Billie Joe Armstrong

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts. on Expert. I'm Dan Rather, I'm joined by the Minister of...

What?

I don't know, that's just up to Luke. Weren't you the Minister of something?

Yeah, I was the Minister of Magic.

No, that wasn't it. That's Terrence Posner in The Sorcerer's Stone.

I was the...

Minister of something.

I was.

Minister of Mice. Yeah. Maybe the Minister of Mice. Oh, that sounds right. We have a fucking radical guest on today.

We're in a kind of a music...

Yeah, we're in our music phase.

We're in a music phase, because we have Billy Joe, and then next week we have some music, Armchair Anonymous.

And we have Batiste.

Yeah.

Yeah, yep.

And we have someone scheduled too, also.

Someone else? Yeah. Okay, Easter egg? Yeah, Easter egg. Well, I loved meeting him.

He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

Welcome, great to meet you, brother.

Nice to meet you. Yeah. Hi, Monica, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

I was checking out your non-alcoholic beer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you want me to get you one out of the fridge? Do you like any?

Yeah.

It's very, very good.

My family are huge fans of the show.

That's nice.

Yeah, yeah.

We're always so flattered to hear that.

It's me and my two best friends from Detroit, who, I'll give you a guess, you might be one of the few people that can crack it. If it's from Michigan, and it's called Ted Seeger's, what do you think that's about?

Bob Seeger?

Bob Seeger, and who would be Ted from Michigan?

Bundy? Close. Nugent.

Oh, Nugent, oh, yeah.

The nug. Oh, yeah.

Oh, here we go. Cheers. Oh, this is fun. This is my first time cracking it. It's fun.

That's good.

As far as N.A.'s go, it's like as close as you can get to the real deal.

Yeah, I've been drinking a lot more N.A.'s now.

What's your favorite? Well, let me guess. Zero, Zero? The Heinekens?

I like it, but it makes me pee nonstop.

Sure, that's gonna happen.

Yeah.

What else is in the hopper, pun intended?

I like the new Guinness Zeros, they're really good.

The pub drought, it's almost identical. As I remember, it's been 19 years, but I'm gonna hit you with something that I hope immediately connects us.

Okay.

It involves one of the most magical nights of my life. I'm in Oakland visiting my cousin in 96.. He's a musician. He introduces me to this dude, Jason White.

Jason White's, like one of my favorite people on the planet.

Okay, so he and I meet and it's an explosion. He's from Arkansas? Yep. He's like a proper good old boy. He comes from that thing, but he's left it as F.I.

Probably at the alley in Oakland.

Yeah, it was the alley. In fact, my cousin just sent me a picture of it. Yeah, the Dueling Piano Bar. I felt like I met a soulmate and then I never really saw him again, but we spent like 48 hours together.

Who's the person that he would know to make the connection?

My cousin, Justin Lebow. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. I know that name. But he's in film school in Detroit. He had a band back in the day called Current and then Ottawa.

Yeah, me and him, we travel on the bus together. I met him in Arkansas in 1990.. Okay. So he was booking shows and then he booked our show at this place called Vino's.

And did you have a similar explosion of like connection with him?

Yeah, immediately. Because he played me some of his band and he could sing. And I was like, this dude is really good. Then he ended up a couple of years later, moving out to Oakland. And then I have a side project, band, Pin and Gum Powder.

Yeah, that he replaced someone in, right?

He replaced some, yeah.

You were both singing and playing guitar?

Yeah, yeah. Oh. I understand what you mean. We were like immediate kindred spirits about everything. Yes.

Yes, super funny. I will say when I isolate the things I liked about the punk rock scene in Detroit, it was most people were super into being funny. I think that was actually the thing. There was an irreverence that was built into the scene.

Yeah.

So many of those kids I knew in that time ended up being like the funniest people I ever met. Him being one of them were just instantly hysterical.

He joined Green Day in 99.. Oh, he did? He's our second guitar player. Oh, still? Yeah.

