Green Day

by Gillian G. Gaar

  Earlier that day, Bayer had received another honour, a Kodak Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in music video, given out at a special luncheon held for those nominated for the VMA Best Cinematography award; though recognising all his work in video, Bayer’s projects with Green Day had certainly given him a higher profile. And though again saying the ‘September’ video was anti-war, not anti-Iraq war, he nonetheless made a more outspoken anti-Iraq war statement himself. “I’m pissed off about the war,” he told Shoot. “Maybe I’m pissed off that a media channel like MTV isn’t doing more to energize kids … I’d like [the ‘September’ video] to start discussions. I’d like to have kids on TRL not talk about what Gwen Stefani is wearing, but maybe about the Iraq war.”

  On September 8, the group performed ‘Boulevard’ at the NFL Opening Kickoff game at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The group had played the same venue in a show of their own on September 3; the performance was filmed and a clip of ‘September’ from the show was shown as part of ReAct Now: Music & Relief, a telethon benefiting victims of Hurricane Katrina. A download of the song, with proceeds also going to the cause, reached number 32 on Billboard’s Hot Digital Tracks chart.

  Meanwhile, the US tour was proving to be wildly successful, the group routinely being greeted by rapturous sell-out crowds. Billie Joe’s constant jabbing at President Bush received an equally enthusiastic reception; in addition to ‘Holiday’ being regularly introduced as a “big fuck you” to the President, Billie Joe would usually conclude his introductions of the band by saying, “… and I’m George W. Bush. But you can call me … asshole!” One wonders about the reaction to such statements of the more conservative parents escorting their children to the show, who may not have previously paid much attention to the music their kids were listening too, much less read any interviews with the band. Indeed, Mike told Rolling Stone Billie Joe’s anti-Bush comments sometimes prompted a negative response. “We see a guy throw us the finger — but then they’ll change it into a fist and start pumping the air,” he said. “Maybe they suddenly figure, ‘Fuck, yeah — he is an asshole.”

  There was also a subtle backlash of another kind, as a variation of the old “sell out” argument resurfaced and mainstream critics questioned how far the group had strayed from their punk roots now that they were headlining arenas. A New York Times review of the band’s September 1 show at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was titled, “Now A Band That It Once Would Parody.” The reviewer, Jon Pareles, went on to point out the irony that practitioners of punk, a genre he called “a corrective to bloated 1970’s stadium rock” would go on to become stadium rockers themselves, “reveling in big-event shtick.” “What may have been a fond parody of rock excess started to turn into, well, a stadium concert,” Pareles wrote and while conceding, “Standard punk was made for clubs, not stadiums, and a full set of three-minute punk blasts wouldn’t suit the band or the place,” he couldn’t help adding, “But Green Day’s own catalogue of songs include such diverse material … that the band could have played a stadium concert with far less filler.” Still, he also admitted that the material on American Idiot was “music that has no use for punk-rock orthodoxy.”

  And even in the wake of their latest round of massive success, Green Day remained a band more than willing to laugh at themselves, seen most readily when they allowed The Network to open for them for three shows, October 6 in Las Vegas, October 11 Los Angeles, and October 13 in San Francisco. Adeline Records remained as tight-lipped about The Network as always, a statement on their website confirming the opening dates but adding “Green Day’s management declined to comment on the ongoing feud between the bands.” In an additional twist, the statement was said to have been written by writer/actor George Plimpton, who had died in September 2003.

  Insomniac cover designer Winston Smith attended the Green Day/Network show at the Warfield in San Francisco, “an old-fashioned theatre, the kind of place where Sinatra and other people would play when they were nobodies,” he says. “It’s not gigantically big, it’s just a regular theatre. I think the band liked the idea of playing a small club. It wasn’t like Gilman or anything, but it was a small club compared to the giant venues and stadiums that they’ve been accustomed to.” He was surprised that the age of the crowd was older than the teenagers he’d been used to seeing at other Green Day shows, which he attributed to the fact that tickets for these special shows were only available on line. “The people who got the tickets were computer geeks or computer wizards,” he says. “Usually 14-year-olds are the slickest at that stuff, but maybe they didn’t have their gold card out! I don’t mean that in any derogatory way. I’m just saying that the tickets evaporated within seconds of being offered.”

  Smith had not seen The Network before, nor was he aware that the group was, as he puts it, “Green Day in mummy drag.” “At one point I was sitting backstage sketching, working on an album cover for Ben Harper,” he says. “I was in this quiet, well-lit area; you could put your beer down and not have to worry about anyone knocking into it. I was sketching, and this guy walks up, he was wrapped head to toe in plaster, and he goes, ‘Hey Winston, how are you?’ I said, ‘Is that Mike in there?’ He said, ‘Could be!’ And the same thing happened with Tré coming down the hallway, he gives me a big hug, and I was thinking, ‘Who is this, oh, it’s you, Tré, you’re wrapped up like the invisible man!’ I was thinking, ‘Man, that has to be really hot to perform under lights and also be wrapped up.’ It would be like putting on a rubber Halloween mask, and after an hour you’re thinking you’ve lost nine pounds because of the claustrophobic wrap job. I was amazed that they managed to make it through. It’d be like being in a miniature sauna, a Turkish bath. Maybe that’s how they keep their weight down! What a clever thing, too, they open up for themselves.”

