In November, Green Day business was back to the forefront, with the release of the greatest-hits collections International Superhits (on CD) and the accompanying International Supervideos on DVD, on November 13 in the US (the day before in most of the rest of the world). The group hadn’t initially been keen on releasing a greatest-hits set. “We were kind of indifferent about it,” Billie Joe admitted to Guitar World. “We all felt it was perhaps too early in our career to release a best-of. But when we started to add up all of the successful singles we’ve had, we realised we had the makings of a pretty damn good record.”
“We wrote them, you bought them, and now you’re buying them again,” Tré joked to another reporter. But along with the new songs ‘Maria’ and ‘Poprocks & Coke’, the CD included ‘J.A.R.’, which hadn’t previously been featured on a Green Day album. ‘Maria’ was the first track on the album and opened with an excerpt from the interview a five-year-old Billie Joe had done for his ‘Look For Love’ single, which, by 2001, must have felt like it had been recorded a lifetime ago. The song was an invigorating slice of pop-punk, with surprisingly biting lyrics lurking underneath, the title character being an unabashed, free-wheeling insurrectionist. Conversely, ‘Poprocks & Coke’ was a straightforward love song that wouldn’t have been out of place on Warning.
The cover of both the CD and the DVD featured the same image: the group’s forms in silhouette, their name above them, and the release’s title below. Both the band name and title emerged from a pop art-esque band of bright colours: pink, orange, and yellow. “Obviously, they were taking the piss out of the idea of doing a greatest-hits release in the first place with such an ostentatious title,” says Chris Bilheimer of the design. (“We prefer to call [the album’s songs] ‘Superhits’ in all ridiculousness,” Tré confirmed to Launch.com.) “The first thing I thought of with International Superhits were those compilations you see advertised on TV. I thought, let’s go over the top and do a really garish design that looks like those old compilations. I did one mock-up of that design, and the outline of the band is actually a photograph from the Warning photo sessions, because I didn’t have a current photo session. So I just outlined that. Then I went to D.C. — they were playing a radio festival up there — with just this one idea. I showed up with one piece of paper, my first idea, and they were like, ‘I love it, it’s done.’ For Superhits, they gave me the title and that was it.” Bilheimer also put together another EPK for the record, hosted by comedian and writer Greg Behrendt. “I only spent a couple of days in the studio and just filmed them a little bit,” he says. “For Superhits they only recorded two new songs, so there wasn’t a whole lot going on.”
The album only reached a surprising number 40 in the Billboard Top 200, but reached number 15 in the UK. In assessing the band’s career, Billie Joe told RollingStone.com, “Everything that we’ve achieved has come naturally to us. And everything that has come to us, it wasn’t about some huge marketing plan. I think people genuinely liked our songs. A lot of bands have to trade in their integrity to get what they want, and the gross thing about it is that they have no problems doing it at all. I think we’ve accomplished a true sense of independence.”
The group made numerous TV appearances at the time of the International releases. The week of November 12 saw them in Vancouver, B.C., taping an appearance on The Chris Isaak Show (a connection undoubtedly fostered by Rob Cavallo’s having produced Isaak’s 1998 album, Speak of the Devil).The episode, entitled “The Wrong Number,” had the band playing with Isaak on the songs ‘Hitchin’ A Ride’ and Isaak’s own ‘One Day’ in between trashing Isaak’s home. It aired the following year, and the group also appeared on a subsequent episode, “Charity Begins at Home.” Then it was back to Los Angeles, where the group performed a particularly intense ‘Hitchin’ A Ride’ on The Tonight Show on November 19. Billie Joe let out a few sustained cries during the instrumental breaks, then motioned for the band to play softly during the break before the final chorus, meaning that when the group came back in at full volume, the effect was that of a punch straight to the gut. At the song’s conclusion, Billie Joe stood on his left leg with his right cocked behind him as he played the final chord, then nonchalantly holding his right hand in the air. They also appeared on the radio program Rockline, playing live in the studio (including older songs like ‘She’, ‘Scattered’, ‘Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?’, and, the only track from Superhits, ‘Minority’) and taking questions from callers. The next day they appeared on The Late Late Show, performing ‘Minority’ and ‘Maria’, with Tré giving his drum set a “love tap” with a bat at the end of the latter song.
