Green Day: Rebels With a Cause

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INTRODUCTION

Kings Of The World

They’d been superstars all along. The only difference was that now the whole world knew it.

— Lawrence Livermore, Metal Hammer Presents Green Day, 2005

Date: September 24, 2005. Place: SBC Park, a 41,000-seat outdoor stadium in San Francisco, California, where Green Day will perform yet another date on the seemingly never-ending tour promoting their wildly successful album, American Idiot. So far, the record’s racked up sales of nine million worldwide, and the previous February won a Grammy award for Best Rock Album. It’s been hailed as a stunning return to form for the band: the album of their career, in the words of the London Times. It’s also — surprisingly from a group previously regarded as bratty punk rockers — something of a political statement, marking the first time the band members have spoken out extensively about several issues on the minds of many Americans today: the machinations of the Bush administration; the war on terror; the US invasion of Iraq; and how all this has been distilled, dumbed down, and relayed to the nation via reality TV. As Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s lead singer and guitarist, told a reporter at the time of the album’s release, The country’s divided, and there’s a lot of confusion … and it’s not only confusing for my kids, it’s confusing for adults, too. Everybody just sort of feels like they don’t know where their future is heading right now, you know?

But today isn’t just any date on the tour. The San Francisco gig, held the same day as yet more anti-war protests are being held across the country (including one in San Francisco), is the closest the band will come to doing a homecoming show. (Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt having made their live debut at a now-closed rib joint in Vallejo, some 30 miles to the north.) And at a time when other stadium acts are charging as much as $300 a ticket, Green Day has kept their ticket prices relatively inexpensive (around $50). Opening acts Flogging Molly and Jimmy Eat World have each received a warm welcome, but it’s obvious who the crowd has come to see. Giant screens on either side of the stage, bearing the Verizon logo in a nod to tour sponsor Verizon Wireless, display text messages from the attendees: Green Day Rocks and Scream if you love Green Day! along with jokes (Go Dodgers! which elicits boos from fans of the San Francisco Giants) and personal pleas (I’m sorry Jan. Everyone makes mistakes. Call me.). It’s also predominantly a young crowd, including plenty of kids and pre-teens who have come in the company of their parents, like the seven-year-old girl who walks by in a pink Green Day shirt and matching boots, holding her mother’s hand. Fans who haven’t been following the tour through online websites debate what the opening song will be: ‘American Idiot’ or ‘Welcome To Paradise’?

In the run up to Green Day’s set, the music playing over the PA system is mostly punky pop/poppy punk like Devo’s ‘Whip It’ and The Go-Go’s ‘We Got The Beat’. Five years ago, Billie Joe sang on stage with The Go-Go’s in San Francisco and went on to co-write the song ‘Unforgiven’ for the group’s 2001 reunion album. Not too many in the crowd seem familiar with Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’ (whose lead singer, Kathleen Hanna, makes a cameo appearance on the American Idiot album), but The Beastie Boys’ ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ gets a lot of cheers. Then a familiar trumpet fanfare brings the crowd to its feet. It’s the Village People’s ‘YMCA’, of all things, and as the song reaches the chorus, the audience stands and obligingly spells out Y-M-C-A with their arms en masse, as someone clad in a pink bunny suit bounces out on stage, goofing around, chugging beers, winding up the already expectant crowd even more.

Then comes a song by one of Green Day’s chief influences, The Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. It’s a song Green Day themselves have played in concert, most notably in a short tribute set at the 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony when The Ramones joined the other illustrious names already in the Rock Hall. When the song comes to its abrupt end, the lights go out and the crowd snaps. Those in the stands rush to the front of the seated sections, and those on the field push even tighter together in the standing-room area in front of the stage. Everyone unleashes their emotions in a fusillade of screams probably audible on the Berkeley shoreline, The Contra Costa Times later observes. (Contra Costa county being where Billie Joe and Mike originally hail from.)