This makes me so happy because I have to say, I had that night with him. I ended up getting sober. And I remember thinking, I wonder how it worked out for that too, because he seemed to go like I did. And you just wonder, you know, if you've had one of those party nights with somebody.

He's living in Berkeley now and he's married, has two kids. Oh, wonderful. And he's funny. when we're on tour, he'll go out like, where's Jason? Like on our days off.

Okay. Anybody bourdaining.

Yeah, so he's checking out every hotspot.

Is he like a foodie now?

He's a total foodie. And a cook, and the drinking he's definitely more mellow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's a given. It was unsustainable. At least the version I experienced with him that I too was participating in. Yeah.

When you grow up being like a Replacements fan, it kind of goes hand in hand. The romance with self-destruction and booze and great rock and roll.

I know, do you find yourself, I'll watch these movies like Leaving Las Vegas. There's some of these tragic stories and they're over and the people I'm with are like, oh, that was, and I'm like, I'm sorry, but it looks good. I hate to say it, like. it looks good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know what that gene is in us.

We just made a video a couple of days ago. I'll show it to you after we talk. I think you might find it interesting.

Okay, great. Now, the other thing from that night that I remember, he divulged to me because he found out I'm super into cars and he liked cars. Again, there's a rare thing in the punk world to care about cars.

I love cars too.

And he told me you had a Galaxy 500..

He had the Galaxy. Oh, he had a Galaxy. Yeah, I convinced him to buy it. Okay. At the time I had a 62 Chevy Nova and a Ford Fairlane.

A Ford Fairlane. That's what the story he told me involved. And this could be apocryphal, but I want you to know. I've been holding this story for 30 some years, which was you got pulled over. You were in the Fairlane and the cop came up and then he recognized you.

Yeah, that's amazing.

You remember that story or do you think it's apocryphal?

Well, I've had a couple stories. I have gotten a DUI before. Okay, right. But there's a couple of times where I had a light out and I had a couple of drinks and I got pulled over and I'm just like, act straight, you know, put your hands on the wheel. It happened to me on Hollywood Boulevard.

You were like, oh no, I thought we were going to jail. No, we're not. We're going to tiptoe home, and this would be the last time ever.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

I'm so delighted, though, that Jason's still in your life and he's doing good. And he's got kids, that makes me really happy.

Yeah, he's one of my closest best friends.

Oh, that's wonderful. Okay, let's start in the suburb, Rodeo. Is that where you grew up?

Yeah.

And we're pronouncing it, Rodeo, right? It's not Rodeo.

Yeah, it's a totally unincorporated town. Here? No, it's in Bay Area, West Contra Costa County, or the locals call it West Cocoa County. There's these three small towns. It's Rodeo, Crockett, then Port Costa.

Oh, no, kidding, that small? Your dad drove for Safeway?

Yeah, Safeway truck driver.

And a musician?

He was a jazz drummer.

And did he play a lot as a kid?

He played pretty often, but he used to play all the clubs in the Bay Area. He had some of his gear stolen. And then, when I started getting back into music and singing, he bought some of his drum set back. He started playing with me when I would do gigs because I would start off as just like a singer when I was like- Five, right? Yeah.

There's a recording of him singing.

I made a record.

Oh, wow. Yeah, and Kimmel played it one time when you were on.

Yeah, yeah. So I started playing with him then, and then I picked up the guitar when I was eight. So I was jamming with him then too. How fun. Yeah, it's a really important memory.

I bet, and you're the youngest of six?

That's right.

Three older sisters, two older brothers. We both have an older Dave, by the way. How old is he? How much older were the boys?

David was born in 69.. I was born in 72.. You're 75..

Yes, how did you know that?

I Wikipedia'd.

Okay, great.

Wow, you did the research. I did my little research. That's, I was just wondering. I was wondering how old you were. I was like, is this guy an Xer or millennial?

Yes, so this is pretty staggering. Your parents are born in the thirties. Mine are born in the fifties and we're the same age. So I was like, oh, you were late for them, probably.

Yeah, she had her first son with a different husband.