A video was shot at the end of October for the song ‘Macy’s Day Parade’, which also appeared on the International Superhits CD, though it had not been released as a single. “That was just a simple one,” says director Mark Kohr. “All it is, is a one-shot video of Billie walking through this defunct steel plant site that’s been vacant for years. It was about, in a certain kind of way, leaving behind failures and having the hope to move on; and so it’s just basically him walking through the ruins, and then saying, ‘There’s hope’ and then leaving.” The video was shot in black and white, underscoring the poignancy of the song, with Billie Joe looking unusually conservative with neat, closely cropped hair and wearing a suit and tie. The rest of the band plays in an uncharacteristically subdued fashion off to the side, and Billie Joe eventually joins them, but only strums the guitar for a minute before putting it down in favour of wandering through the industrial wasteland again. “It did get played some, but not that much,” says Kohr. “It wasn’t that popular.” A video for ‘Poprocks & Coke’ was also prepared. As in ‘Last Ride In’, the band isn’t seen performing the song; the video is a compilation of footage shot at rehearsals and studio sessions.
Green Day’s fans were also pleased by the sudden appearance of some Billie Joe demos on the band’s website, recorded in his basement studio. The quality was rough, but it was great fun to hear Billie Joe working out songs — none of which were later recorded by Green Day — at home. Soon after, three Christmas songs also appeared: ‘The First Noel’, ‘Rocking Around the Christmas Tree’, and ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’.
There was more touring coming up in 2002, but given that there was no new album to promote, the schedule was more relaxed. On January 19, the group appeared at the Winter X Games VI in Aspen, Colorado. Then came a gig they probably wouldn’t have missed for anything in the world, when The Ramones were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The ceremony was held March 18, 2002, at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, sporting a new mohawk, gave the induction speech, which rambled on for 17 minutes and prompted some booing from the audience (Vedder’s response: “Fuck you”), but which also recognised the magic of what the group achieved, a quality Vedder saw as missing from the current music scene. “They were armed with two-minute songs that they rattled off like machine gun fire,” he said, “and it was enough to change the Earth’s revolution. Now it’s Disney kids singing songs written by old men and being marketed to six- and seven-year-olds, so some kind of change might have to happen again soon.”
And then it was Green Day’s turn. With Billie Joe and Mike in “concert stance,” pummeling their instruments fiercely as Tré pounded on his drum kit behind them, the group blasted through a powerhouse set of ‘Rockaway Beach’, ‘Teenage Lobotomy’, and ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, which induced a number of the black-tie audience to jump to their feet, enthusiastically punching their fists in the air. “It was like Joey was in the room and we played our asses off for him,” Billie Joe later told Rolling Stone. It was noted the group left the event immediately afterwards without heading backstage where reporters traditionally wait at the event to conduct interviews, but the band members claimed they weren’t aware of this procedure. Instead, the group headed for a party upstairs, dragging Dee Dee Ramone into the elevator with them. Unfortunately, the elevator got stuck, forcing ever
yone to climb out, but as Billie Joe noted, “I would have been fine getting stuck in the elevator with Dee Dee Ramone any day of the week.”
Later, on the group’s website, Billie Joe addressed what he saw as a mistaken view about The Ramones; that they were ultimately “unsuccessful” because they were only critically acclaimed and had not sold many records. “I thought they were the most successful band in the world,” Billie Joe’s statement read in part. “The Ramones has this sort of good following everywhere. And everywhere, all these punk bands had started up — thousands and thousands of punk-rock bands. And I think that is way more important than having a hit single or a Platinum record. I would give that in a minute to have something like that. I think that is the most important kind of success that a band can ever have — the ability to influence.” He also mentioned the thrill of finally meeting Dee Dee Ramone (“For some people, that might be like meeting Marlon Brando or something”), and was pleased that the green-haired “son of the rhythm section in The Talking Heads” (Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth) had so obviously enjoyed Green Day’s set; in footage of the event, both the couple’s sons, Egan and Robin Franz, can be seen bopping away in front of the stage.
