Green Day

by Gillian G. Gaar

  ‘American Idiot’ was the obvious choice for the first single. And the accompanying video is, essentially, a straightforward performance video. But in its execution, it’s nothing less than stunning, and, as its director hoped, as timeless as the album. As Bayer put it to MTV, “If a band can’t perform, you don’t have a video.”

  The video was shot over two days at Pechiney Cast Plate, a former aluminum factory located in Vernon, California, just south of LA. The building provided an industrial setting, its huge windows letting in plenty of natural light. The “set” was minimal; mics for Billie Joe and Mike, a riser for Tré’s drum set, a few camera monitors, and two large banks of speakers, flanking an enormous American flag. The flag hung vertically, not horizontally, and instead of bearing the colours of red, white, and blue, this flag’s colours were green, white, and black. The band members themselves also had a homogenous, unified look; for the first time in a video, they were all wearing the same colour of clothing, black, marked by individual touches — Billie Joe’s red tie, Tré’s black-and-white striped tie, Mike wearing a tight sleeveless shirt. The band’s clothes were also well tailored and later articles would name-check designer brands like Dior Homme and Duncan Quinn in discussing the group’s new look; gone were the days of T-shirts and baggy shorts.

  As the band mimed to the song, Bayer shot from numerous angles in his efforts to give the video a true live feel. And one of the most effective visual techniques was the use of motion control, which allowed the band members to be filmed at different speeds, yet having them all remain synchronised in time to the music. As motion-control operator Mike Leben explained to Studio Daily online, “Since the motion control was triggered by the corresponding time-coded music track for each frame rate, we were able to keep the camera moves and the band’s performances in sync, no matter what speed we chose to shoot at. Each of the band members performed at various speeds, and editorial was able to choose which sections of the song would have which members of the band performing at which frame rates, all mixed together seamlessly.”

  After the second chorus of the song, the stripes on the main flag the band performed in front of began to run, eventually disintegrating completely (the flag had been painted with acrylic paint mixed with Joy dishwashing liquid, which kept the paint from washing away too quickly once water was poured over it). Green paint also gushed from the speakers, eventually drenching the band. Bayer later noted the flag had been inspired by the opening scene from the film Patton, where George C. Scott as the legendary WWII general addresses the audience in front of a large flag, while the green paint pouring from the speakers was a nod to the waves of blood cascading down the hall in Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic, The Shining. The band members were also shot individually in front of another large green, white, and black flag that extended onto the floor.

  At the end of the shoot, Bayer had 60,000 feet of footage to work with. Along with the different performance shots, there were also shots of the band seen in grainy black and white on monitors. Working with editor Tim Royes, the footage was edited down to a fast and furious three minutes. There were a few visual jokes; the word “faggot” in the line about “faggot America” was usually censored when the video played, but directly after the line is sung, there’s a quick cut to Mike shooting Billie Joe a quizzical look, as if to say, “I don’t know about this guy …” (Billie Joe told The Advocate that in addition to worrying people might think he was using the word “faggot” as a demeaning term — “I thought of it as empowering,” he insisted — he also thought censors would be more likely to bleep the phrase “redneck agenda”).The end of the song had Billie Joe throwing down his guitar in the puddles of green paint now covering the floor, then cutting to a wider shot of the band members walking away. In the last shot, someone walks right in front of the camera, conveying the feel of watching a documentary; the camera then jerkily pans to focus on the water-streaked flag.

  With release of the album still three months away, all elements were now in place for what would amount to a full-scale resurrection of Green Day’s career. Tom Whalley, Warner Bros. chairman and CEO, admitted to Billboard he had some concern about the album’s political content, especially considering “the way other artists were condemned for speaking out.” But, he added, “the music was so great and it wasn’t overly political to the point that it was obviously picking a side. It speaks more to where the band saw the state of the country.” It was the first of many attempts to reconcile the difficulty in dealing with a popular — and money-making — band taking a potentially unpopular stance in their music. Phil Costello, Reprise’s senior vice president of promotion, was quoted in the same article about his wondering how a “punk-rock opera” could be marketed. “When I first spoke to Billie Joe about it at the beginning of the project, I was left with the impression that there was going to be little if anything for radio,” he said. “Then, lo and behold, when I was invited to the studio, I was speechless, because I heard so many singles.”

  And the fun was just beginning.

  CHAPTER 11

  Return Of The Conquering Idiot

  “To me, it doesn’t feel like it’s just another rock record that somebody put out. It feels like we tapped into the culture a little bit.”

  — Billie Joe to Billboard, October 9, 2004

  Green Day wasn’t present when the California Music Awards were held June 6 at Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, where they earned another four awards: Outstanding Male Vocalist, Outstanding Bassist, Outstanding Drummer, and Most Downloaded Song for ‘I Fought the Law’ (the song had first appeared in an iTunes/Pepsi commercial that had aired during the 2004 Super Bowl). Billie Joe had also been nominated for Outstanding Guitarist but lost to Kirk Hammett of Metallica. The Network’s Money Money 2020 was also nominated for Best Debut Album. (The CD would be reissued by Reprise on November 9, along with a DVD of the November 2003 show, entitled Disease Is Punishment. The DVD also featured the six videos packaged with the original Adeline CD release, and The Network’s raucous press conference.)