Now the music is Richard Strauss’ majestic ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, better known to modern audiences as the theme from Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as the music that welcomed Elvis to the stage for most of his Seventies-era shows. (As it happens, Billie Joe’s first album purchase was an Elvis record.) The screams reach a fever pitch when the members of Green Day finally appear — the core trio of guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tré Cool augmented by Jason White and Mike Pelino on guitars, and Jason Freese and Ron Blake on horns, keyboards, and assorted percussion. The ensemble blasts into ‘American Idiot’.

When Tré first hits his drums, the red curtains at the back of the stage drop to reveal three huge vertical red banners, two of which have the zapped man logo used in the cover artwork for Warning. The middle banner is emblazoned with the now-iconic cover image from American Idiot: a hand gripping a heart-shaped grenade (but which Billie Joe said looks more like a strawberry in the program for the spring and summer 2005 tour).Two additional large banners with the zapped man logo flank the stage. The band members are all dressed in black, with little individual touches adding a bit of colour: Billie Joe and Tré wearing striped ties, Billie Joe wearing a white armband with the words Rage on his right arm and a black wristband with the red heart grenade/strawberry logo on his left wrist, and Mike’s trousers having a thin white stripe down each leg.

After the song’s first chorus, Billie Joe shouts out, San Francisco! to massive cheers; he’ll go on to yell the city’s name at some point during just about every song in the set to the same enthusiastic response. He also begins the audience interaction that will continue throughout the show. During the instrumental breaks he dashes from one side of the stage to the other, singing, "Hey — oh!" and then pointing at the crowd who dutifully sing, "Hey — oh!" right back at him. He also endeavors get the audience to do the wave, pointing to his right to get the crowds there to start the ritualistic raising of arms, continuing all around the ballpark. Before charging back into the final verse of the song, Billie Joe says, "I want you to sing so fucking loud that every redneck in America hears you tonight, all right?" to more delighted screams. At the song’s conclusion, he races back to center stage and on the final note strikes a crucifixion pose, standing straight, both arms thrust out to the sides. He holds the pose for a full 30 seconds.

Welcome to the Green Day world tour 2005! he finally shouts above the crowd noise. "And this is our homecoming show, bay-bee! He dedicates the next song to everybody that came here from the East Bay" — as the area across San Francisco Bay is referred to — and launches into ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’. This is the first of American Idiot’s song-suites, which runs just over nine minutes, one of the longest songs Green Day’s ever recorded. (‘Homecoming’, also on American Idiot, runs 10 seconds longer.) During the ‘City Of The Damned’ segment, Billie Joe gets the crowd to wave their arms from side to side, shouting, Get those fists in the air! Get those hands up! As the number segues into the ‘Dearly Beloved’ segment of the suite, Billie Joe cries, Stand up! Stand up and be heard! It’s a demand that goes right to the heart of American Idiot’s appeal and its multiple layers of meaning. Is it a call to arms or merely a request to enjoy yourself? It’s ultimately your decision; as Billie Joe told Guitar World in discussing the album, I’d rather have people work out for themselves what it means to them. At the end of the ‘Tales Of Another Broken Home’ segment, where on the album there’s a brief pause before the song thunders to its conclusion, in concert the moment seems to stretch into eternity. Billie Joe, standing still for a change, takes in the spectacle of a stadium packed with fans screaming at the top of their lungs, then backs up, slowly raising his arms to heighten the crowd’s screams, and dives back into the song as flash pots explode.

Afterwards, Billie Joe bows deeply, holds his right fist in the air, blows kisses, then gives a few I’m not worthy bows before saying, You guys fucking rule! as the crowd excitedly chants, Green Day! Green Day! "And this next song is a big fuck you to George W. Bush! says Billie Joe, and the band launches into ‘Holiday’, with its bitter critique of President Gasman and threats of bombs away to those who have the audacity to be critical of the government. However, This song isn’t anti-American! Billie Joe shouts as he plays the song’s intro, It’s anti-war! At one point, he calls for Lights out! then, shining a flashlight into the audience, starts reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance, in the eerie glow of a red spotlight. The last line of the pledge, With liberty and justice for all," provides a defiant reminder of what real American values are.

