July also marked the start of another UK tour, which began July 11 in Manchester, and included shows in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. The shows began with the spirited ‘Maria’, perhaps not as familiar, perhaps not a big hit, but with an invigorating guitar line and propulsive drumbeat that never failed to get the crowd stomping and cheering (the flash pot explosions after the first verse didn’t hurt either). Audiences were always ready to sing-along with old favourites like ‘Longview’ and ‘Basket Case’, and newer live favourites like ‘Hitchin’ A Ride’ and ‘King For A Day’ kept the pace lively. The setlist was split fairly evenly among Green Day’s Reprise albums, though ‘Brain Stew’-‘Jaded’ was usually the only number from Insomniac. In his review of the second of two shows at London’s Wembley Arena for Dot Music online, Matt Thompson noted the band’s usual antics (including flash pot explosions and Billie Joe spraying the crowd with an oversize water pistol), but added, “Between the madness it’s easy to forget the sheer punk grandeur of Green Day’s songs … there’s no sign that the band have lost their love for this performing malarkey and after doing it for so long they sure have mastered their art, right down to the vacant stare in Billie Joe’s eyes and the shake of drummer, Tré Cool’s blue rinse hair … The show is both accomplished and ragged, but always top class, and by the time it’s over there’s not a single punter who isn’t grinning like a dumb kid and wishing the band will carry on all night.”
While overseas, the group also taped various radio appearances for the BBC. And then came another long break from live performance, at least in the guise of Green Day; another two years, in fact. Work on the next album continued, as did the band members’ involvement in various side projects, such as Billie Joe’s appearance on an episode of the TV show Haunted, playing a gambler. Mike took time out to have wrist surgery, as years of bass playing had finally resulted in his developing carpal tunnel syndrome.
He also entered the restaurant business, becoming co-owner of the Rudy’s Can’t Fail Café, which opened in Emeryville in September, at the corner of Park Avenue and Hollis Street. The site had previously been the location of Eugene’s Ranch House, a diner that had opened in 1964 and had been patronised by the many factory workers in the area. But as the factories began closing, business had slacked off.
The owners decided to sell in 2002 and the building was purchased by Jeffrey Bischoff, the guitarist in Tilt. He also ran the merchandising company Cinderblock and had been a customer of Eugene’s for many years. His partners in the venture were Zach Zeisler, his accountant; Steve Mills, a general contractor; and Mike, who was initially more of a silent partner (“Rumors of an anonymous, millionaire rock-star owner swirl around the place like meringue on a banana cream pie” said an early story on the restaurant), but his involvement eventually became publicly known.
The restaurant took its name from The Clash song, ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’ (from London Calling), and its design was ’50s-retro mixed with punk-rock touches, such as a display of Barbie dolls identically dressed as waitresses, vintage games, toys under the glass-topped tables, and a bulletin board with a Polaroid picture of the “Band Of The Month.” The specials might have rock-themed names like “Mr. Roadie’s Fish & Chips,” “Give ’em Enough Meatloaf,” and “God Save Southern Fried Chicken,” but the generous portions and reasonable prices made the café an instant hit with the locals, such as businesses like Pixar Animation Studios, located across the street. (Coincidentally, Clash lead singer and guitarist Joe Strummer died that December of a heart attack; Billie Joe posted a version of The Clash’s ‘Bankrobber’ he’d recorded on the band’s website as a tribute.)
The state of the American union was also very much on the band’s mind at the time. When the US began bombing Afghanistan in October 2001, fans who visited the group’s website were solicited for their views. And as talk of a war with Iraq heated up in 2002, Green Day’s opposition to the administration became even stronger. Billie Joe posted an audio message on the group’s website that urged fans to sign a petition opposing the war (or, in his words, “strongly urging [President Bush] to re-think his plans for military invasion,” adding, “This petition isn’t only for people who live in America, but people all over the world. So, even if you know someone at work or at school who doesn’t even know what Green Day is, tell them to log on to greenday.net, type in their name and where they’re from. I want to get as many names as possible.”