  But the band wouldn’t be under wraps for much longer, for American Idiot was now ready to be unveiled to its eagerly awaiting public. As was their custom, the band played a few warm-up shows, beginning on July 29 at the Olympic Auditorium in LA, followed by August dates in Japan and the UK, including appearances at the Leeds Festival on the twenty-seventh, and the Reading Festival on the twenty-ninth. The shows were intended to get the band back into performing mode, and so featured little of American Idiot’s material.

  Their old friend and “boss” from Lookout Records, Lawrence Livermore, caught up with the band during their appearance at the Reading Festival. “It was very cold and windy up on the stage,” he recalls, “and although the crowd was going crazy, they seemed so far away that I marveled at how the guys could put such incredible energy into their performance. Because it seemed almost like playing in a big, empty warehouse while watching the audience on television, if that makes any sense.”

  Stories had been circulating for months about the new album. The album’s title track was the obvious first choice for a single and went to radio on August 4, quickly topping Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart. It also reached number five Mainstream Rock, number 14 on Hot Digital Songs, and number 16 on the new “Hot Ringtones” chart. The song also appeared on the Maddon NFL 2005 video game, later winning an award for Best Song in a Video Game at Spike TV’s Video Game Awards.

  The US CD single was released August 31, and eventually reached number 61 on the Hot 100, an inauspicious sign of the chart action soon to come. The cover art was also as striking as the artwork for the album’s cover had been, with white silhouettes of a couple holding a small child over a trap against a black blackground, which Chris Bilheimer explains, was meant to reflect “the concept of being raised by ‘rage and love,’” he explains. “In your childhood, it seems that at any second you can be scarred for life by chance, especially from something like a divorce. You trust your par
ents to protect you from harm, and so often it is your parents that do the scarring. So that image is really about how you think you and your family are safe, but you never know what is around the corner.”

  The US single also featured the non-album bonus track, ‘Too Much Too Soon’, a mid-tempo number which detailed some of the further frustrations in Whatshername’s life. Two versions of CD single were released in the UK, one of which also featured ‘Too Much Too Soon’ and the other having two more non-album tracks. ‘Shoplifter’ was a poppy lament about an activity one could easily imagine St. Jimmy indulging in, while ‘Governator’ was a bitter critique of California’s movie-star-turned-politician, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which threw in lines from the Terminator’s hit films — ‘California Über Alles’, indeed.

  The video had its world premiere August 16 on mtvU (a station only available on college campuses; the station would award the group honourary degrees the following year), then hit MTV2 on August 18, following a “Making The Video” special, which further heightened anticipation for the rest of the album. And just under a month later, the band would perform the record live in its entirety for the very first time at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on September 16 (the only songs from the album they’d previously played live were ‘Holiday’ and ‘American Idiot’).

  On the night of the show, Billie Joe admitted to some pre-show nerves, saying he felt like “a deer in the headlights.” Meanwhile, in the auditorium, songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack filled the sold-out room as the audience took their seats. The show started much like the stage version of Rocky Horror had begun as well, with two black-and-red-clad hostesses emerging from the wings to sing the lines Kathleen Hanna performed on the record. (The Rocky Horror Show had opened with an usher coming on stage to sing the first number, ‘Science Fiction-Double Feature’.) The hostesses also reappeared during the show to hold up signs reading “Act 2” and “Finale” at the appropriate times (before ‘Novocaine’ and ‘Homecoming’, respectively), as if the concert was an old-time vaudeville performance.

  The curtains dropped and a mosh pit formed the moment Green Day launched into the title song. The band members were equally animated throughout the night. Billie Joe, one reviewer described, “jumped around like the stage were a trampoline, his red tie flying from side to side,” while Tré was seen lustily singing along with each song in spite of not having his own microphone. Billie Joe was also taking more advantage of the band’s having a second guitarist in Jason White. Now, if he was caught up in running around the stage, he didn’t have to worry about missing a guitar line, and in some songs he played little guitar at all. The band was also wearing the American Idiot colours of red, white, and black, as they would for every subsequent date on the tours supporting the album, which would continue through the end of 2005. The stage sets, designed by Justin Collie of the Artfag Design Co., used the same colours and at the larger stadium shows, huge banners would depict the heart/hand grenade logo from American Idiot and the zapped man logo from Warning.

  “Welcome to Green Day Presents American Idiot, our record-release party — slightly glorified,” Billie Joe said after the first song, then, aware that the audience was mostly unfamiliar with the material, helpfully provided brief explanatory comments about each number. “Which brings us to our next character, he’s a son of a bitch,” he said, introducing ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’. Afterwards he explained, “That song’s about telling your home, your family, whatever, to fuck off. And here’s something else that can fuck off. The next song’s about the war going on in Iraq,” leading into ‘Holiday’. ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ was dedicated to Johnny Ramone, who had died of prostate cancer the day before.

