— Billie Joe to RollingStone.com, November 26, 2001
In some ways, the next few years found Green Day in something of a holding pattern. Not that the band wasn’t working; as the new millennium began, Green Day was where they could usually be found — on the road. A US concert tour opened January 11 in Dallas and ran through the end of the month. In March they played a short tour of Japan. Summer would also see a hectic round of touring. And there were plenty of new releases; appearances on compilations and soundtracks, non-album B-sides, unreleased material available on the group’s website, and the release of both greatest hits and rarities sets, not to mention their innumerable side projects. But there would be no new full-length album released until the fall of 2004; not unusual for some big acts, but it would be a first for Green Day.
The year also began with a new single to promote, the title track from Warning, which peaked at number three Modern Rock, number 24 Mainstream Rock; in the UK, it reached number 27. Adeline released a vinyl single with the non-album B-sides ‘Scumbag’ and The Ramones cover, ‘Outsider’; non-album B-sides on other versions of the single included ‘Suffocate’ and a cover of Hüsker Dü’s ‘I Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely’. The video for ‘Warning’, directed by Francis Lawrence, was filmed in San Francisco and played off the track’s lyrical suggestion of ignoring life’s warnings. A young man is shown going about his daily routine, all of which involve a degree of risk — running with scissors, swimming immediately after eating, accepting candy from a stranger — and surviving all the potential dangers without consequence. The man’s escapades are intercut with shots of the band performing the song in their house. The video had its premiere on MTV on January 22.
The group made a steady stream of TV appearances to promote the single, first appearing on The Tonight Show on February 2 performing the song. On February 23, they taped an appearance for Mad TV, again performing ‘Warning’ in addition to ‘Blood, Sex, and Booze’. (Terry Linehan from The Frustrators played second guitar as Jason White was on tour with another of his bands, The Influents, at the time.) Billie Joe played an acoustic guitar during the former number, which, combined with the blue denim jacket he wore, made him come across as an earnest singer-songwriter type; he struck more traditional “rock star” poses with his electric guitar during the second song. The studio audience got an additional treat as the group also performed ‘Brat’ and ‘The Ballad Of Wilhelm Fink’ in between the two broadcast numbers.
The same month, Adeline Records held their first showcase at San Francisco’s Fillmore on February 10. The Frustrators and The Influents were both on the bill, as were Fetish and One Time Angels. Pinhead Gunpowder also played occasional dates throughout the spring, at Oakland’s Starry Plough on March 9 and at The Clock Tower in Benicia, California on April 16. Later in the year, Billie Joe would also sit in with The Influents for two shows in July. Meanwhile, Tré was occupied with the latest addition to his family; his wife, Claudia, gave birth to their son, Frankito, in February.
In between touring, the group shot the video for their next single, ‘Waiting’, over the weekend of April 14 to 15, at a house in the West Adams neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The video debuted on April 24, when Green Day appeared on Montreal’s music channel Musique Plus, playing a 90-minute set for a studio audience. The clip, directed by Marc Webb, was a straight performance video, with the group seen playing in the living room of a comfortably lived-in house, while their friends dance and frolic around them. The song was the lowest charting from Warning, only reaching number 26 Modern Rock and number 34 in the UK.
On April 15, Joey Ramone, lead singer of The Ramones, succumbed to lymphatic cancer after a lengthy struggle. The band had been one of Green Day’s biggest influences, and Mike quickly issued a public statement, noting that Ramone’s death had occurred on Easter Sunday: “Ironically, religion gets its Icon back and American punk culture loses theirs. I think an end of an era has come and I’ve never felt as old as I do right now … Thanks always come a day late and a dollar short but my respect has and will always be there for the band that showed me that simple songs and a simple life could make you happy.” He signed off, “Oh yeah!! and the kid in The Ramones T-shirt will always be cool … GABBA GABBA HEY.” Billie Joe later told Launch.com, “If it wasn’t for them, my band wouldn’t exist. They’re one of those bands that definitely had a direct influence or impact on the way we even look at songwriting.” The band later provided a taped musical tribute that aired at a fiftieth birthday party celebration in honor of the late singer, held May 19 at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. US Representative Gary Ackerman issued a congressional proclamation on the same date, declaring it “Joey Ramone Day.”