Oh, this is scandalous.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, wow, wow. She's gone through a few. She was a hot little commodity. Good for her.

So the oldest brother is a full, what? 22 years. 22 years older than you?

Yeah, the distance in age between me and my oldest brother is wider than the distance in age between him and my mother. Whoa. Right, right. She had my brother, Alan, when she was, I think, 18.. And I was born, he was 21..

Oh, my Lord.

Yeah. That's crazy.

And some mom was 42-ish.

She was 39 and she was about to turn 40..

And were you conscious of the fact that your parents were older when you were a kid?

Yeah, because a lot of my friends had parents that were more 60s generation. I wouldn't say all hippies, but I would see old photos of my parents when they were teenagers.

They were teenagers during World War II.

Yeah, my mom moved from Oklahoma. She's one of 12..

Holy shit.

She moved to California when she was about 12 or 13, and it was during the war effort. They worked in the shipping yards, building ships and bombs in Richmond, California and Oakland. She's born during the depression. She went through World War II, the Korean War, lost a brother in the Vietnam War, went through the 70s having kids and lost a brother to AIDS. So she's seen so much evolution in this country.

She's born into an era with no TV and then now she lives with fucking AI. It's kind of insane.

Yeah.

She doesn't seem to have a global picture of that, or doesn't give a shit or is not impressed by her own story. Is it mind blowing to her? Because I feel like I want it to be mind blowing for her.

I think it is. She reflects a lot on her life and she's really sharp. She's 91 and she's in great shape. She walks every day and exercises.

Is she still in that area?

The house I grew up in.

Oh, that's incredible.

Yeah, every once in a while you'll hear a story about one of her brothers or something like that. It's like, whoa. A lot of my family was military, because you got drafted and you went. And my oldest brother got drafted for the Vietnam War. I hope I'm not getting him in trouble right now.

Oh, wow.

Thank God they never tracked him down.

He didn't go to Canada or anything. He just stayed local. No, he just stayed. And ignored the mail.

And hoped nobody would track him down.

Kind of like I do with jury summons. Just kind of ignore it.

I'm going to pretend. I know, I know.

You got to serve your time. Not in a war, but in jury duty. I do think you should.

I'm like, don't they have to prove I received it? This is my defense in my mind. I'm like, oh, if they do come for me, I'll go like, well, I never got one. How could you prove I got one? I haven't signed for one yet.

I haven't looked in a mailbox in 30 years.

Exactly. My apologies. I'll come now.

If you serve one, you'll see why you should serve one.

I did. I've gone twice. And then every time they kick me off. And then I think, why are we going through this song and dance? I'm just going to skip it.

Did you watch the show, jury duty? Yeah. So good.

Oh my God. What a nightmare for the people to find out they're just getting hoaxed.

I know. Oh my God. Do you think you have younger brother syndrome?

Oh, I wouldn't say syndrome, but it was very well known. I was the baby in the family and I sort of looked like the baby in the family. My sisters used to play, dress up with me and stuff like that. I was like a little doll to them.

Could have been a serial killer from that.

Yeah. And then my brother, we shared a bedroom our whole life.

Here's my little brotherism. Everything he did was the cool thing to do. He's why I skateboarded. He's why I snowboarded. My first show was exploited at 11 years old.

Hell yeah.

Whatever he did, I did. And then, in sixth grade, he sent me to school and I had a really radical haircut and I was wearing all hardcore stuff. That became who I was. I didn't pick it. He was doing it and then I did it and, lo and behold, it totally worked.

I had an older sister the same way, my sister Anna. I got really into metal early on and she's like, why don't you come to these shows with me? I was 13 and I saw REM play in a gymnasium in Santa Cruz. And then I saw The Replacements. She took me to see 10,000 Maniacs.

10,000 Maniacs.

That was the first time I had heard music that felt important. It made me emotional in a different way than more of the party, hair metal stuff that I was listening to. And then it caused me to go deeper, because all of a sudden I became obsessed. I became a massive Husker Du fan.