Billie Joe later wrote he was gratified by the response to his appeal: “All of the opinions were honest and polite and nasty, and for that I commend you,” he said. The group’s seemingly new interest in politics was but a taste of what was to come.
CHAPTER 10
At The Threshold
“Breaking up was an option. We were arguing a lot and we were miserable. We needed to shift directions.”
— Mike to Rolling Stone, February 24, 2005
2003 did not begin on an auspicious note for Billie Joe, who was arrested on January 5 for driving while intoxicated. Taken into custody at the Berkeley County Jail, he paid his bail fee of $1,053 and was released.
More important was the looming crisis in the band’s career. Since the release of International Superhits, the band had been asked repeatedly about the release of their next studio album and the answer was always some variation of, “We’re working on it.” MTV.com even reported that the band had “seven songs written and another three under construction.” “The songs are coming out quickly, but we don’t want to force anything,” Mike was quoted as saying. “Our thing is just get in there and pound the songs out and let them come out when they’re ready.” But no release dates ever seemed to be forthcoming.
It was later said that the band had completed an album during this time, provisionally entitled Cigarettes And Valentines, but that the master tapes had been stolen, forcing the band to start all over again. There has always been some mystery surrounding this claim. Where exactly were the tapes stolen from? Several stories stated it was the band’s recording studio, but owner John Lucasey insists this isn’t so. “They were not taken out of Studio 880,” he says. “We take so much pride about our security. Our front gates stay closed, you gotta check in once you’re inside, we’ve got safes and everything. I had clients asking me about that, and I’m like, ‘No, trust me. It’s all good here.’” Were the police ever notified? Were only master tapes taken and not tapes of rehearsals, demos, jams? Were there no backup copies available? Nor did whoever took the tapes apparently know their value, for the tracks have never appeared on bootlegs or on the Internet. As Q noted, “Armstrong seems cagey on the subject and even says that perhaps [the tapes were] just ‘mislaid.’” In addition, a December 2004 Billboard story said the tapes weren’t stolen, but “accidentally erased from a computer drive” and quoted Mike as saying, “We still have some burned CDs but those are not good enough to release.”
But for whatever reason, the group was now free to start over in a new direction. And not just musically; for the first time, the band members also decided to address the growing grievances between them. Mike told Entertainment Weekly that when he and Billie Joe were speaking on the phone after the Pop Disaster tour, Billie Joe had suddenly confronted him by asking, “Do you wanna fucking do this anymore?” “And I was like, ‘Well, yeah, but we’re fucking miserable a lot of the time, and we gotta get to the core of this shit.’ A lot of it came from bundling shit up and not treating each other like grown men.”
Green Day didn’t go quite as far as Metallica did (hiring a therapist and filming the sessions, as seen in the 2004 documentary, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster), but found that more informal sessions of mandatory “talk time” were beneficial. “Admitting that we cared for each other was a big thing,” Tré told Rolling Stone. “We didn’t hold anything back.” Billie Joe admitted feeling intimidated about bringing new ideas to the table, lest Mike and Tré make fun of them. Mike and Tré admitted their resentment at being shut out. As Mike explained to Q, he
told Billie Joe, “We’re not, like, staff. You’re the President, but we’re the cabinet and you’ve gotta consult us.”
Airing their differences enabled the band to get back to work with a new confidence and determination. “At one point, they just kinda looked at each other and said, ‘Fuck it, we’ve got to do the album we want, and we’ve got to do it on our time,’” says Lucasey. “‘We’re not in Hollywood and people aren’t gonna prod us anymore.’ So all of a sudden they just started having fun.”
For a while, some of that “fun” involved Green Day’s typical love of vandalism, as when Tré painted the walls of the studio’s lounge with glow-in-the-dark paint. Lucasey finally noticed it when he was locking up the place one night. “Everything looked normal, then I turned out the lights, and I went, ‘What?’” he says. “I turned back on the lights, nothing there. Turn them off. What the hell? It was all over all the walls. And the refrigerator! It was everywhere. It was horrible. So I took knives to the heads of his drums.” It wasn’t the first abuse inflicted on the fridge; it also bears numerous dents as a result of Tré driving golf balls into it.