The group’s next visit to New York was more than a little hectic. They began April 26 by appearing on The Howard Stern Show. Then it was off to The Late Show. In reference to Tré’s previous antics on the program, host David Letterman noted while introducing the group, “It’s great that we have a pain management doctor in the audience, because every time on the show, the drummer — who’s unstable — does something strange and he hurts himself … keep your eye on the drummer!” The band then launched into ‘Waiting’. Tré didn’t hurt himself, but toward the song’s end, he did stand on his drum stool and dumped a box of potato flakes over his head to the audience’s laughter and applause; even Billie Joe had a bit of difficulty keeping a straight face. At the song’s end, Tré rolled over his kit, lay on the floor, then got up and ran into the audience, leaping on a lap or two before escaping out the back door. “A very troubled youngster!” Letterman observed.
And the band’s day wasn’t over yet. They next headed to the legendary venue CBGB’s to see their friend Jesse Malin in his new band, Bellevue. (Malin, who’d also played with East Bay band D Generation, later signed to Adeline as a solo artist.) Green Day then took the stage for a surprise set of their own, playing to a delighted audience estimated to be around 100 people. Many of the songs were drawn from the group’s first two albums, with only two songs from their new album. Though the size of the crowd meant it was less frenzied than their usual audiences, a young man did manage to briefly crowd-surf during ‘409 In Your Coffeemaker’. The band also chatted a lot more between songs, as they had in earlier years. “I like that song,” Billie Joe said after playing ‘Going To Pasalacqua’. “That’s a good song. I like that one. If I do say so myself!” When someone shouted a request for ‘Mahogany’, Billie Joe responded with, “You don’t think I can play that song, do you?” then proceeded to perform the song’s first verse. “That is some creepy shit, ain’t it?” Mike observed afterwards. “Reminds you of being molested by your fuckin’ uncle or something!” Billie Joe regained control of the situation by putting in his own request. “I like this song, therefore, we’re going to play it,” he said by way of introducing ‘She’. “This is not a democracy, fuck off!”
Later that week they attended the California Music Awards, held April 28 at Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium. Green Day ended up walking away with “everything … but Carlos Santana’s hat,” wrote journalist Joel Selvin, winning an impressive eight awards: Artist of the Year, Outstanding Group, Billie Joe named Outstanding Male Vocalist and Outstanding Songwriter, Mike named Outstanding Bassist, Tré named Outstanding Drummer, and Warning named both Outstanding Album and Outstanding Punk Rock/Ska Album. The Outstanding Songwriter award was especially notable for Billie Joe, given that the competition had included Neil Young, perhaps prompting him to note, “Punk rock is about writing songs!” on accepting the award. When Tré won his Outstanding Drummer award, he pulled off the same on-off stunt he’d done on The Late Show, dashing up, running across the stage, pausing briefly to snatch his award, and tearing right off again. What host Huey Lewis meant when he said, “That Green Day, they’re all class — in a weird sort of way,” wasn’t exactly clear, but the group returned for a brief musical performance at the show’s end.
Work on side projects also conti
nued apace, with Billie Joe co-writing the track ‘Unforgiven’ for The Go-Go’s reunion album, God Bless The Go-Go’s, released May 15. The collaboration came about after Billie Joe joined the group onstage during a performance the previous August, singing along to ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’, then hung out with them after the show. He also appeared on a record released by his old OpIvy friend Jesse Michaels and his new band, Common Rider, whose EP — Thief In A Sleeping Town — was released on August 22 on Lookout. (Jason White also appeared on the EP.) In a “Top 5” list for Rolling Stone, Billie Joe had previously cited Common Rider’s 1999 album Last Wave Rockers as one of his favourite records of the year. He also served as an engineer and mixer on Tilt’s 2001 album Been Where? Did What?