Yes, I've heard this about you. Yeah. What happened to me is I got handed this genre of music and I just did it because my brother was doing it. But every now and then a melodic one would seep in, right? Or I discover, let's say, mostly everything on Discord, where I go like, oh, there's some melodies.

After the hardcore scene burned itself out because it became kind of the who can play faster songs Olympics.

Yeah.

And like who could have the fastest drummer. Like any scene, it starts to kind of wear itself out. But I think after that, with post-hardcore and the label that we were on, then the Bay Area scene, more people were getting back into melody. One man from Discord. I saw, Grey Matter.

I had a Soulcide tattoo. This used to be the sun and then the flames from the Soulcide album. But then that was tribal and then tribal tattoos got really embarrassing, so I had to cover it.

Oh man, you should have lived in Detroit, man.

Yeah, I was a little bummed when that evolution happened in tattoos, where every dude on the Jersey Shore had a huge tribal piece and I was like, oh, I gotta get rid of this thing. No one knows, this is Soulcide.

God, what if that happens to crows? What are you gonna do?

If everyone on the Jersey Shore gets crows and hogs, I'm sure they have them. I think I'm destined, can't escape it.

My whole body is a walking inside joke, you know, like all of my tattoos.

Right. What's the most embarrassing one you can think of off the top of your head? And granted, you now have come to love it most certainly.

I don't have any ones I'm really embarrassed of. There was kind of a little gang of young punks back in the day. It was called Death Wish Kids. That was from a Poison Idea song. It was DWK.

Oh, sure, right.

And like Deadly White Kung Fu, you know, stuff like that. That's the one I get the biggest kick out of.

Right. Now, this is a very sweet story. It does make me think of maybe the Chili Peppers meeting Young, but you met Mike, who's now the bassist, when you were like 10 years old in school. I'm sorry, we have to also address really quick, your dad dies when you're 10..

Yeah.

And I feel like that's probably related to meeting Mike, or somehow there's something there.

I think about that often because I met him, it was in the fifth grade and we were at a middle school, it was fifth through eighth. We were both sort of this class clown. Right from the beginning, we were very close. We always talked about music, even at that young of an age, but that was the same month that my dad passed away. When I met him, he wanted to be a comedian.

Well, I would imagine it would be the difference between having a friend because they're there, why not, it's entertaining versus very much needing a friend.

I think we both needed each other. We could have deep conversations. It's so funny. We used to go into my backyard and we used to pick up these leaves that we thought were magic leaves and that we can control the wind.

Sure, sure, orchestrate the wind.

All of a sudden a wind would come, see, I told you they were magic leaves. And as time went on, that relationship just kept growing. And we always sort of talked about music and being in a band.

Who did you guys think was the coolest band at that age?

I really loved Motley Crue and Van Halen. Those were big bands for me when I was around 11, 12 years old. And then I think around 13 is when it got into harder metal. Around 12 years old is when me and Mike, we would sit down and play guitar together.

And he originally played guitar.

Yeah, so when we got to around high school, we were like, we wanna be like the replacements. Mike played guitar and I played guitar and we had rotating drummers. This one kid, Jimmy Brasher, was with us. And we had our friend, Sean, who was a really close buddy of ours. And we were playing in the backyard, and Sean was having a hard time keeping up playing bass because he was just a few years behind us.

This is such a wonderful.

It's such a kid thing.

I know. Get his braces tightened.

Yeah, he had to go to the dentist and me and Mike and Jimmy were sitting there, and I go, Mike, why don't you try picking up the bass? And he was like, okay. And then he played everything that he was supposed to play perfectly. It was sort of this weird feeling where I looked at him and I was like, you know, you're gonna be the bass player, right? And he looked at me like, oh man, now I can't play guitar, because now I'm the bass player.

You were right, yes, of course.

My brother, Alan, my oldest brother, told Mike, he goes, you're not a rhythm guitar player. You're a lead bass player.

Oh, that's a good reframing.

Yeah, Mike tackled that. He's an amazing bass player. Totally underrated. His melodies that he writes on bass are gorgeous.

