GREEN DAY
Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1986 by lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt. For much of their career the band has been a trio with drummer Tré Cool. In 1994, its major label debut Dookie released through Reprise Records became a breakout success and eventually sold over 10 million copies in the U.S. The band’s rock opera, American Idiot (2004), reignited the band’s popularity with a younger generation, selling five million copies in the United States. In 2010, a stage adaptation of American Idiot debuted on Broadway. They are one of the world’s best-selling bands of all time, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. In 2014, it was announced that the band would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of 2015 class, in their first year of eligibility. (More from Wikipedia)
One Friday recently, we had Good Morning America on as we usually do. They have their Friday Summer Concert Series each year; this May, Green Day was the inaugural act, and did that bring back some great memories. It was fun seeing them in their element so many years after their founding. Their performance of “Basket Case” was as good as I have ever heard it; also broadcast were “Know Your Enemy” and “Still Breathing”.
Green Day was the lead punk revival band of the early 1990’s and actually have had much greater success than any of the original punk rock bands, and most of the new wave bands as well. Their first major-label release (and third album), Dookie (1994) was an immediate worldwide smash, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart, and sold well throughout the 1990’s, with total sales of 20 million albums. Their 2004 rock-opera album American Idiot was the basis of a hit Broadway show a few years later. In all, Green Day has sold more than 85 million albums and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, their first year of eligibility.
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The celebration of the 10th anniversary this year of the introduction by Apple Computers of their earthshaking personal device, the iPhone let me know that Steve Jobs referenced Green Day in his original announcement about the iPhone. While demonstrating its features on January 9, 2007, he flashed the album art for American Idiot to the audience and played a brief excerpt from “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”.
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Like most, I was introduced to Green Day with Dookie. I imagine that I found out about them through their music videos on MTV and/or VH1, as the rock-video era was winding down. As Wikipedia notes: “Dookie produced five hit singles for the band: ‘Longview’, ‘When I Come Around’, ‘Basket Case’, a re-recorded version of ‘Welcome to Paradise’, and the radio-only single ‘She’.” The whole album rocks though, not just the hits.
I identified Green Day with the burgeoning alternative rock scene of that era; Nirvana’s landmark album Nevermind had come out about 2½ years earlier, but there were plenty of bands and artists that I had been digging from well back in the 1980’s, many that I found out about via the late-night MTV program 120 Minutes.
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But it wasn’t until I saw footage of Green Day’s live performance at Woodstock ’94 that I tuned into their punk roots. I had recently moved from New York to San Francisco and admitted as much to some of my work buddies, who assured me that this Bay Area rock band was very much a punk rock band from the beginning.
Green Day’s set at Woodstock ’94 was one of the most memorable of this revival of the original Woodstock festival 25 years earlier, though not necessarily because of the music. At one point during their performance, bandleader Billie Joe Armstrong started a “mud fight” with audience members, leading to a new nickname for the rock festival of Mudstock.
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Childhood friends Billie Joe Armstrong (lead vocals and guitar) and Mike Dirnt (bass) are from Oakland (across the San Francisco Bay from San Francisco) and formed a band called Sweet Children when they were just 14. Their first live show was on October 17, 1987, at Rod’s Hickory Pit in Vallejo, California. Drummer John Kiffmeyer joined the line-up in 1988; he was previously in Isocracy. By the time their first EP, 1,000 Hours came out on Lookout! Records in 1989, they had dropped the name Sweet Children, since it was similar to that of another local band, Sweet Baby. Their new name, Green Day was selected because of their fondness for marijuana.
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In early 1990, the label released Green Day’s first full album, 39/Smooth, with two other EP’s following later in the year, Slappy and Sweet Children; the latter disc features early recordings by Sweet Children for another label, Skene! Records. The following year, Lookout! Records combined the band’s previous releases (except Sweet Children) as 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. Later that year saw the release of Green Day’s second album, Kerplunk, which sold 50,000 copies.