At the end of the month, Green Day began a quick tour of Japan (a live seven-track album taken from the tour, Tune In Tokyo, was released that October in Japan only). It was then announced the band was joining forces with Blink-182 for what was billed as The Pop Disaster Tour (a name Mike had come up with), set to open April 17 at the Centennial Garden in Bakersfield, California and running through June 17. The initial suggestion for the tour had come from the Blink-182 camp. While batting around ideas for a summer tour, the band’s bassist, Mark Hoppus, recalling the earlier Monsters Of Rock festivals (held in Castle Donington, England, featuring heavy-metal acts), had thought, why not a Monsters Of Punk Rock tour? Green Day proved to be receptive, while Reprise also thought the tour would be a good way of reminding audiences exactly who had influenced bands like Blink-182 in the first place. “There were a handful of new bands influenced by Green Day that a younger generation was paying more attention to than Green Day,” Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Tom Whalley later told Billboard. “Before we lost that younger generation, we wanted to make them aware of Green Day.”
Though officially co-headliners (and both would play 75-minute sets), Blink-182 closed the show, but bassist Mark Hoppus was gracious enough to tell Rolling Stone that Green Day was “a huge influence for us. Green Day breaking punk rock into the mainstream consciousness really helped us and opened up people’s minds to our kind of music.” For his part, Billie Joe joked about the “big production” the band was going to bring on the road: “We’re going to be biting the heads off bats,” he said. He added that he hoped Blink-182’s presence would provide “a challenge … I’m looking for people to walk away saying, ‘Whoa! That was a great show!’” Hoppus suggested the group consider swapping set lists on occasion, an idea unfortunately not taken up.
Darryl Eaton of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) — who booked both acts — was perhaps a little indelicate when, in reference to the tour’s ticket price range of $30 to $35, he said to Billboard, “That’s only $5 to $7 over what we charged on the last Blink tour, so in essence, they’re getting Green Day for $5 to $7.” In fact, reviews tended to favour Green Day over Blink-182. In reviewing the tour’s April 24 date at the Forum in Inglewood, California, Variety said that Green Day “proved it is the better of the two veteran bands with a supertight showcase of its many hits,” citing ‘Waiting’ as a particular highlight, “though Armstrong’s poor harmonica playing should be removed from the tune.” By comparison, the reviewer held his nose over Blink-182’s “endless potty-mouth shtick [which] seemed even more gratuitous and juvenile than usual after Green Day’s excellent set,” and, even worse, noted that “the crowd appeared to grow restless long before the band’s time was up.”
On April 27, as the group was playing San Francisco’s Shoreline Auditorium, they were also being honoured across the bay at the California Music Awards, again held at the Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Auditorium, winning Outstanding Group. Two days later, the band played even closer to home at the Oakland Arena, with profits from the show going to the city’s Children’s Hospital. Billie Joe told Launch.com, “We’ve been dicked over on some charities but this organisation is solid and everyone’s money [from the] tickets is going directly to Children’s Hospital … Plus, you know, Tré’s been in and out of Children’s Hospital his entire life, either breaking something or in the psych ward. And then my kids and his kids and Mike’s kids will probably do the same thing.”
In its review of the show, the San Francisco Chronicle unsurprisingly came down in favour of the home crew. “Green Day remains the hotter band,” wrote Neva Chonin. With the group dressed in “fashionable black,” “Billie Joe Armstrong was a consummate ham, leaping and bouncing across the stage, goading fans, climbing on stacks of speakers to shower the audience with a squirt gun, and leading the group through spastic punk jam sessions,” while delivering “a string of greatest hits that kept the crowd singing along even as it danced itself breathless.” Conversely, “Blink’s 60-minute, paint-by-numbers set paled in the aftermath of the Oakland punk-pop pioneers’ rousing performance.” To Chonin’s ears, the “fuzzy sound” only “highlighted the fact that many of Blink’s songs sound depressingly alike” and she also took exception to Blink-182’s vulgarity: “A few sex jokes are funny; nonstop scatology is a snooze.”