Well, I think the one we should say immediately is Longview, because we're here, you go to the movies, you've got a song in your mind, but you don't know what the bass line is. You come back from the movies, Mike is on acid in the kitchen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lying on his back and he's got it.

Yeah, we all live with this one house. It was two or three bands that were sharing this house in Richmond. I went to the movies and everybody in the house dropped acid and I showed up because I told him, I go, we really need a good bass line for this song. And Mike is sitting on the floor, his eyes are like in circles. He goes, I got it, I got it.

And you don't have a cell phone yet to pull it out and just start recording the audio probably.

No, nothing like that, but he remembered it. That's the memory that I have. And I hope that that's the memory he has with it.

Does it matter?

No, no.

It doesn't, I'm in the middle of writing stuff about my childhood. My brother and I were in the same place at the same time for these same events. Both of us have completely different memories of it. How on earth could you trust one of us over the other?

Both of you are wrong is really the answer.

And both are right. Yeah. Right? Both are wrong, both are right. Yeah.

I mean, we definitely remember things differently. I have a really good memory of the early days, being in a van and touring. I can remember the houses and the people that we stayed at and I can remember which gig. It's pretty impressive, I gotta say for myself.

But that makes so much sense, right? Because it's the first of everything.

Yeah. I used to wear this pick on a necklace and it was a Ramones pick, but we played in Cape Cod and we played with seven league boots. Soulside became seven league boots. And so I remember playing this sort of vets hall and I looked down and I'm like, oh my God, a Ramones pick. I took it with me and I made a necklace out of it.

I gotta imagine there's something in the same way that smells activate memories so strongly, they're located close to each other in the brain. I'd imagine there's something about the musical experience. When you're hearing that song or it's coming to you, or you're breaking it or you're synthesizing it, I have to imagine that gets stored in a unique way that probably cements all the details that led to it in your mind in a way.

Yeah, one thing that's good about having voice notes on your phone, a melody will hit me in the head and then I'll just sing into it and that'll start the process of writing the song. There's one song on our new album called Susie Chapstick that I did the voice note, I demoed it four different ways until I kind of came to like a teenage fan club. pretenders kind of feel to it. So I edited it together, the arc of how the song came about. One day I'll put it out.

All from voice memos.

Voice memos and little piano parts, and at one point it was like a bossa nova and I was like, well, I don't think we're gonna be able to get away with a bossa nova on this record, but.

You never know, though. You've gone some places that probably you were shocked with the outcome.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so you move out of your town and you go to West Oakland. Yeah.

With Mike.

Well, Mike.

Here's the thing about Mike.

We are so close, it is like our story. His mother ended up moving to Louisiana before high school got out. So he moved in at my house with my mom.

Who would notice?

There's already fucking 100 people there. So many kids.

Yeah, I know. She was like, give me a couple hundred bucks a month because rent and then, as soon as I had to start paying rent at home, that's when I was like, I'm moving to West Oakland and a friend of mine hooked me up. Big warehouse space full of other bands and artists. It was like $50 a month for rent. I have my own room.

Okay, so this is why I relate deeply to you. So we all moved to downtown Detroit and we had a loft, and similarly I had to come up with 100 bucks a month and then I'm good. And then we can go to St. Andrews every night and we can get hammered and walk around the city. I imagine the same culture shock for you that it was for me.

Yeah, the sense of danger was always there.

Which is so exciting, though, isn't it?

Well, there was also this cool thing. I remember we couldn't go to the liquor store after two. There would be a guy down the street that was selling beer out of the back of his car. So we would go by 40s. out of the back of this guy's car.

This is what we learned. So first I parked my car in front of that loft and all the windows got broken and someone stole the stereo out, standard. So then I'm like, I'm gonna leave the doors unlocked so they don't break my windows. They got broken again because people just assume it's locked. It evolved to you had to park with your windows completely down.

Yeah.

And it was winter in Detroit. You come outside and there'd be snow on your fucking front seat.

You probably had a shitty car. You're trying to get it started in the cold.

I had an 84 Ford Mustang GT that I had rebuilt the engine on.

