Major labels like to blame their woes on file-sharing, which is a convenient boogie man, like Saddam Hussein. But the real culprit is their failure to shepherd more bands like Green Day into the marketplace. How many acts from the Nirvana-led punk explosion of the early 90’s are still making vital music? It doesn’t even take one hand to count them, and this encapsulates the short-term perspective that’s ruled the major labels, particularly since being swallowed by big media conglomerates with their short-term, bottom-line concerns. It’s a credit to this trio of Bay Area punks that they’ve not only survived — you can say the same of Scott Weiland — but continued to grow as a band. Their growth culminated with this year’s Grammy for Best Rock Album for Amerian Idiot, a decade after winning the Best Alternative Album Grammy with Dookie. How have Green Day succeeded while Trent Reznor is rapidly closing on musical footnote status? It’s been a progression.
Undoubtedly, part of the bands’ strength is the bond between singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt (nee Mike Pritchard). Dirnt met Armstrong when the two were in sixth grade and they immediately bonded on the subject of music. With a checkered home life, Dirnt was living in the Armstrong household by the time he was 15, and paying $250 rent. The next year the two of them moved into a squat in Oakland, a short distance from the punk club on Gilman Street, where they cut their teeth. (This experience would become the subject of teenage emancipation ode, “Welcome to Paradise.”)
They recorded a couple self-released albums under the name Sweet Children, and then in 1989 they added drummer John Kiftmeyer and released a full-length album and a couple more EPs. Billie Joe dropped out of high school and the band went out on a 45-date summer tour that ended with Kiftmeyer leaving the band and being replaced by Tre Cool (born Frank Edwin Wright III). Cool had been playing in punk bands since he was 12, and he formed the core of the band.
With 1992’s Kerplunk! Green Day put into place all the elements that would turn them into multi-platinum rock stars two years later. From the chugging, catchy power punk of “One For the Razorbacks” to the catchy balladeering of “80” (presaging “When I Come Around”) to the bouncy, earnest jangle pop (!!) of “Words I Might Have Ate,” — demonstrating their willingness to stretch their sound. It’s no surprise that it became an underground sensation or that the major labels came sniffing around, looking for more acts to throw at the wall in the post-Nirvana feeding frenzy.
If one just listens to the music, it’s easy to miss how much Dookie dovetailed with Nirvana. But listen to the words — from the apathy trumpeting “Burnout” to the boredom and masturbation of “Longview,” to the sanity questioning “Basket Case” — they echo the very same themes of loneliness, alienation, and self-doubt that drove Kurt Cobain. Furthermore, like Cobain, their anger and frustration rose out of very dysfunctional home situations (and eventual homelessness), not middle class ennui, giving their passion an all-too-concrete concrete source.
Dookie moved nine million units in its first 14 months, and Green Day were on the cover of almost every music magazine. A great album, it combines the sunny harmonies that characterized Cali punk bands such as The Adolescents and Descendants with big guitars inspired by the Clash, Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols, and tied together by Armstrong’s strong pop sensibility.
They followed Dookie with Insomniac, which the band had undoubtedly all become because of their rigorous year-long touring regimen. But burnout wasn’t far behind, and Green Day bailed on their second world tour in 1996. Insomniac hadn’t been the same size hit as Dookie, selling just over one million copies. Rather than retrace their steps, Armstrong and company pushed forward and broadened the sound without losing sight of what got them here.
Nimrod is an exciting album from the bristling high-energy punk tunes like “Nice Guys Finish Last” and “Scattered,” to more intriguing excursions such as the lounge-ish punk shuffle of “Hitchin’ A Ride,” and the horn-driven barrelhouse blues of “King For A Day.” It’s a solid transitional album with a foot in the past and a peek around the corner, but it is somewhat lacking in real standout tracks. Excepting, of course, their breakout single, “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life),” which with its string arrangements heralds the band’s wholehearted embrace of pop.
It took three years to finish their next album, No Warning, and though it arrived with little fanfare (and sales, as it turns out), it marks a major step for the band. No longer simply a punk band, the album unveils an old-fashioned rock outfit from the rockabilly-ish “Church on Sunday,” to the Brit invasion pop of “Hold On” and “Warning” (with its echo of the Kinks’ “Picture Book” guitar riff) to the Pogues-ish waltz of “Misery.” An overlooked and underrated album, its sophistication and eclecticism is a sign of things to come.
It would be another four years before American Idiot came out, and it wasn’t originally conceived as a rock opera. The trio had actually cut an entirely different album when the master tapes were stolen. Rather than revisit that material, they went in another direction. Coming on the heels of their “Best Of” album, International Superhits, the band felt they were opening a new chapter. An “anything goes” ethos prevailed, and resulted in a variety of rock styles. As the songs took shape, so did an idea of a disillusioned kid beset by political, religious and social strife, on a search for self-identity.
In many ways, it mirrors Armstrong’s own journey from a disaffected kid to a grown-up with a child and responsibilities, trying to hold a family together. (Armstrong was arrested for DUI in 2003, and has noted in interviews how drugs and alcohol, so prevalent on the road, had nearly broken up his marriage.) It’s a mature album from a band that, now well into their 30s, has taken on even larger concerns and done so with a palette befitting a rock band whose music finally fully transcends the sum of its influences. U2? REM? Meet Green Day.
Green Day plays Cricket Arena tonight at 9pm.
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2005.
