While most 5-year-olds are pulling hair and learning to share their toys, Billie Joe Armstrong was recording his first song and being interviewed by radio stations. As a child, he learned to play the piano, took singing lessons and performed in hospitals to help cheer up the infirmed, and while his peers were out whacking baseballs and sulking over life’s disappointments, Billie Joe was wielding his beloved “Blue” and protesting his lot via song. From the time he popped out of the womb, Billie Joe Armstrong was destined to rock.
Armstrong was 15 when he played his first show at Rod’s Hickory Pit after forming Sweet Children in 1987 with childhood friend and Green Day bassist, Mike Dirnt. He and Dirnt met in their school cafeteria when both were 12 years old and quickly became inseparable, bonding over a mutual familial strife and the love of music. Armstrong persuaded his friend to buy an electric guitar and the boys jammed together at Billie’s house. Although initially influenced by heavy metal, Billie Joe turned to punk after hearing the Sex Pistols and remained unfazed by the ridicule of his peers for his punk getups and anarchistic attitude.
In the earliest days of Sweet Children, both Armstrong and Dirnt played guitar with John Kiffmeyer on drums and Sean Hughes on bass. After a few gigs and an EP (which was later featured at the end of Green Day’s Kerplunk!), Hughes left the band, Dirnt took up the bass, and in 1989, the trio of Armstrong, Dirnt, and Kiffmeyer changed their name to Green Day, slang for a day of sitting around smoking pot. Then, with an album and a couple of EPs under their belt, Kiffmeyer left Green Day in late 1990 to attend college and was replaced by current drummer, Tre Cool.
Billie Joe dropped out of high school six months shy of graduation and a day before his 18th birthday to pursue his musical ambitions and passed on an invite to front fellow punk band Rancid in order to devote his time and immense talent to Green Day. He’s been the group’s lead vocalist and primary lyricist since their inception and plays a host of instruments including guitar, harmonica, mandolin, piano, drums and percussion.
Green Day were on a roll, cranking out an album nearly every other year. With the success of their second record, Kerplunk! (the first to include the current lineup), the band outgrew their indie label and signed with Reprise Records, a move which alienated their grassroots fanbase. The band’s first release with Reprise was 1994s Dookie, a landmark album that popularized punk in the States, selling over 15 million copies worldwide, and earned Green Day a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance.
Three years later, Green Day would again incense their hardcore fans with the release of Nimrod, an experimental album that dabbled in all sorts of genres and included an acoustic ballad, of all things. Although Nimrod didn’t match the sales of Dookie, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” was a huge hit for the group with its mellow, contemplative lyrics and retrospective tone.
The song reached a massive audience when it played during a montage of clips from the show Seinfeld. “Good Riddance” marked a fall from punk grace for Green Day. Many thought the band were losing relevance. Even Johnny Rotten, who once influenced a young Billie Joe Armstrong, took a potshot at the band, claiming the Sex Pistols paved the way for Green Day to “waltz in and call themselves punk”. He ranted on, accusing Green Day of having “reduced a political movement into a simple musical style” and called the band “phonies”, saying that, “They hold no promise, no future. They jumped on a bandwagon that was all clearly laid out for them, forgetting all the bands that did the groundwork, putting together a punk movement. They came in and said, ‘Yes, we can wear these clothes and have our hair like this, wear those boots and play music that way, and we'll call ourselves punk.’” Ouch.
Next time: Green Day redeem themselves as Billie Joe Armstrong pulls off back-to-back rock operas with American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown.