Oh, well, shit. You're very intimate with the car.

Oh, I was. Did you see the windows broken? Every few weeks was a bummer.

Oh, my God.

That sense of danger I found very intoxicating and arousing.

Yeah, especially moving in with people that were doing the same thing when you're living in a house with 16 people.

Is that how many people were in there?

It was a warehouse. I think at one point it was a brothel. Oh, wow. So it was all these kids that had all of these rooms and we had gigantic rats. And me and my friend, we used to sit there with pellet guns.

There you go.

Cause we have 13 cats too. Oh, no.

I'd rather have the rats than the 13 cats.

Me too actually.

It feels like you're gonna find them eating a grandma's body or something.

She still married you, even though you wouldn't protect her from those rats.

Well, they have a cute story. First tour he ever did with Green Day, they were at a house party in Minneapolis and he met her.

It was 4th of July, 1990.. We played, she was there with her boyfriend, and this was the first time we were out of California, and California fireworks are illegal. But right when we got to these different States, we were buying bottle rockets and all this stuff. Her first memory of me is me shooting bottle rockets at her and her boyfriend. that was there also.

You hated it at that moment.

We played the next night at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown and she showed up. I remember she came up to me and we started talking and we were out of records that we were selling on tour. She was, I have a couple of friends that are in England that love your band, but they can't get your records. And then I was like, oh my God, this girl is so beautiful. And I was like, here's my home address and my phone number.

And a bus ticket.

Yeah, and a ring.

You basically bamboozle your bandmates into going and adding two cities to a tour later that you have no business going to, so you can see her again. Yeah. And you've now written 2,000 light years away.

I wrote that on the way home.

Were the other guys calling you out? Like, why are we going all the way here for these two shows?

Well, I think that they kind of didn't give a shit, because we packed our van with like six of us. And so we got in the Forty Connel line and we had to drive to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. first. Adrian met me there, and then they quickly figured out. We played Mankato, Minnesota.

Yeah, listen to this memory. These are not even towns.

Yeah, we played in Beloit, Wisconsin, and we played in Minneapolis at the 7th Street entry.

There was a pretty big scene there, though. Yeah, that was probably a good size show.

Yeah, it was just more coming to, like a little Mecca to be playing where Husker and The Replacements and Soul Asylum. But they figured it out that I was really into her pretty quickly. But at that time, I think Trey may have even been about 17 years old when we made that drive.

Oh, my Lord. You've since had boys. And when you think of them out on the road in a van at 17 going to Sioux Falls, do you think like, I now realize, we were quite young?

Yeah, every time they get in a van, I worry. Right. My son Jacob's in a van, but they've got one guy in their van who is a car head and keeps that van in tip top shape. And I'm like, I don't care where you're driving. It's either 55 or under.

Not the advice you'd expect a rockstar dad to give. No, I know. None of it delivers.

Yeah, just the dab, dab. There is no rockstar dad.

Exactly, there's no such thing. Wait, so when did you realize you guys were good?

Honestly, I thought we were always good.

Okay, that's a great answer.

I thought from the very beginning, when we started writing songs, and as we were getting into punk, it came totally natural to us. And we always had it in our heads to evolve. And I think the bands that are peers at that time, except for like Rancid, because they did evolve. For us, it was like, we wanted to evolve. We weren't just listening to punk.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Just over 30 years.

Oh. Wikipedia.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Me and Mike have been together for 40 years.

Yeah, oops. Yeah, 30 year anniversary of Dookie is this...

Yeah, in February. 2024..

Okay, so there's a lot of elements that can break a band apart. We've seen all of our favorites. So few of them have made it. Metallica did it somehow and U2.. Those two have stayed together.

Well, that produced like five songs. Yeah. So, you know, they're like, hey, we've got five new songs for our next album.

Yeah, I read the sweetest thing. You said that you wrote 2,000 light years away and that you've been writing songs about her for 30 more years. I think that's so fucking sweet. And that the moment you send her that song, from the outside, we'd all go like, what woman's not gonna love getting that song, and it's about her? But at that moment, you had some anxiety that like, am I a stalker?