Next to the lounge is a large room that was initially designated as a game room, where Green Day indulged in further horseplay. One of the doors is black, with the words “Painted Black” on it in red, a joking reference to The Rolling Stones’ song, ‘Paint It Black’. The walls are a deep red; one features a large mural by Bulgarian artist Vladimir Bibera that spells out the word “Oakland”. A wide array of artifacts are hung throughout the room, such as a poster advertising a Charlie Chaplin Midnight Film Festival that has a picture of Green Day pasted on it, the photo altered to show Billie Joe sporting the Little Tramp’s trademark moustache. Lucasey has painted gold stars in various places in honour of the star tattoos the members of Green Day have. And there’s a collection of what can only be described as rock’n’roll action figures, with such names as “Goth Guy” and “The Geek,” plus the requisite Beavis and Butthead figures. (“What’s a rock studio without a Beavis and Butthead?” says Lucasey.)
As befits a game room, there’s an air hockey table and a beautiful old billiards table, with black fringe dangling from the pockets and bear-claw legs, made by Golden West Billiard Manufacturing. And among the castoff clothing, go-karts, and old guitar cases, there’s also some workout equipment. At one time, the room also had an eight-lane slot car race track. “Seventeen feet wide by 32 feet long,” brags Lucasey. “But it was taken out because Tré figured out a way to make a ramp for the slot cars — pretty ingenious, actually — and would run them on the strait and launch them across the room into my cinderblock wall. He destroyed roughly 25 cars in about an hour’s time. Those cars cost me around 50 to 100 bucks per car, so I figured this could get quite expensive. So, with much regret, the track left.” Crazy-looking cars were painted on the wall in compensation.
The room was also home to “a real insane game Tré and I used to play,” says Lucasey. “We cleared this room out completely, and Tré and I used to play a little game of chicken. We’d open the doors on each side of the room. Then Tré would take his golf club, set up a golf ball, and hit it as hard as he could against the cinderblock wall on the far side. And the ball would come flying back at you, at maybe 150 miles an hour. And we’d each stand by a door, and whoever dodged out of their door would be the loser. I mean, it was almost risking our lives doing it. And everybody else thought we were just complete jackasses for doing it, but it was just something Tré and I liked to do.”
But the game room eventually became a music room as well. “I gave the guys everything that any kid would ever want in a game room,” says Lucasey. “And they said, ‘But that’s fun for a minute. Can we set it up so we can have jam sessions?’ So I did, and they’d have blues sessions and jazz sessions. We’d walk in, and I’d be like, ‘What the hell are you guys playing?’ They’d be having jam sessions, they’d have a mariachi band come and jam with them or something. Just weird shit, because their fun, their release, was playing music. And then their work was going in the main studio and making music. So, the game room didn’t get used that much as a game room.”
But not all the release was musical, as the group’s intense go-kart races on the premises revealed. “We were out there killing each other every night on go-karts, things like that,” Lucasey recalls. “It was insane. Nobody was allowed to park in our parking lot, because we had a full Indy course set up. We had 10 go-karts, and people going to the hospital on a regular basis, because we weren’t nice to each other. We were all wearing helmets and protective gear, and we’re running each other off the road, and when I think about it, it was frickin’ madness. There were a couple injuries, but nothing too debilitating. Some stitches — one of our guys got stitches because he got in a golf-kart crash. I think Mike aimed him into a wall; Mike hurt his arm pretty badly. Then there was a guest band from Japan who came over to visit, and one guy got total road rash. And Rob Cavallo, the first day he gets here, says, ‘Okay, I’ll try this freaking thing.’ And somebody, Tré maybe, says to me, ‘John, uh, you know, you better let Rob win.’ And I pointed to Billie and I said, ‘On stage you’re a rock star. Rob, back in LA, you’re a fucking big Hollywood producer. But when you’re on my track, you’re dead, you’re nothing but meat.’ And sure enough, the second lap, I flipped Rob, he just went tumbling in a go-kart, probably doing about 30 miles an hour.” But Lucasey feels the rough-housing had its therapeutic value. “Magical things happened because of all that,” he says. “When they wrote and recorded songs, they were just so intense. There was a great energy, because they believed in their writing. I saw what you rarely see in the studio, which is a deep down satisfaction in their music. Some bands that come in here don’t know how to have a good time in the studio. They’re really uptight, they take it way too serious, and get angry at things because they’re out of control. They don’t know what they’re doing, so they have to look like they know what they’re doing by getting angry or acting too dominant, instead of just letting things happen. When you see a band who’s totally with it and together, it looks like it’s effortless, and it looks like they’re just so happy, like they’re having a great time. It’s not like they’re dancing or jumping for joy; they eat dinner when they’re supposed to eat dinner, they sleep when they need to sleep. They go out and say, ‘I’m gonna go hit golf balls.’ They take it like it’s a part of their lives, and that’s what these guys did. It’s a zone that very few achieve in the music business, and Green Day definitely hit that zone.”