  As far as the band being too tired to headline after also being the opening act, Smith says, “When people who aren’t musicians think about that kind of exertion, they think it’s just more work. But in their case, they are just thrilled with the opportunity to perform. We artists would probably do it for free if we had to. We do do it for free for years before anyone recognises whether we have talent or skills. And that was their thing, that was why they couldn’t go off the stage when they were supposed to at the end of the night, they just kept on grooving. Then afterward they were just completely high on the adrenaline charge. You’d think backstage after the show they’d want to have it all quiet and all the people gone but no, that’s when they came out and wanted to socialize. From my point of view, I’m an artist, so when I create something, it can take me 10, 12, 14 hours, two weeks, whatever. And at the completion of it, instead of feeling totally drained and tired like you’ve been running for four miles, you feel this exhilaration for having dived in and completed this thing. Whether it’s a work in progress or not, you have this, it’s probably a dopamine high people get. That’s why musicians can play until their fingers bleed, or artists can stay awake 22 hours at a time to finish a picture. It’s because you are driven. Unlike the rest of us who have a 9-to-5 gig, who just can’t wait until it’s over with and we can unwind. I think they are unwinding while they are on stage. Everyone else is a beneficiary of that.”

  Smith also experienced the full force of the band’s power that night. “Generally when I’m backstage, I stay backstage and hang out there, and I only hear the music from the backstage,” he explains. “But this time, I went out front and I couldn’t really turn myself away from the front view of the band because it was so compelling. They really know how to perform, and not in a pop or ‘show business’ way either, it’s done completely sincere. They didn’t want to stop when they were supposed to stop. Usually shows at the Warfield stop around midnight, maybe one o’clock if someone does a long encore. But these guys went on till they had to be dragged off. And the crowd completely enjoyed it. It was a mutual admiration society.

  “When they came backstage, I gave Bill a big hug and I said,
‘That was one of the best, if not the best show I’ve ever seen,’” he continues. “I used to be a roadie for any band you could ever think of, all kinds of wannabe bands, and I’ve seen some great shows. Sometimes I think, that’s the top, nothing is ever going to get any better than that. Then something else will come along and top it. This show surpassed some of the best stuff I’ve ever seen. I felt, he must hear this all the time, but it was completely sincere. I never said it to anybody else. I usually just say, great performance, good show, well done. But not so effusively as I felt that time. It was definitely heartfelt. And he definitely took it that way. I think he was kind of glad to hear it from an old-timer like me. A geezer like me, that I actually thought the show was not bad.”

  In November, the group was back overseas. On November 3, they picked up two more awards, winning Best Rock Act and American Idiot winning Best Album at the MTV Europe Awards, held at Lisbon’s Pavilhão Atlântico, though losing Best Group to Gorillaz. The band also performed ‘September’ during the show. Then it was off to the UK, where on November 6 the group performed ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’ in its entirety on Top Of The Pops, making it the longest song performed on the show to date. Fans in attendance at the BBC TV studios were then treated to a short set by the group.

  The next day a special advance screening of Bullet In A Bible, the concert film of their Milton Keynes concerts, was held at London’s Vue Cinema (advance screenings of the film had been held November 1 in the US). The band members attended the screening, with Billie Joe making a few comments before the film was shown, thanking their tour crew, and adding, “It’s been the best year we’ve ever had and most of all thank you, thanks a lot, we really appreciate it, and we will be back.”

  The Bullet In A Bible DVD/CD set was released November 14 in the UK and Europe (the same day the ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’ single was released in the UK), and November 15 in the US, where it debuted at number eight in the Billboard Top 200 chart. The cover was designed by Chris Bilheimer, who reversed the colour scheme used on American Idiot; instead of a black background, the package had a red background. The clear plastic “O” card that encased the package featured the title and the band’s name in white lettering, with a shot of Billie Joe facing the massive audience, fist raised in the air, in black. “I tried to keep the same theme as the American Idiot album,” says Bilheimer. “It’s the same typeface, and I wanted it to still have the revolutionary propaganda poster effect with the raised fist sort of thing. And it was the best photo they had. Nothing else was that iconic, had that much of an impact, and didn’t just look like every other live record — a dude with the guitar. This has an epic feeling to it.”

  The back cover has a bullet entry hole, and when you open the sleeve up, there’s a shot of the bullet coming through the other side. “My father collects guns,” Bilheimer says. “So I called him and said, ‘Can you shoot some books for me and mail them to me?’ So that is an actual bullet on the inside.”