Hi! How you guys doing out there tonight? Welcome to the biggest hometown show that we’ve ever had — thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Billie Joe says at the song’s end. We’ve been a band now — I should say, we’ve been a Bay Area band now — for the last 17 years, he continues, going on to talk about the their first-ever show at Rod’s Hickory Pit in Vallejo. Among the packed audience down front is 17-year-old Robin Paterson, also from Vallejo. She’s a senior at John Swett High School in Crockett, where Billie Joe was once himself a student, until the number of his unexcused absences piled up too high. She’s been a Green Day fan ever since a friend told her about Dookie, the band’s major-label debut, released 11 years earlier in 1994. She is especially fond of International Superhits, Green Day’s greatest-hits collection. She wasn’t immediately won over by American Idiot on its release: At first I didn’t like it that much because they sounded so different, she says. But after I heard it more and more, I liked how it sounded. And I really liked how they made it all one story, but each separate song had a different meaning behind it.

Paterson and her friends got in line for the show around 4 pm, and managed to get close to the catwalk that juts out from the front of the stage. They’ve all brought T-shirts with John Swett on them, in the hopes Billie Joe will see them. Paterson throws hers on stage, but not knowing what it is, Billie Joe ignores it. Finally, he notices the group wearing the red and white T-shirts (the high school’s colours) and points to them. Other people in the crowd try to grab the shirts for themselves, but the Swett group is determined to get one to Billie Joe. Joe Pallotta and Rick Williams each throw shirts up, but Billie Joe can’t catch them. At last, during an instrumental break in ‘Hitchin’ A Ride’, Charles Wetmore makes a perfect toss and the shirt lands right on top of Billie Joe’s microphone stand. Billie Joe picks it up and displays it for the crowd. This is the high school I went to in Crockett, California, he says, amending that to, One of the high schools I went to. Didn’t graduate though. He pauses, then can’t resist adding, And look at me, mom! grinning broadly, his arms open wide in a gesture of triumph. From somewhere in the audience, Ollie Armstrong, Billie Joe’s mother, is surely smiling back. In her story about the concert for the John Swett Signal, Paterson quotes fellow student Tarah Rhine saying jokingly of the moment, For once it made me proud to go to John Swett.

There are more American Idiot songs during the show, including ‘Are We The Waiting’, which has the crowd waving their arms in the air again, then segues into the rollicking ‘St. Jimmy’, during which Billie Joe races from one side of the stage to the other, breathlessly spitting out the lyrics, as the crowd claps along in time. Then come the classics; the loping drum beat that kicks off ‘Longview’, from Dookie, which introduced the band to the rock mainstream. It’s an ironic slacker anthem from a band that’s rarely sunk into a no motivation slump like the protagonist in ‘Longview’. Perhaps one of the primary reasons Green Day has such a loyal and devoted fan base is that they spent much of their formative years touring as extensively and as frequently as possible, a regimen they’ve basically maintained ever since. To start one number, Billie Joe quickly plays a single chord, then stops. He does it again. And again. And again, provoking the crowd into screaming louder each time he does it. Finally, on the tenth time, he continues past the first chord, and the song turns out to be ‘Brain Stew’, a favourite track from Insomniac. It’s embellished by the copious use of flame pots; as the flames rhythmically shoot upward, the whole band begins jumping up and down in time with the song. Toward the end, Billie Joe picks up a large hose and sprays the crowd. Then, spotting a little boy in the audience, he brings him onstage and hands him the hose so he can spray the packed, sweaty masses in the mosh pit before him. And then there’s ‘Minority’, the first hit single from Warning, whose anti-authoritarian message would’ve fit quite nicely on American Idiot. Underscoring this message, Billie Joe will later shout during the show, No matter who are the powers that be, do not give up your civil liberties! And speak out against the bullshit that the bastards throw in your face! The call to maintain an active interest in current events is the same reason you’ll find booths for organisations like Amnesty International, Punkvoter, USA Harvest, and Greenpeace at Green Day shows.