That has crossed my mind more now because of sort of the culture that we live in compared to back then. But I think that some of the stuff, I just thought this is my gift to you. This is what I think, this is how I feel. I'm able to express myself, and do it in melody and heart. And people do really romantic gestures, but for me, that was-.

That was your soul. You're like, here, here's a peek at me.

Yeah.

And so, if you like it, you like me. And if you don't like it, you don't like me. The stakes are high. Because you're going, here. it is, take a peek.

It's very vulnerable.

Yeah, because there are, I would say back then, girls that I've written songs about, and it was just like, shoop. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Like, I better change the lyrics. You know?

How come it took you guys four years to get it together?

She was in college in Mankato, Minnesota. She also had a boyfriend.

The same one. Yeah.

Oh, wow, very long time. The recipient of the bottle rockets.

Poor guy. Yeah. I was sick with just love and I was like losing weight and I didn't really know how it was gonna work out, but I sorta knew that we were gonna be in each other's lives.

You're kinda just waiting for her to not be with that guy, I imagine. Yeah. And so anyone who's coming into your life in that period is like only gonna get so close, because you know somewhere in the back of your mind, like, when that day comes, I'm running towards that.

Yeah. So I ended up being in Minneapolis for some stuff.

That you acted like you had to be there for?

Yeah. Nah. I called her and I knew that she had a breakup.

You're trying to act not too excited.

Yeah, I kept calling her. We were on the very first Dookie tour and we were gonna play First Avenue and she showed up. Ever since then, we were together.

Yeah. Okay, so forces on a band. though. Let's just talk about this transition because, as you would know so well, and maybe it exists elsewhere. I've not been in other mini cultures to know, but selling out was a real thing for people.

Yeah.

Their popularity. It's like, eh, anymore.

That was always there, especially when a band in the punk scene would get popular. All of a sudden, the punk rock cops were taking, you know, maximum rock and roll was starting to look. Yeah. So they're looking at. how much of your T-shirts are you selling them for?

People don't have record players in the dashboards of their car. Yeah. But they have CD players.

And then the size of the band is getting bigger. So people that are in the scene start to take notice. And especially where we were from, where it was, like the socialist, political, punk rock capital of the country, if not the world, San Francisco, and especially Berkeley.

The purity demands were quite high there. Big time. I bring it up because I think if you're listening on the outside and you're like, well, this is preposterous. You're a musician. You'd want everyone to hear your music.

Yeah. We'd gotten into some brawls with people. The worst thing you could call a person back then was a rock star. It was like a bad word. So when someone would say it, it was like fighting words.

They wanna be rock stars. Yeah.

It was tough. The smart people probably would just moved out of that community, but I stayed. Because when we signed to Reprise, which is Warner's, everyone found out and we were kind of trying to keep it on the down low as much as possible. And then we made the record. Record comes out.

Who still, he's the one who just produced Saviors, yeah? Yeah. Again, a testament to the impossibility that you're still a band 30 years later and you're still working with him.

I'm just very loyal, sometimes at a fault. We made the record, then it just kept getting bigger. It just didn't stop. When we started kind of becoming the poster boys of the punk revival, that's where I was like, I don't want to be known as that. I just want to be known as Green Day.

Yeah, because you make this really insular, sweet thing that defines itself as outcasts and misfits, and you're now giving it to the populace.

Yeah.

Which is hurtful. if that was your sanctuary. You don't want to share it with the fucking quarterback from the football team. Totally. It's preposterous in many ways.

For me, because I'm coming from it as a musician, it is heartbreaking, but good is good.

No, a thousand percent. I'm with you. It's insane, the limit that was enforced on everyone. But just the simple, if we get emotional about it, when I would go to a show, you could go to a show in any city in America, you would walk in and you liked the people. immediately.

But they could also see it as, look what my people do. Yeah, so I don't love that.

No, I don't either, but I can empathize with the feeling underneath.

Everyone just wants to exclude everyone. It's like, why can't we just all like a thing that's good?