  For the encore, the band served up some back catalogue classics, performing ‘Longview’, ‘Brain Stew’ (which Billie Joe ended up singing on his knees when his mic fell over), ‘Minority’, and Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’. Said RollingStone.com, “It proved to be a fitting finale, as on this night Green Day earned the right to declare itself champion … of a whole new genre.”

  When the album was finally released in the US on September 21 (September 20 in the rest of the world), it hit with the force of a full-scale explosion, debuting in the Billboard charts at number one, having sold 267,000 copies in its first week. (“It’s pretty sweet,” Billie Joe said of the achievement.) It also debuted at number one in the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and Japan, racking up sales of 1.5 million worldwide in the first week. The reviews were overwhelmingly glowing, from music magazines (Guitar World: “This is a multi-layered, literate narrative that effectively wields anger, wit, and bombast to expose the ugliness that seeps below the surface of this country’s patriotism, commercialism, and nationalism”) to mainstream periodicals (Newsweek: “This is one of the best rock albums and the biggest surprise of the year — a punk-rock opera and one of the only mainstream offerings to really address the emotional, moral, and political confusion of our times”).

  “Tell the truth: did anybody think Green Day would still be around in 2004?” marvelled Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. “But here they are with American Idiot: a 57-minute politically charged epic … all this from the boys who brought you Dookie” Sheffield didn’t think the album was perfect, but felt that added to its strengths (“American Idiot could have been a mess; in fact, it is a mess … But the individual tunes are tough and punchy enough to work on their own”). He also picked up on the wealth of musical influences — naming Hüsker Dü, The Clash, Cheap Trick, The Beach Boys, and Bruce Springsteen among them — and described ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ as “a sadder, more adult sequel to ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’.” And if he didn’t like every song (calling ‘Homecoming’ “monstrously awful … like The Who’s ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ without any of the funny parts”), he nonetheless concluded, “Green Day have found a way to hit their thirties without either betraying their original spirit or falling on their faces. Good Charlotte, you better be taking notes.”

  Many of their peers and colleagues also felt the album ranked among Green Day’s best work. “American Idiot was the best record of the year and should be recognised as the best record of this decade, certainly dependent on what else comes out,” says Jennifer Finch. “As far as craftsmanship, that record is great.” Frank Portman remembers first hearing the title song while on a solo tour of Europe. “I went to a radio station when they were playing it and I was like, ‘This sounds totally great,’” he says. “You could tell that it was going places. I think it has some great songs. Personally, I like it in spite of the hype, rather than because of it. I’m not that big of a fan of political concept albums, and I think it works if you forget that; it works better for me personally.” “As far as I’m concerned, American Idiot is their best record by far, an absolute classic in the history of rock’n’roll,” says Lawrence Livermore. “I found it really inspiring that a band could do its greatest work after so many years together. Most bands might as well break up after their first two or three albums; by the time American Idiot came out, Billie and Mike had been in Green Day half their lives and still managed to make their greatest record yet.”

  Accolades soon went beyond the album, encompassing a reevaluation of Green Day’s entire career. Entertainment Weekly called Green Day “the most influential band of their generation.” Q magazine had published three special editions chronicling “50 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll” in 2004 that didn’t have a single mention of the band; by early 2005 they were calling Green Day “the biggest band in the world.” At the same time, some were seeking to downplay American Idiot’s political sensibility. “Don’t let the album’s political agenda put you off — Idiot’s appeal is actually mostly non-partisan,” Entertainment Weekly reassured its readers. Not everyone agreed with that assessment. Billboard quoted Mike O’Connor, program director for Denver radio station KTCL as saying, “Denver-Boulder is a split market politically, so when a record like Green
Day comes out, we always get accused of Bush bashing.”

  Nor did the “political agenda” necessarily put everyone off. “It’s got a political edge,” musician/journalist John Robb says of the record. “‘American Idiot’ is one of the finest punk records ever made. The single is absolutely fantastic — if The Clash had made that single in ’78, it’d be looked on as one of the greatest Clash songs ever written. But because it’s Green Day, all the rock snobs wouldn’t take it seriously. It’s not a direct political song, but it taps into what America’s like in the Iraq war times, the way the media’s being really controlled, etc. America’s a very rich country, but it’s a country you can very easily be left out of, and I think the song, and the record, picks up on that as well. There’s a lot of broken homes, kids not having proper upbringings, it’s a selfish society maybe. And Green Day pick up on the things that in your mid-teens you feel like; you feel disenfranchised by American society. But also it’s been picked up among loads of kids who have completely happy backgrounds, and just want to go to gigs and jump up and down and sing along to the songs. They just write really great anthems. The best political rock’n’roll is always small ‘p’ politics. You don’t say, ‘Bush out! Bush out!’ You sing a song that sums up those feelings of people in a more subtle way.”