There are a few surprises in the set list as well. Tré comes down front from behind his drum stool after ‘Longview’ to sing ‘All By Myself’, a hidden track on Dookie, which — as befits the gregarious drummer — is both goofy and a bit endearing. And after asking, How many old-school Green Day fans are out there tonight? Billie Joe presents a real blast from the past with ‘2000 Light Years Away’, the lead-off track from Kerplunk!, their second album for Lookout Records, released over a decade ago, all the way back in 1992. Billie Joe then takes the time to introduce the band, saying of Mike, "a man that I’ve been standing next to since I was 10 years old. And the greatest bass player in the history of punk rock music! Tré, says Billie Joe, is a man I like to shower naked with — Tré winks and nods at that — as well as a man that is close childhood friends with Mr. Michael Jackson … and … the greatest drummer in the history of rock’n’roll!" And my name, Billie Joe concludes, is George W. Bush. The crowd boos and jeers in response, but Billie Joe gets the last laugh when, after a pause, he continues, "But you can call me asshole!"

There’s typically a lot of interaction with the audience on ‘Hitchin’ A Ride’, and this night is no different. First Billie Joe gets the crowd chanting, Hey! Hey! Hey! At one point, the music drops out completely, and Billie Joe points to various sections of the audience, encouraging each side to out-yell the other. Pleased with the results, he says, "Now that’s how you do it San Francisco, bay-bee!" Before the song starts up again, he teases the crowd further by fondling himself with his left hand, while moaning provocatively into the mic he’s holding in his right. Inevitably, as the moaning builds, he reaches into his trousers and finally shrieks, Somebody fuck me! as the crowd roars in delight. Having recovered, he grins and says, I smell some of that Northern California marijuana out there! It’s going down good with that hot dog about now! — a scent that he’d certainly recognise, given that the band’s name was inspired by pot smoking. This is what I need, he continues. This is what I need. This is what it’s going to take. I need every single person in this park, in SBC Park in San Francisco, California, to scream, ‘One, two, one, two, three, four.’ Are you ready? The crowd is. ‘Hitchin’ A Ride’ finally resumes, and as flames shoot up, the crowd howls even more.

Audience participation reaches its height when it’s time to play ‘Knowledge’, a song originally by East Bay legends Operation Ivy. It’s the opening track from OpIvy’s sole album, Energy, released in 1989 on Lookout. The album went on to sell over half a million copies, a remarkable achievement for an independent label, then or now, and especially so considering that it’s been promoted almost exclusively by word of mouth. Energy’s record release party was held May 28, 1989 at the equally legendary Berkeley venue 924 Gilman. You could easily fit a few clubs the size of Gilman on the stage Green Day now occupies at SBC Park. Green Day opened for OpIvy that night in 1989; in fact it was their first show at Gilman playing as Green Day, having only recently changed their name from Sweet Children. The Lookouts, Tré’s band before he joined Green Day, played the same show.

Green Day covered ‘Knowledge’ on their second EP, Slappy, released in 1990. Nowadays, in a spirit of all-inclusiveness, they pull up kids from the audience to play the song. First, the band plays through the song, then Billie Joe announces, Now, this is what we’re gonna do. We’re going to do something that’s never been done here in San Francisco at SBC Park, ever! We want to start a band on stage, right now! So we need three volunteers. Naturally, everyone clamours to have the opportunity, but Billie Joe grills the prospective players intensely. Do you know how to play drums? he asks a young man in the crowd tonight. Swear to God? How long have you been playing for? Seven years? Right, get your ass up here, let’s go! The new drummer scrambles up and gets behind the kit, with Tré watching over him, smacking him in the head each time he tries to do a fancy fill; We got a show boater here tonight! exclaims Billie Joe. Then a young woman is chosen to play bass; This one’s for the ladies — get your ass up here! says Billie Joe. The drummer and bass player get their parts down, to an approving, All right! We’re making history! from Billie Joe. Rounding out the new band is a young man with a mohawk, who, on taking the stage, hugs Billie Joe, then pulls a guitar pick off Billie Joe’s mic stand; Billie Joe pulls him back and gives him a big kiss on the mouth in return, and the young man literally leaps for joy. Billie Joe then urges the bassist and guitarist to the front, where they let rip and strike all the classic rock-star poses while Billie Joe runs around the stage singing the lead vocal. That was the greatest band we’ve ever had up here, ever! he says afterwards. Then he calls the guitarist back; Hey you! Come here! What are you doing? What’s your name? Javier? Where are from, Javier? You’re from Peru? That’s awesome. Javier, you get to keep the guitar. Javier holds the guitar up in delight. Now get your ass off my fucking stage! Billie Joe thunders in mock anger. He then directs the drummer to do a stage dive. As Tré plays a drum roll and Mike thumps his bass, Billie Joe leads the crowd in shouting, Jump! Jump! Jump! The drummer gears himself up, then executes a perfect dive into the crowd.

