Green Day

by Gillian G. Gaar

  On September 16 they taped an appearance for T4 On Sunday, again performing ‘Minority’, followed by a late night in-store appearance at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, a free event some fans had waited 12 hours to get tickets for. When someone threw a clown mask onstage during the show, Billie Joe immediately threw back a withering response in reference to the band Slipknot, who wore such masks onstage: “So you’ve got masks, assholes. Why don’t you try writing a good fucking song for a change?” They also spray painted their name on the store’s walls.

  ‘Minority’ was the group’s first single from Warning. It topped the Modern Rock chart for six weeks, and reached number 15 Mainstream Rock. In the UK, it reached number 18. The video, directed by Evan Bernard, had the group playing on a parade float, adorned with oversize scowling heads and fists making the heavy metal “devil sign” [first finger and pinky extended, middle two fingers curled under the thumb] — seemingly an idea better suited to the song ‘Macy’s Day Parade’ (indeed, Bernard had told his art director the look he wanted was that of “a punk version of a Macy’s Day float”). Other trappings of grand parades are also present: baton-twirlers and marchers holding on to the large balloon effigies (actually computer generated) of the group members.

  The video was shot over the weekend of August 19 to 20 in San Diego on near-deserted streets, underscoring what Bernard called the song’s mood; “a celebration of being an outsider.” Yet it also struck a note of futility and powerlessness — there’s virtually no one around to listen to, much less cheer on, the band’s anti-authority message. (Billie Joe’s acoustic guitar even has a sticker reading “Against All Authority.”) One could also read a sense of a defeat into the video’s ending, with the group sitting on their now-destroyed float. In reality, the idea to wreck the float didn’t come up until the last day of shooting, and, of course, accurately depicted what the end of a Green Day show often looked like. One of the styrofoam fists was later auctioned off.

  The group was also starting to become increasingly candid in their political views. This was timely, considering that a US presidential election was held a month after Warning’s release. Tré went so far as to tell Launch.com, “If you’re 18, for Christ’s sake, register and keep George W. bullshit out of office because he’s the devil, he’s totally evil, and he needs to be stopped.” The band adopted a more satiric approach with the mock commercials put together on Billie Joe’s own purported candidacy for president, “Paid for by The Friends of Billie Joe to Elect Billie Joe. And Tré and Mike.” The pro-Billie Joe ad had a voiceover proclaiming, “You need a leader. You need a leader with a flair for leadership and the ability to lead. You need — Billie Joe Armstrong,” over shots of Billie Joe strategising with his aides, meeting school children, and jogging with the Secret Service. “A man with a home. A man with a dog. And a wife!” continued the voiceover, showing Billie Joe sharing a bench with his “spouse”, Tré, fetchingly done up in drag. His slogan was, “Burning a bridge to the 21st century,” a play on President Clinton’s slogan about building a bridge to the new century. In the spirit of equal time, an anti-Billie Joe ad was also produced, with more cautionary commentary: “You’ve heard a lot about Billie Joe Armstrong. But what do you really know? Did you know that he’s a dick? Did you know that his wife is very ugly?”

  Warning was released October 3. In its first week, it debuted at number four in Billboard, and sold 156,000 copies. In the UK, it reached the same chart position. (Adeline also released a version on green vinyl.) In December, an enhanced version of the CD was released that featured the EPK, the “Billie Joe for President” ads, and the ‘Minority’ video. A 64-page booklet was also included, with photos and song lyrics. “The booklet came about because I had a ton of video and photos from the recording sessions, and tons of footage from Lance,” Bilheimer explains. “I wanted to have a booklet that had a lot to look at, so you felt that you were getting a lot for your money.” The cover photo of the booklet is of a sign posted in a tram at the Atlanta airport that reads, “PLEASE HOLD ON.” “I liked the idea of a safety/warning sign whose message actually works as advice for people when they are having troubled times,” Bilheimer explains. The CD was also packaged in a green bag, “based on the idea of a hazard materials bag,” says Bilheimer. “It just kinda made sense to package something called ‘warning’ in a hazardous materials bag.”

  For the most part, the album received favourable reviews. “Green Day has not tried to repeat the formula of its commercial peak,” wrote Jon Pareles in the New York Times. “While the melodies on later albums have stayed strong, Mr. Armstrong’s lyrics have outgrown bratty self-absorption, and the music has sometimes quieted down, with unpunk instruments like acoustic guitar … Warning is closer to British Invasion pop from the Sixties than it is to punk from the Seventies.” When first reviewed in Rolling Stone, the magazine was more critical, with Greg Kot writing the album “invites the question: Who wants to listen to songs of faith, hope, and social commentary from what used to be snot-core’s biggest-selling band?” But in the magazine’s year-end issue, critic Barry Walters was kinder, saying, “Warning is an incredibly enthusiastic record. Even when tempos drop and arrangements embrace artful pop, these tender hooligans still sound like they’re pogoing.” Magnet’s review had a certain degree of prescience, saying that the album showed the band “working with a sense of maturity they have only begun to express.”