The group’s last US tour of the year started in June, with the band performing ‘Waiting’ on The Tonight Show on June 13 as a warm-up. The tour began June 17 in Minneapolis, ran until July 3, then picked up again on July 20 and ran until August 5. While in New York, they appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on June 28, again performing ‘Waiting’. On tour, Billie Joe was again announcing, “That’s it for our set list. Do you have any requests?” after a few opening songs, encouraging audience suggestions. And once the band tired of honouring requests for Green Day songs, they urged the crowd to suggest covers. At a show at Milwaukee’s Eagles Ballroom on June 18, for example, they ended up covering ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’, part of ‘Eye Of The Tiger’, and what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described as “a few quick jabs at Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit.” When a fan was invited onstage to play guitar, the paper noted he had to “pass a rigorous test to prove his worthiness: jump from the balcony and crowd surf to the stage. And although it took him a while to build up the nerve for the plummet, he eventually made it to the stage and proceeded to show up Armstrong with his guitar chops.” The show ended with ‘When I Come Around’, the crowd singing along with gusto when it became apparent Billie Joe couldn’t remember all the words. “Not surprisingly, fans found out what they already knew: the band is still the ultimate ’90s punk-pop group,” the Sentinel concluded. The Washington Post was somewhat less complimentary during the tour, saying of the group’s June 24 date at Washington, D.C.’s Bender Arena, “Mostly it was just three guys telling noisy tales about boredom and horniness in the suburbs, with a very limited musical vocabulary,” though the writer did concede, “It’s an approach to rock that has survived the onslaught of hip-hop and electronica and outlived grunge and metal. As long as there are suburbs and guitars, it’s going to inspire kids to pogo. And start their own bands.” While in D.C., the group appeared on a local radio station and Tré performed an ode to fellatio that would’ve confirmed the Post’s assessment of the band’s “horniness.”
After the completion of the US tour, the group returned to Studio 880 to record some more songs: re-recording of ‘Maria’ (a song they’d previously recorded in March and which appeared as a B-side on the vinyl version of ‘Waiting’, released by Adeline) along with a new song, ‘Poprocks & Coke’. In an interview with MTV.com, Mike revealed the group was also working on other songs, ostensibly for their next album. “The songs are coming out quickly, but we don’t want to force anything,” he said. “Our thing is just get in there and pound the songs out and let them come out when they’re ready.” He added that the next record would not be as (relatively) low key as Warning: “I feel like the last record is so complete that to try to take over where that one left off would be kind of futile … I just think the fact that we’ve had a nice break from making hard and fast music has made us want to do it [again].”
The group had continued to drop by Studio 880, even when they weren’t working. “Whenever they’re home, they’re here,” says John Lucasey. “They always come by. If they’re going to the airport, I’ll get cars in my lots, and I’d be like, ‘Who the hell’s car is it? Oh, it’s Tré’s, he must be gone visiting New York or something.’ Or they’ll just stop by and get a burrito and just sit in and ask what’s going on.”
They even got involved in the studio’s renovations, truly making it “the house that Green Day built” in more ways than one. “During Warning I started construction on a second room, which they love very much now,” Lucasey says. “I’ve consulted Mike on a lot of things, like on the building of the spaces, and even the offices. Mike designed his house, and he’s designed a couple of houses, and he’s helped design a restaurant. It’s just amazing, his artistic mind. So whenever I’d be stuck on something, he’d be the person I called, the only other person who I thought was wacked enough to understand what’s going on. And he would say, ‘No, what you’re gonna do is …’ He wouldn’t suggest, he would tell you. A lot of the elements in this studio are Mike Dirnt-born. In fact, for a short time he had an office here. He even cut the ribbons for the front of the building here. I couldn’t think of anybody better to do it!”
The group then headed to Europe. By late August, they hit the UK festival circuit, beginning with the Reading Festival on the twenty-fourth (where, after Tré’s drum kit, a guitar, and a speaker stack were all set on fire, the group took up acoustic instruments to finish their set), Leeds on the twenty-fifth, and Glasgow on the twenty-sixth. The group recorded an interview for Steve Lamacq’s Evening Sessions Radio 1 program and also attended the Kerrang! awards, having been nominated in three categories: Best International Live Act, Best Band in the World, and Classic Songwriter, winning in the latter category. The band then returned to the states.