The celebratory mood continues with Billie Joe donning a crown for ‘King For A Day’, a giddy celebration of cross-dressing. The rest of the players also don funny hats, and a wizard puppet pops up on stage and dances on top of some gear. It wouldn’t be a Green Day show if Billie Joe didn’t bare his bottom at least once, and it happens during this song, as he turns around, tugs his trousers down a bit and wiggles his bum for the audience’s amusement. The rock’n’roll standard, ‘Shout’, proves to be just as much of a rave-up, and during the little bit softer part of the song, Billie Joe crouches down lower and lower until he’s actually laying face down on the stage. A stage hand comes over and puts the fallen crown back on Billie Joe’s head, along with a robe, and Billie Joe rolls on his back and begins singing another standard, Ben E. King’s ‘Stand By Me’, before leaping up and continuing with ‘Shout’.

The elegiac ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ is dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which brought disastrous floods to the American South, decimating the city of New Orleans in particular, in late August. The entire stadium is alight with the flicker of cigarette lighters and glowing cell phones that the crowd holds up, mirrored by the firey sparks raining down over the stage. The main set ends with ‘Minority’, but considering the wild crowd response, you know there will be an encore and so there is. The band returns and starts up with ‘Maria’, one of the new tracks recorded for International Superhits. ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’, the group’s biggest commercial hit to date, is yet another sing-along, as so much of the set has been for this audience. Most bands would probably be content to end their show on the grandiose note struck by the cover of Queen’s ‘We Are The Champions’, which sees a hail of green, red, and white confetti falling down on the crowd, some of whom pick up the slips of paper as souvenirs. But Green Day has yet another ace up their sleeve. Billie Joe returns to the stage bearing an acoustic guitar and a spotlight picks him out as he sings what’s become the signature closing song for the band, ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’.And to further top things off, at the song’s conclusion a spectacular fireworks display fills the sky. The crowd, previously elated, is now utterly ecstatic.

Thank you for the best fucking night of my life! says Billie Joe at the show’s end. It’s a sentiment Robin Paterson comes close to sharing. Being my very first real concert, I pretty much thought it was the best thing ever, she says. On a scale of one to ten, I’d say it was a ten.

Seventeen years before, Billie Joe and Mike played their first show to an audience of about 30. There weren’t any stage lights, let alone confetti, flame pots, overhead video screens, or giant banners. But the desire to connect with the audience was much the same, along with the passion of the band’s delivery and the sheer, unadulterated joy of simply making music. By that standard, perhaps the distance between Rod’s Hickory Pit and SBC Park isn’t that great after all.

CHAPTER 1

Stranded In Suburbia

When you were a child, did you know this [performing] was what you were going to do?

Either that or be a Safeway truck driver.

— Billie Joe to the San Francisco Chronicle, November 19, 1995

Across the bay from San Francisco lies a sprawling collection of towns that stretch up and reach around to the southeastern side of San Pablo Bay, from Oakland (a bonafide city, with its population of 400,000), to Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, Richmond, San Pablo, El Sobrante, Pinole, Hercules, Rodeo, and Crockett, where the Carquinez Bridge then takes you north to Vallejo. Rodeo (pronounced Ro-DAY-oh), founded in 1890 by the Union Stock Yard Company as a meat-packing centre, has a population of 11,000, a size that no doubt helps the local Chamber of Commerce assure potential residents that the small-town atmosphere that characterised Rodeo around the turn of the [20th] century still exists today.

