Green Day biography

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Green Day's Discography

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Green Day filled a post Nirvana misery vacuum with their retro-punk anthems. Songs like Geek Stink Breath and Brain Stew, helped them become official spokesmen for all teenage male matters, (see masturbation, smoking dope, farting and er, chicks, dude!). Like fellow cartoon punkers The Offspring and Blink 182, Green Day, through a series of catchy, punk-retread albums remained in this state of arrested development for several years. And then came 2004's album American Idiot, their most ambitious offering to date, a full-on rock opera that attacked George Bush, the "age of paranoia", America's invasion of Iraq and the suffocating age of consumerism. Phew! "I was ready to fail. I was ready to fall flat on my face," said lead singer Billy Joe Armstrong. Instead, Green Day became the biggest band in the world...

Green Day began life as Sweet Children, a band formed by singer Billy Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt at school in Rodeo, California when they were 14. Drummer Tre Cool (aka Frank Edwin Wright III) joined from the band, The Lookouts.

Billy Joe Armstrong's dad had died when he was 10 years old. He felt stifled and unhappy and turned to the city's music scene for some kind of release. The band called themselves Green Day in memory of a marathon weed smoking session. In 1989 the band released its first EP independently. 1,000 Hours was well received by the California underground punk scene. Soon the group had signed a contract with a local independent label, Lookout. Their first album, 1,039 /Smoothed Out Slappy Hour, recorded in just 24 hours, was released later that year.

The band continued to cultivate a cult punk following in the early '90s which gained strength with the release of their second album in 1992, Kerplunk. The album displayed more confidence and a better grasp of dynamics than their debut, leading to a major label deal with Reprise Records. Dookie, their major label debut album became a surprise smash upon its release in 1994, largely due to the college/MTV favourite Basket Case. The album was an effervescent tonic to counter Kurt Cobain's suicide that year. It was full of sarcastic, loser anthems to teenage alienation and masturbation, natch. It sold 10m copies. Green Day soon became a rebel-punk phenomenon in the US, like the Sex Pistols without the danger and revolutionary intent.

The band quickly followed Dookie with the Insomniac album in 1995. The album was much darker and edgier, perhaps a reaction to being crowned as slacker poster boys. . The album entered the US charts at No.2 but went on to sell 2m copies, less than a quarter of the sales of its predecessor. Tracks like Geek Stink Breath and Brain Stew proved radio favourites and kept the band's profile high.

In the spring of 1996 Green Day cancelled a European tour claiming exhaustion. The cancellation meant that the band could spent the rest of the year writing new material. The result was 1997's Nimrod album. It was an adventurous set of songs and the single, the acoustic ballad Time Of Your Life (Good Riddance), proved an interesting departure. The single gained attention in the UK when it was used to soundtrack the England football team's departure from the 1998 World Cup, natch.

Armstrong managed to defy his detractors with 2000's Warning album - far from a juvenile slab of anthemic punk, the album displayed Armstrong's love of The Kinks and Elvis Costello with a set of downbeat, low-key and introspective songs. The title track was an understated gem proving that the band were maturing into, wait for it, sophisticated songwriters.

The ensuing four-year hiatus led to rumours that the band had run out of ideas and Armstrong admitted. "We were kind of stuck and it took something major for us to see that." That something major was the aborted attempt at their seventh album. Initially due to be called Cigarettes and Valentines and not much of a departure from 2000's Warning album, the master tapes were stolen. Armstrong says now it may even have been mislaid. But after the tape%u2019s disappearance the band's producer Rob Cavallo took the opportunity to tell the band he thought it was rubbish!

So the Green Day were faced with not only re-inventing their music but the relationships within the band. Dirnt and Cool felt that Armstrong was excluding his bandmates and making decisions without them. And so Armstrong faced up to being cold and controlling while Dirnt and Cool learnt to contribute more musically. The band moved to LA for inspiration. "LA is full of people with scripts, plastic surgery victims , people crashing and burning. I'm fascinated and horrified by it," says Armstrong.