  And though the sales continued the decline from Dookie (stalling at one million in the US), the record nonetheless won admiration from some of their old associates from the East Bay. “I thought Warning, which I gather has been their lowest-selling record, was a brave attempt to shift gears and try something new,” says Lawrence Livermore. “You don’t always see that in a band that’s been around as long as they had by that time.”

  “I admired the chances they took with Warning,” says Frank Portman. “And that’s probably actually my favourite one, I have to say. That’s ’cause I’m a contrarian, ’cause I think a lot of people think that was where they stopped being punk or whatever. And I don’t. I know the feeling of people accusing you of stopping being punk, so I paid more attention to that album.”

  The group did a few quick performances around the country in September and October, mostly radio and TV appearances. In early October they arrived for a few hectic days in New York. On October 3, they appeared on The Howard Stern Show, then appeared on The Late Show, performing ‘Minority’. On October 4, they appeared on MTV’s Total Request Live and another radio show, then played a free evening concert at Roseland. After a few songs from Warning, the band again threw open the show to requests, saying, “We’re going to play anything you fucking want, basically,” resulting in a set laden with older songs like ‘Christie Road’, ‘Only Of You’, and ‘Disappearing Boy’, which RollingStone.com noted were delivered with “pure glee,” in contrast to the songs from Warning, which “seemed perfunctory afterthoughts, quickly rendered to make room for everything else the band wanted to squeeze into the show.” Tré was called up front to sing ‘All By Myself’ and ‘Dominated Love Slave’, swapping instrument roles with Billie Joe; a cover of Billy Idol’s ‘Dancing By Myself’ also turned up. For ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, members of the audience were invited onstage to take up the instruments. The set ended with the usual bout of instrument destruction.

  The next day in Boston, the tour was momentarily in danger of being delayed when Tré became injured after a cymbal sliced through the webbing between his fingers. Thankfully, the drummer’s hand wasn’t seriously damaged and after receiving stitches at a local hospital, Tré was back signing Green Day memorabilia at a post-gig signing. The rest of the US tour proceeded smoothly, with one of the more unusual being the Valley 6 Drive-In movie theatre in Auburn, Washington (outside of Seattle) where the group on October 10. Seattle radio station KNDD gave away tickets, and teacher/fan John Goar managed to get one through one his students (the band also made a live appearance on the station
that day). The band made their entrance to Frank Sinatra’s version of ‘My Way’. The persistant drizzle didn’t dampen the crowd’s enthusiasm, though after a while it did cause the packed audience to look like they were steaming, causing Billie Joe to shout, “Oh, I think we reached the apocalypse now, boy! Well, if I’m going to hell, I’m bringing you right down with me!” A portion of the concert was later broadcast on MTV.

  In less than a week, the band was back on the road again, with a short Australian tour in October, followed by more European dates in November and December. In between, the band returned to San Francisco to headline a free event on November 5 called “Take Back San Francisco,” billed as an “anti-gentrification celebration.” The event was a protest against the real-estate development that was displacing artist spaces, such as Downtown Rehearsal, a venue utilised by hundreds of musicians (Faith No More and Chris Isaak among them), that had been closed the previous August to make way for a new office block. “If the city’s willing to build a giant baseball stadium and kick homeless people out of town, do you think anyone’s going to care about musicians?” Mike told the San Francisco Chronicle. “There are games and there are lives. I think it’s a lot easier to win the World Series than it is to stay alive for an entire year in San Francisco.” (Ironically, Green Day would play that new baseball stadium in San Francisco in five years.)

  The event began with a “Million Band March” from San Francisco’s Mission District to Civic Center Plaza, where the concert was being held. The turnout for both was disappointing; a mere 500 musicians participated in the march (with the Gun And Doll Show leading the pack, driving a van that dragged a symbolic “dead musician” behind them), while the show itself drew 2000. But the setting was impressive; Civic Center Plaza is in front of the city’s majestic City Hall, which looks more like a state capitol than a municipal building, topped with a golden dome that’s 302 feet high.

  The lineup included Victoria Williams, Mark Eitzel, Creeper Lagoon, Blind Boys of Alabama, and Zen Guerrilla, among others; Metallica’s Kirk Hammett also delivered a speech of support. “We all know why we’re here, don’t we?” said Billie Joe when Green Day took the stage. “Because I don’t think any band has ever played in an office space.” When someone in the crowd yelled out the inevitable request for ‘Freebird!’ the band broke into another Lynyrd Skynyrd song, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, substituting “San Francisco” for “Alabama.”

  The show marked the last time Eric Yee saw Green Day perform live. “Me and my friend Kevin took BART there,” he says. “That was the first time I ever saw them play with Jason White, the first time I had seen them as a four piece. I remember they played forever, they played all old songs. That was pretty cool. It was pretty fun. Musically they were always tight. I’ve never seen them play bad. I don’t think there’s any difference besides the size of the venue that they’re playing, they always give it their all. If it’s just them playing to me and Eggplant at some party or them playing to 10,000 people, they always give it their all.”