In late 1990, John Kiffmeyer left Green Day to attend college, with Tré Cool – formerly with the Lookouts; Lookout! Records founder Larry Livermore was their guitarist – filling in on drums and eventually joining the band permanently. The lineup of Green Day has been stable ever since, although Jason White joined the band on stage as a second guitarist beginning in 1999 and was an official bandmember between 2012 and 2016.
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Twenty-three years after the release of the punk-rock concept album Only Lovers Left Alive by past UARB the Wanderers, Green Day released their classic rock-opera album, American Idiot. From Wikipedia: “American Idiot (2004) marked a career comeback for Green Day following a period of decreased success. It charted in 27 countries, peaking at number one in 19, and eventually sold 16 million copies worldwide. The album spawned five successful singles: ‘American Idiot’, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, ‘Holiday’, ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’, and ‘Jesus of Suburbia’.”
At the 2005 Grammy Awards, Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino introduced Green Day’s live performance of “American Idiot” by saying: “Instead of fading away, they’ve grown up and released a concept album with a novel concept: All the songs are good.”
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The name “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” has a long history in music and elsewhere. According to Wikipedia, there have been six previous uses of the phrase as a song or album name by everyone from David Cassidy to Smokie to Hanoi Rocks, beginning with a 1930’s standard called “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” – in all, there are 14 items listed on the phrase’s “disambiguation” page. Green Day created a combined rock video for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Holiday”; as mentioned in Wikipedia: “MTV’s Green Day Makes a Video described ‘Holiday’ as a party, and ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ as the subsequent hangover.”
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is Green Day’s biggest hit single to date, with 2 million copies sold. Wikipedia notes: “As of 2017, ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ remains the only song in history to win both the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and the MTV Music Video Award for Video of the Year.”
“Wake Me Up When September Ends” is Billie Joe Armstrong’s tribute to his father, who died in September 1982. Later, as reported in Wikipedia: “In the United States, the song became symbolic after Hurricane Katrina [in August-September 2005], where it was dedicated to victims of the disaster and also regarded as a dedication to the victims of the September 11 attacks that occurred in 2001.”
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While I was living in New York City, the rock opera Tommy (1969) by the Who, under the name The Who’s Tommy had an acclaimed run on Broadway from 1993 to 1995. It was a great show, and the critics had fun imagining that the album’s original fans were finally getting to listen to the songs, since they were so stoned when the album first came out.
I figured that the Who would not be the only rock band to make it to Broadway; after all, even the Warner Bros. cartoons gang landed there in a show that I also saw when I was living in New York, Bugs Bunny on Broadway, with a limited run in October 1990. Turns out, under the name Bugs Bunny at the Symphony (including a 2010 sequel, Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II), the concert musical has been touring regularly ever since. In the performance that I saw, classic cartoons were projected on a large screen, sometimes accompanied by a full symphony orchestra. The first time I heard the Merrie Melodies theme song performed live at the opening of that show, I just about lost it.
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But nothing prepared me for Green Day’s rock opera to become a hit Broadway show called American Idiot; the musical ran for a full year beginning in April 2010 and since then has had regular performances worldwide. The musical American Idiot featured all of the songs from the original American Idiot album, plus several from their second rock opera, 21st Century Breakdown (2009) and one previously unreleased song, “When it’s Time”. Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the book for the musical with director Michael Mayer; while Green Day never performed during the show, Armstrong occasionally played the role of “St. Jimmy” during the Broadway run.
Needless to say, the 2010 Tony Awards were fantastic, with Green Day’s live performance of “American Idiot” pulling no punches. American Idiot was nominated for Best Musical and won two Tonys that night for Best Scenic Design of a Musical and Best Lighting Design of a Musical. The cast album, American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording “debuted at #43 on the Billboard 200, becoming one of the highest-charting musical soundtracks” (according to Wikipedia).
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But Green Day is easy; everybody knows about them. When I tried to come up with other punk revival bands to talk about in this post, I started coming up short. The Wikipedia article mentions: “Green Day was widely credited, alongside fellow California punk bands Sublime, Bad Religion, the Offspring, and Rancid, with popularizing and reviving mainstream interest in punk rock in the United States.” I really don’t know much about those four bands other than a few stray tracks, like the Offspring song “Self Esteem”.
(June 2017)
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