As a result, they were at home when the September 11 attacks on America occurred. After hearing the news, they ended up going into Studio 880, though not to work. “They came in and just sat together for a couple days,” John Lucasey recalls, “not wanting to record, or even watch the news anymore. They just needed each other, as well as their families.”
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, a list of “lyrically questionable” songs circulated among the 1, 100-plus radio stations that were part of the Clear Channel Communications network, with a suggestion that they be temporarily pulled from playlists lest they prove too disturbing. Songs that referenced planes (Peter, Paul, and Mary’s ‘Leavin’ on a Jet Plane’, Steve Miller’s ‘Jet Airliner’) were perhaps obvious contenders, but the inclusion of tracks like The Bangles’ ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ and Green Day’s ‘Brain Stew’ were more puzzling. Even John Lennon’s decidedly anti-war ‘Imagine’ and Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York,’ made the list, though these were songs that some might take comfort in hearing. Indeed, E! Online reported that one New York City radio station said both numbers were among their most-requested songs that week.
When news of the list was made public, Clear Channel hastily issued a press release denying that any of the songs were being censored, saying, “Clear Channel Radio has not banned any songs from any of its radio stations. It is up to every radio station program director and general manager to understand their market, listen to their listeners, and guide their station’s music selections according to local sensitivities.” They did admit that the list was compiled by one of their program directors, but added, “This was not a mandate, nor was the list generated out of the corporate radio offices. It was a grassroots effort that was apparently circulated among program directors.” (The New York Times said that a “smaller list” of songs was generated by the corporate office, “but an overzealous regional executive began contributing suggestions and circulating the list via e-mail, where it continued to grow.”)
It was indicative of a sea change in the cultural climate of the US; post-9/11, there was going to be no room for dissent. As President George Bush put it when he addressed a joint session of the US Congress on September 20, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,” and performers who later attacked the administration ran the risk of being penalised for their views. In one of the most reported examples, when Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks made the statement, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed that
the President of the United States is from Texas” (The Dixie Chicks’ home state) at a London concert in March 2003, the group’s songs were yanked from radio playlists across America.
But interestingly, the members of Green Day didn’t face censure when they made similar remarks. The US began bombing Afghanistan on October 7 and Tré told Launch.com the same month: “I object to any killing at all. It’s terrible what happened [on September 11] and I think retaliation definitely makes sense and it’s definitely one option. But, personally, I prefer peace.” Even more surprising was his blunt opposition to the Bush administration: “I knew the day that George Bush was elected President that we were in deep, deep shit.” This was an exceptionally daring statement for a major artist to make at a time when Bush was enjoying record-high approval ratings of around 90%. Further, it was less than a month after then-US Press Secretary Ari Fleischer had ominously warned the American public that they “need to watch what they say, watch what they do” during a White House press conference. Tré was even brasher when talking to Joel McIver of Record Collector: “Take my personal freedoms, go ahead. I don’t care. Tap my phone, Mr. Bush. Do whatever you want. Fuck my ass too, it’s all right. God bless America!”
Adeline Records had previously scheduled a showcase at Gilman for September 16, with The Thumbs, Agent 51, One Time Angels, and The Influents on the bill. The show went ahead and Green Day also put in a surprise appearance, defying Gilman’s “No bands on major labels” ban. “No one wants to think about what happened a few days ago,” said Mike. “So let’s try and have some fun.” Yet the band’s performance also showed that some grudges never die. “No one bitched on the night,” Mike later told Q about their Gilman appearance, “but they sure debated it the day after.” Still, not everyone felt that way; one attendee told Spin, “It was like they never left. Who they were and where they’ve been didn’t even enter into it.” Further Adeline showcases were held in October at the Showcase Theater in Corona on the twentieth (with The Frustrators, The Influents, One Time Angels, and Agent 51 on the bill) and the Troubadour in Hollywood on the twenty-first (with Fetish replacing Agent 51).The Frustrators also played a show with LA speed punks, The Dickies, on September 22 at the Minnow in Alameda, California.
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