to a common view of why they started making music in the first place. “I respected Mike and Trey very much when I approached them,” Armstrong explained. "I know their nuances; I know their quirks. We know each other. So I think each other allows each other's space, but also maintains friendship. Of course, our frustrations, but I see the way the band wastes in front of the world, and I like you guys saying that, what's your relationship? As much as making music."