  But some things were different from the old days. “A lot of people want to talk to them, so they can’t really hang out,” says Yee. “They’re always getting pulled in a lot of different directions. But we hung out some in their bus after the show, drinking. We drank beer and we talked about our friend Lucky Dog [a one-time roadie for Green Day who had killed himself]. That was the first time I got to talk to Billie Joe about that. He said the last time he saw him was perfect, and that’s the way he wanted to remember him. Then everybody went to go see Neurosis because Neurosis was playing at the Great American Music Hall. Kevin and I didn’t go in because we were pretty much, ‘Just screw it.’ Neurosis pretty much sucked at that point anyway.”

  On November 10, the band appeared on The Tonight Show, again performing ‘Minority’. At the end of the month, the band returned overseas for more shows. Warning was certified Gold in December, and the year ended with the band doing four radio-sponsored shows in Fairfax, Virginia; Seattle, Washington; San Francisco at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium; and the Universal Amphitheater at Universal Studios in LA. A Q&A the band filled out for the show’s program was typically jokey: “Favourite album this year” was Check Please by The Influents; “Favourite stocking stuffer” was a “Jeff Striker Penis Pump”; “All I Want for Christmas is: Sox”; “Favorite food to eat while on tour: Whisky”; and “I would most like to tour with: Santa Claus.”

  In retrospect, Warning would come to be seen as a turning point in the band’s career, a necessary developmental step that would lay the groundwork for their artistic breakthrough with American Idiot. But it’s hard to recognise a turning point when you’re going through one. And though Warning and the subsequent tours had achieved a measure of success, there would now come a growing sense of disatisfaction with the direction of the band’s career. It was easy to overlook this as 2000 became 2001, for several months of touring in the US and overseas awaited Green Day after the Christmas break. After that, it would be time to write more songs and record the next album. Certainly no one would ever have guessed that the Green Day would not release another new studio album for four more years.

  Billie Joe at the Reading Festival, August 24, 2001. (Jon Super/Redferns)

  Billie Joe with his side project band, Pinhead Gunpowder, at the Starry Plough, Oakland, March 8, 2001. (Anthony Pidgeon/Retna)

  Green Day in disguise? The mysterious band The Network, following the group’s performance at the Key Club, Los Angeles, November 22, 2003. (Jay Blakesberg/Retna)

  In between recording introductions for their appearance on Sessions @ AOL, New York, September 20, 2004. (Clay Enos/Retna)

  American Idiot photo session, 2004. The baggy shorts and t-shirts were gone, in favor of designer wear. (Pamela Littky/Retna)

  The band’s political outspokenness on American Idiot was controversial, but gave the group their biggest hit in a decade. (Ross Halfin/Idols)

  Jason White backstage at the Billboard Music Awards, Las Vegas, December 8, 2004. Jason played his first show with Green Day in 1999, and has been the group’s second guitarist on tour ever since. (Mark Sullivan/WireImage)

  “But you can call me … asshole!” Billie Joe bashes his favourite American idiot at Irving Plaza, New York, September 21, 2004. (Kevin Mazur/WireImage)

  Mike at an outdoor concert in front of New York’s J&R Music World store, 22nd September 2004. (Eddie Malluk/WireImage)

  Mike and Tré enjoying a rare moment of relaxation, backstage at the Voodoo Music Experience festival, New Orleans, October 16, 2004. (Jason Squires/WireImage)

  The infamous pink bunny gets the crowd going before Green Day’s show at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, February 6, 2005. (Debbie Smyth/Retna)

  Billie Joe and his wife Adrienne, at the Grammy Awards, Staples Center, Los Angeles, February 13, 2005. The band picked up their first Grammy when American Idiot won the Best Rock Album award. (Christina Radish/Redferns)

  Picking up yet another honor at the MTV Video Music Awards, American Airlines Arena, August 28, 2005. ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ would win six awards, including Video of the Year; the ‘American Idiot’ video also won the Viewers’ Choice award. (John Shearer/WireImage)

  We Are The Champions: Billie Joe at Milton Keynes Bowl, June 18, 2005. The two shows held at the venue were proclaimed “Gig of the Year” by the readers of the New Musical Express. (Rowen Lawrence/WireImage)

  We’re A Happy Family: clockwise, Billie Joe, Adrienne, Joey, and Jakob at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, April l, 2006. The band was named Favorite Music Group and ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ Favorite Song. (LFI)

  Displaying their Record of the Year Grammys for ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ at the Grammy Awards, Staples Center, Los Angeles, February 8, 2006. (Steve Granitz/WireImage)

  Back On Top: after 10 years of declining sales, Green Day’s American Idiot eventually topped the 10 million-plus sales of 1994’s Dookie. (Spiros Politis/Retna)

  CHAP
TER 9

  Here A Superhit, There A Shenanigan

  “When I was doing Insomniac I didn’t want to do anything that sounded like Dookie. When I was doing Nimrod I didn’t want to do anything that was like Insomniac. With Warning I didn’t want to do anything like I did before, and now I don’t know what the hell I want to do.”