About
Punk revivalists in style, this raucous trio achieved triple-platinum status with their major-label debut, Dookie. Although Green Day's taut, three-minute, guitar-driven songs ably revive the fierceness of the group's stylistic progenitors (the Who, the Clash and the Sex Pistols), punk's original aim — to annoy, outrage, shock — is not Green Day's thing.
Friends since age 10, Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt grew up in Rodeo, California. They formed their first real band, Sweet Children, at 14. When they were 17, the pair first recorded as Green Day, signing with the punk label Lookout and releasing the 1989 EP 1,000 Hours with drummer John Kiffmeyer. The next year, the group recorded its first full-length album, 39/Smooth, in a day. Two more EPs followed, with Kiffmeyer leaving to focus on his studies and Tre Cool, with whom Armstrong had played in a band
called the Lookouts, taking over on drums for 1992's Kerplunk. With a solid fanbase built on the nurturing, all-ages hardcore scene in Berkeley, the group signed with Reprise in April 1993. Its 1994 release, Dookie, proclaimed the next generation of punk, hitting Number Four on the album chart, buoyed by the band's effervescent presence on MTV and at Lollapalooza and Woodstock '94. The album won a 1994 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance and sold 10 million copies worldwide.
The 1995 follow-up Insomniac sold nearly 3 million copies and charted at Number Two, but failed to repeat the success of the band's major-label debut. Nimrod (Number 10, 1997) sold a million copies but won fresh exposure for the group, largely on the strength of the ballad "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." In 2000, Green Day released Warning (Number Four), a more introspective, even folk-influenced record that showed the group stretching artistically. Despite producing the radio hit "Minority," the album was a commercial letdown, selling fewer than a million copies. Two compilations followed: A best-of, International Superhits! (Number 40, 2001), and the B-sides round-up Shenanigans (Number 27, 2002).
By the early '00s, there was a growing consensus that Green Day's cachet was in decline, as evidenced by the band's slowing album sales. That belief that was put to rest with the release of American Idiot (Number One, 2004), a multiplatinum, Grammy-winning rock opera with political overtones that restated Green Day as one of the biggest musical acts in the world. Produced by Rob Cavallo, Idiot is grandiose — two of the songs are multi-part suites that clock in at nearly 10 minutes — but never show-offy. Five singles were released, all of them hits: The title track (Number 61, 2004), "Wake Me Up When September Ends" (Number Six, 2005), "Holiday" (Number 19, 2005), "Jesus of Suburbia" (Number 27 Modern Rock, 2005) and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (2004), the latter a ballad that came one slot away from being Green Day's first Number One single.
Following extensive touring, Green Day recorded a cover of the Skids' "The Saints Are Coming" (Number 51, 2006) with U2, which was released to raise awareness for musicians whose lives had been disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. In 2007, the band appeared on both American Idol — where they performed a version of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" (Number 53) — and in The Simpsons Movie. That year the band also began a side project — that they at first kept secret — called Foxboro Hot Tubs, a group that also features Jason White, Josh Freese and Kevin Preston. In May 2008, the band issued its first LP, a garage album called Stop Drop and Roll!!!, and went on a brief tour. Armstrong also revived his other side project, Pinhead Gun Powder, who played their first show since 2001 in February 2008.
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