The spring had also seen the release of The Frustrators’ first album, Achtung Jackass, released March 5 on Adeline. “An awesome East Bay display of truly magnificent musical madness” read one ad for the record, though the subsequent questions the ad posed — “New wave? Punk? Country? Ball-busting rock? Stand-up comedy? All of the above?” — remained unanswered. In the summer came the release of another Green Day collection, Shenanigans, a compilation of B-sides and rarities that was released July 2. The album offered fans a chance to pick up stray songs they might have missed, given the number of non-album tracks the band had released over the years on import singles, compilations, and other types of releases. Songs like the ’50s-flavored ‘On the Wagon’ and the cover of The Kinks’ ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’ (which featured some wonderfully dreamy harmonies) dated back to the Dookie era. There were other fun covers, such as Fang’s ‘I Want To Be On TV’ (B-side of ‘Geek Stink Breath’) and The Ramones’ ‘Outsider’ (which had appeared on a Ramones tribute album and the soundtrack of The New Guy). ‘Espionage’ was another soundtrack number, an homage to the music of James Bond spy thrillers and perfectly suited for the spy film satire, Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
‘Do Da Da’ had been recorded during Insomniac, when it was then titled ‘Stuck With You,’ not to be confused with the song of that name that did end up on Insomniac. It first appeared as a ‘Brain Stew’ B-side. The raucous ‘Desensitized’ was recorded during the Nimrod sessions, and Billie Joe later admitted the band wished they’d put it on the album. Instead, it became a ‘Good Riddance’ B-side and as a bonus track on the import version of Nimrod, along with ‘Suffocate’, ‘You Lied’, and ‘Do Da Da’. Mike had written lyrics for both ‘Scumbag’ (a ‘Warning’ B-side) and ‘Ha Ha You’re Dead’ (which had also appeared on the Adeline compilation, Every Dog Will Have Its Day), a kiss-off to an enemy that brought the record to a satisfying close.
The cover of Shenanigans had a spray-painted portrait of the group on a wall next to a public telephone, created by Chris Bilheimer, an idea he got from a fashion spread in a magazine. “Instead of photographs of the clothing, the guy had spray painted pictures of models wearing the clothing,” he explains. “It was such a great concept, that I took the band a copy of the magazine and said, ‘What if we spray paint stencils of you guys?’ and they said, ‘Great.’ I did it and that was it. That was another kind of easy one.” Or, relatively easy. “Something that elaborate takes about an hour and a half,” says Bilheime
r. “I had fourteen stencils. Different big paper stencils. And I actually just spray painted it onto a sheet of plywood and then photographed a blank wall, and faked it on the computer. Which makes me feel like a big pussy, because if I was really punk rock I would have done it and gotten arrested. But it’s not exactly something you can do very stealthily.” If you look closely, you can see that the abandoned cans of spray paint that lie under the portrait are all labeled “Green Day” “That sort of expresses my obsessive compulsive side,” says Bilheimer. “I still have some of those cans here in my office.”
The inside cover features a collage of images, mostly drawn from the group’s previous album covers, with individual portraits of the band spray painted on top. “With the inside of Shenanigans there’s a sense of you’re looking at a span of their career,” says Bilheimer. “In a lot of cases, it’s the cast-offs, the flotsam and jetsam of what they’ve been doing. That was the concept — it’s posters from their career and you’re just seeing parts of them, you’re seeing the leftover scraps and pieces.” The spray-painted portraits on top also give a sense of their work being defaced. “That’s one of my favourite things about working with Green Day, there’s a huge sense of humour in what they do,” Bilheimer says. “Which there isn’t so much in the stuff I do for R.E.M.”
The album performed better than International Superhits had in the US, reaching number 27 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. But the record also got some mixed reviews; some described it as filler, simply released to squeeze more money from the fans, but others not only welcomed a collection that pulled together a number of rarities, they felt the songs were more than capable of standing on their own merits. “There are bands who write songs as and when the record company demands,” said Kerrang!, “and then there are bands who just can’t help but knock out gem after gem — on tour, off tour, and in their sleep. There’s enough quality material here to suggest Green Day fall squarely in the latter category.”
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