The group’s creativity also spilled over into other ventures. They set up their own pirate radio station, broadcasting from their rehearsal space behind Adeline’s offices. Iggy Pop recorded his 2003 album Skull Ring at Studio 880, and the group appeared on the two tracks Billie Joe co-wrote with Pop: ‘Private Hell’ and ‘Supermarket’. Billie Joe also contributed backing vocals on ‘Do Miss America’ on Ryan Adams’ album Rock N Roll, and had a hand in mixing Kids Are Alright by Link (both albums also released in 2003).And Green Day also seemingly created an alter-ego for themselves with the band The Network.
With little advance warning, The Network’s debut album, Money Money 2020 appeared on Adeline on September 30, 2003. (It was later released on Reprise.) The record was billed as “an anomalous synthesis of pop and sarcastic social commentary,” created by five mysterious individuals “brought together by an ancient prophecy, which predicted their rise to world power and eventually their demise,” and who were all disciples of the “Church of Lushotology” All wore bizarre costumes with some type of mask hiding their face and had equally bizarre names: Fink, Van Gough, Z, Captain Underpants, and The Snoo.
The 14 songs on the album were drenched in the new wave, synthsoaked sounds of the early ’80s, complete with distorted, robotic vocals. A highlight is ‘Spike’, largely a spoken-word piece concerning the narrator’s pathetic attempts to score drugs, and, after getting kicked out of his cool Oakland warehouse, borrow money from his mothe
r — a sort of updated version of ‘Welcome to Paradise’. The Reprise edition of the album featured a cover of The Misfits’ kitschy ‘Teenagers From Mars’, which could easily be the theme song of some teen exploitation film put out by American International Pictures. The zany humour is in fact the key to The Network’s appeal. Their rendition of new wave is clearly an affectionate parody, especially seen in their song titles (‘Hungry Hungry Models’ and ‘X-Ray Hamburger’) and in the “Manifesto” posted on their website, which read in part: “The Network has been sent here to rid us the mediocre music that has inhabited our planet for too long. Their quest is to dominate the airwaves, thus getting rid of the mindless shit that has been dominating the radio and television for the last 20 years.” The Adeline edition of the CD also came with a DVD of music videos by Roy Miles which mixed together imagery of the band with soft-core shots of scantily dressed women, though the video for ‘Transistors Gone Wild’ more inventively recast the group as action figures.
With representatives at both Reprise and Adeline neither confirming or denying Green Day’s involvement in the project, rumours began multiplying; Devo was said to be involved with the record, and another story had it that the album was indeed a Green Day record that Reprise had rejected, hence the decision to release it on Adeline. The two bands even engaged in a war of words on the Web. On The Network’s site, a clip of a mock press conference was shown, which degenerated into chaos when a reporter unwisely mentioned the group’s purported connection to Green Day. On Green Day’s site, Billie Joe posted an audio message that said in part, “All I gotta say is fuck The Network. These guys are totally spreading rumours. I try to do those guys a favour by bringing them to this country and putting out their record and this is how I get repaid, by [their] talking shit about my band … the only thing I can say is, ‘Fuck you Network — bring it on!’” the latter comment a not-so-subtle dig at the phrase President Bush had used to taunt the insurgency in Iraq, following the official “end” of the war in that country in 2003.
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