And it was here that Billie Joe Armstrong would spend the first 18 years of his life. Born on February 17, 1972, Billie Joe was Andy and Ollie Armstrong’s sixth child. He followed Allen (who was 22 years older), David, Marcy, Holly, and Anna. Oil refineries had long since replaced meat-packing as the area’s primary industry. The whole area from Richmond over to about Pittsburg [California] is all oil refinery areas, says John Goar, who taught math and science at the local high school, John Swett, in the Eighties. That really has an impact on the community. The cancer rate in that corridor is four times the national average. Just about everybody had someone in their family who has cancer. And I learned that it was really inappropriate to breech that subject, at least it was that way when I was there. It was so personal and painful; people know the air that they breathe is giving them cancer, but they didn’t want to talk about it, they wanted to shut it out. Years later, Billie Joe would recall how students from his elementary school were often sent home after getting headaches from breathing the fumes of the refineries, which were alarmingly close by.

Andy earned a living as a truck driver. Ollie supplemented the family’s income by working as a waitress, especially when Andy and his fellow Teamsters went on strike. It seemed like he was on strike, holding signs up in front of Safeway every other month, Billie Joe later said. Ollie had dropped out of school to help her family pay the bills. Now, with a family of her own, she continued working to help make ends meet.

Both parents had a strong interest in music. Andy played drums in local jazz bands for 20 years and had a fondness for artists like Frank Sinatra. That sort of stuff was like the classics to me, where a lot of people thought it was just corny, Billie Joe later told Lawrence Livermore, who founded the label Green Day would first record for, Lookout. "They didn’t know what that stuff was about at all … I got asked to do a version of ‘Witchcraft’ for the Oceans 11 soundtrack and I was like, ‘I know Witchcraft. I’ve known it my entire life.’" (Unfortunately, he didn’t end up recording the song.) Ollie was a fan of country-and-western in general and Hank Williams and Elvis Presley in particular, which her young son picked up on; Billie Joe’s first album purchase was Presley’s classic Sun Sessions.

Being the youngest of six children also aided in Billie Joe’s musical education, as his older siblings had their own tastes, ranging from The Beatles to Bruce Springsteen to R.E.M. So though the first music Billie Joe would play was heavy metal, and then punk, underneath it all he had a solid grounding in the strength of a good, catchy melody. When asked by Rolling Stone for a list of his Top 10 albums in 2000, it was evenly split between classic acts like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and Bob Dylan, and later punk/alternative acts like The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Replacements, and Nirvana.

Billie Joe’s own interest in music and performing was quick to emerge. As a youngster, he would sing along with the performers on TV, using a fireplace poker in place of a mic stand. And at age four he had a stint of formal music education when he began taking piano lessons at the Fiat Music Company, a music store located at the Pinole Valley Shopping Center in nearby Pinole, where Billie Joe’s three sisters had also taken lessons.

The music store was run by James Fiatarone and his wife Marie-Louise, who taught piano and voice. The couple was immediately impressed by Billie Joe’s potential star quality, aided in no small part by a decided adorability factor. He has a style of communicating with his hands and head like Al Jolson or Frank Sinatra, James told a local reporter. I felt he was like a teddy bear and a puppy who could sing like an angel. Marie-Louise was equally enthusiastic. I’ve had singers as young as three years old, but none with the charisma and love he has, she said. To me, he’s like a Renaissance angel, like a cherub in a Michelangelo painting.