  Both the DVD and CD had the same songs, but the show itself was incomplete (missing were ‘Knowledge’, ‘She’, ‘Maria’, and ‘We Are The Champions’). On the DVD, the concert was intercut with interview segments, backstage footage, and interviews with concert attendees. Billie Joe was seen confidently proclaiming Green Day the “hardest-working band in rock. Ever!” while Mike revealed, “I gotta break a sweat before I hit the stage. Because it’s like jumping on to a moving train.” Some of the segments struck a surreal note, as when Tré was seen, wearing a Canadian Mounties’s hat, sitting behind a table of doughnuts, in a scene that could have come from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks TV series (equally Lynchian was the moment he inexplicably blurts out, “No man can eat 50 eggs!”). There was also a sequence of the band walking around London’s Imperial War Museum, which Billie Joe described as “a big gallery of someone else’s nightmare.” One shot had Billie Joe standing in front of a tank, his head blocking out the letter “D” on the machine, so that instead of reading “DEVIL” you see the word “EVIL”. In another, Billie Joe bangs his fist against a replica of one of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima, creating a mournful sound like the tolling of a funeral bell. The group also looks at a display featuring the item that gave the release its title; a Bible a soldier had been carrying in his coat pocket, which saved his life when it stopped a bullet. Though interesting and insightful, the interview segments do break up the flow of the concert, making it a shame that the first official live DVD by the group, capturing what will surely be considered a landmark engagement, didn’t come with a “performance only” option.

  Back in the states, the band performed ‘September’ on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on November 11. They also attended the US release party for Bullet In A Bible, held on the day of its release at LA’s Arc Light Cinemas; among other celebrities, Danny Bonaduce, of TV’s The Partridge Family, turned up with his kids, citing Dookie as his favourite Green Day album. November also saw the premiere of the last video from American Idiot, ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’, initially in a nine-minute edit. But like the video for ‘September’, additional footage was also shot and edited into a 14-minute version. Billie Joe referred to the video as “the new ‘Thriller’.” The video has the title character (played by Lou Taylor Pucci), disaffectedly going through his day, passing the time in his room, at the local 7-11, and at parties, an environment permeated by dilapidation. Even before working on the clip, Bayer had cited Larry Clark’s bleak film Kids as having the look he wanted to achieve. What comes through is a strong sense of isolation; though he’s frequently with other people, this “Jesus” is unable to make any kind of real connection with anyone, even his girlfriend (played by Kelli Garner; both she and Pucci had appeared in the indie film Thumbsucker). Cleverly, Green Day is only seen in passing, on the various TVs that sit in the background. The nine-minute version of the video had its US broadcast premiere November 28 on fuse, another music cable network; the longer version was available on Music Choice, a video-on-demand service.

  Bayer felt the video set a new standard for him. He’d previously told MTV.com that he considered the ‘September’ video “hands down the greatest thing I’ve ever done.” Now he amended that view, calling ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’ “the greatest Green Day video that’s ever been done.” Bayer also announced ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’ would be his last music video. “I can’t think of a better way to end my video career,” he told MTV.com. The single itself reached number 27 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart (making them their third act to hit the chart with five singles pulled from the same album) and number 17 in the UK. The single’s cover art, the white silhouette of a dog, head hanging down, against a black background amply reflected the isolation of the song’s title character. The idea was inspired by imagery Bilheimer had seen in Lance Bangs’ films. “His film work has explored the concept of a stray dog symbolizing childhood alienation from one’s family,” he explained. “This seemed to mesh perfectly for the story of the Jesus Of Suburbia.”

  Green Day wasn’t on hand to pick up their next awards at the American Music Awards ceremony, held November 22 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. They won in two categories: Favorite Artist - Alternative Music and Favourite Album - Pop/Rock for American Idiot (losing Favourite Band, Duo or Group - Pop Rock to Black Eyed Peas). But they were in attendance for VH1’s Big In ’05 show, taped on December 3 at LA’s Sony Studios, winning the Big Music Artist award (the show aired the following day). And they performed at the Billboard Music Awards, held at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas on December 6, turning in a fierce rendition of ‘Holiday’; not broadcast was a bonus performance of ‘St. Jimmy’. Billie Joe also gave the magazine’s Century Award to Tom Petty, saying, “I love music. I love rock’n’roll, therefore I love Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers,” by way of introduction. And Green Day picked up six awards for themselves: Album Group Of The Year, Pop Group Of The Year, Rock Artist Of The Year, Hot 100 Group of the Year, and Modern Rock Artist of the Year, with ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’ winning R
ock Song Of The Year.

  The American Idiot songs soon crossed over into another realm — mash-ups, when parts of two or more songs are combined to create a new recording, a technique that gained infamy when DJ Danger Mouse created the Grey Album, a mash-up of The Beatles (commonly known as the “White Album,” due to its all-white cover) and Jay-Z’s The Black Album. As mash-ups are generally done without permission and then distributed freely over the Internet, they violate copyright law.

  In November 2005, two DJs, “Party Ben” from San Francisco and Australian “Team9,” working under the joint name Dean Gray did a mash-up of American Idiot they entitled American Edit. The mash-ups showed the usual inventiveness: ‘Holiday’ drew on Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock and Roll’, the theme from the UK TV series Dr. Who, and soundbites from President Bush’s speeches; ‘Novocaine’ added ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to the mix (appropriately, given that the song had long been a favourite of the band’s, “A rad song no matter how much they play it,” Mike had told Flipside); and, in the most unlikely pairing, ‘Boulevard’ with The Eagles’ ‘Lyin’ Eyes’.