The Fiatarones were also aspiring songwriters, and eventually took Billie Joe to San Francisco to record a song they’d written, ‘Look For Love’, accompanied by his sister Holly and some of their other pupils. The 2:11 song starts off with Billie Joe’s count-in, then a light-hearted musical backing begins, as Billie Joe chirpily informs the listener that the solution to all of life’s woes is — what else? — to look for love, a sentiment echoed by a female back-up chorus who sing the song’s title no less than 44 times. When the track was released as a single in 1977 on the Fiatarones own Fiat Records label, the B-side would feature a short interview with the young singer. How do you like being a recording artist? a perky female voice prompts. I love it! replies Billie Joe. Would you like to sing to people in other countries? Yes. I love people everywhere! Well, I’m sure that this song will reach people all over the world through your record, Billie Joe, the interviewer says approvingly. The interview ends with Billie Joe’s request for fan mail — and please send me your picture! Twenty-four years later, a snippet from the interview would be chosen to open International Superhits.

‘Look For Love’ was promoted on local TV and write-ups appeared in area newspapers. Billie Joe Armstrong, 5, Might Be On His Way To Top, predicted one writer, who quoted James as saying, Shirley Temple came at a time of the Depression when our country needed her sweetness. These are almost the same kind of times and I think the world is ready for this kind of feeling. Eight-hundred singles were pressed and packaged in a plain white sleeve. Sheet music was also available, at $1.25 a copy; the pink-tinted cover features a picture of Billie Joe, wearing jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with the song’s title, sitting on a bench in front of a piano. His gaze is that of a child who’s been told to smile but won’t; his round, slightly pudgy face is framed by a full head of bushy hair. Today the single can be found for sale on line for up to $1,000.

Billie Joe continued performing as a child, singing at veterans hospitals and other community centres. My parents wanted my time to be occupied and music seemed like the most natural thing that came to me, he explained. Though frustrated in his initial attempts to play the piece of shit acoustic guitar laying around the house, that changed when he was given his own guitar, a Fernandes Stratocaster. The Fernandes was a cheap copy of the Fender Stratocaster, and the first-issue of the guitar resulted in Fernandes being sued by Fender, as the copy was too exact. Some accounts have Billie Joe’s father buying the instrument for his son; other accounts say it was his mother. However he acquired the guitar, it quickly became his prized possession and he nicknamed it Blue. The Fernandes remained Billie Joe’s signature guitar through the recording of Insomniac and he occasionally uses the guitar today (Though it looks more green than blue now, he told Guitar World), and has had a number of replicas of it made as well.

Something else equally life-changing happened to Billie Joe around the same time; Andy Armstrong died of cancer of the esophagus when Billie Joe was 10. Ollie was forced to increase her waitress duties and money became so tight that gift giving at Christmastime was curtailed in the Armstrong household. We just learned to accept it, he later told Launch.com. We just had fun. My family knows how to party, so it was no big deal, you know?

Ollie’s subsequent remarriage to a man none of her children liked added to the unhappy atmosphere that Billie Joe’s sister Anna later described to Rolling Stone as dysfunctional. There was a lot of fighting amongst the siblings, a lot of hitting, she said, a view Billie Joe himself corroborated in other interviews. But it also provided the creative spark for the first song Billie Joe would write, at age 14, the aptly-named ‘Why Do You Want Him?’ later recorded on Green Day’s Slappy EP.

But Billie Joe’s tenth year was also rounded out by meeting a fellow aspiring musician with whom he formed his longest-lasting artistic collaboration to date: Mike Dirnt. Mike had his own set of challenges to deal with while growing up. He was born Michael Ryan Pritchard on May 4, 1972, to a mother whose use of heroin led to his being put up for adoption six weeks after his birth. He was eventually adopted and moved to Rodeo with his new family, but the family divorced in 1979. Mike first lived with his adoptive father, but eventually returned to his adoptive mother. He later estimated he’d moved seven times by the time he was 15. When his mother remarried, he too would come into conflict with his new stepfather, though ironically the two would become closer when the marriage split up. He was also occasionally bothered by chest pains and panic attacks he was initially told were the result of problems with his heart.

Mike had dabbled in piano at home before moving on to guitar and eventually bass after he realised the instrument would make him stand out more in a group of guitarists. He taught himself to play on a total piece of shit his mother acquired from a pawn shop. He also took a few guitar lessons, but preferred to learn on his own, jamming with