Because they had something where they could walk in and feel safe immediately. And now you walk in and it's back to the real world.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. There's also some things that I look back on. We had a lot of young women that came to our shows and that was not as normal.

It was mostly dudes.

As some of the other punk bands at that time. That was one thing that they made fun of us for. And I'm like, dude, this is low-key sexism.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, like I'm not complaining. Yeah. No, no, no, absolutely not.

But also the punk scene, at least in Detroit, it was kind of the pre-Woke-Woke movement. Everyone was minding their P's and Q's. Like. they were actually quite advanced, I imagine. Yet they still had that thing, which is counter to it.

Yeah.

Oh my God. To be doing all of these major highlight things at once had to be challenging.

I'm just really impulsive. Adrian came back into my life. It was just a situation where I want to spend my life with this person. I've been waiting for four years for her to be available and I was available. And so we hooked up.

Well, I would imagine, with that gap of time that you waited, I'd be ready for marriage three weeks into dating, because I've really been in this for four years.

Yeah, she moved to California. She didn't give her parents the whole story of why, like I think she was just out of college trying to find a job, thinking maybe she'd go to New York. Testing the waters, you know, is bullshit. She came out and she moved in with me and then, three weeks later, she called her parents and said, we're getting married. Wow.

And then, almost immediately after that, I'm pregnant, right?

Like. immediately. Our friends pitched in and got us a nice hotel room for our honeymoon. The next morning after our wedding, she's like, you know, I'm not feeling that good. And I was like, well, we haven't exactly been careful.

Triple sure.

It was like, I guess we're gonna be parents.

Whoa.

Yeah.

23 and also you're a rockstar for the first time.

Yeah, yeah. This was in months. The record came out in February. I was married in July.

I, okay. How do we handle all this change?

Oh.

So I'm writing that you have some addiction stuff, yeah? Are we brothers in that? Yeah.

I was a drinker back then, but not a big one. I used to smoke a lot of weed.

Well, Green Day.

Yeah.

Oh my God. I don't think I ever knew that. It was the like.

He and Mike loved weed.

Yeah, we smoked weed and we listened to Susie and the Banshees, and then we were like, this is what our name should be.

Did you like the psychedelic furs?

Yeah. Honestly, when I started drinking a lot, it was due to stage fright.

No kidding.

We were always drinking 40s and it was the thing to do. You could definitely see people that were our age, that were way deep into addiction already. As time went on, when I was in my early 20s, all my friends that had no responsibility were going to the bars. And so I would go meet them and I had a world of responsibility and would go meet them at the bars. That was really immature.

I mean, you were 23,. of course it was immature.

Yeah.

You weren't mature. Your frontal lobe was not even fully developed yet.

Right, but my wife was really the opposite. She understood what a child's schedule needs, how to know if they're sick before they're even being sick.

Well, look, you dropped out of high school and she had just graduated college. So you guys are different types. Thank God. She's responsible.

Yeah, and I was impulsive and spontaneous, and she didn't drink at all.

She didn't at all.

I mean, she drank like in college and high school, but as soon as we had a kid, nothing.

And were you experiencing the phenomena of having realized every dream you could have possibly had and then wondering where is the elation that's supposed to accompany this? And how do I get that? I'm supposed to have that?

I always said there's a fine line between celebrating and partying. When people are celebrating, there's some joy. There's something that happened. that was like, you know, whether it's like-.

Worthy of commemorating with a celebration.

A bachelor party, a record that just came out, doing a movie for the first time. we were at the after parties and blah, blah, blah. But then, like partying has like a darkness to it. Because I think people get to a certain point where they've had a bad day. I've earned this.

Yes, the pressure of that must be daunting as hell.

And that's when the partying kind of kicked in in that darkness.

You need an escape from the pressure.

Yeah, I would spend a lot of hours down at the bar. I'd go out and tell my wife, hey, me and my friends are gonna go get some drinks. And in my mind, I'm going, I'm gonna go down there, I'm gonna have a couple beers and then I'm gonna come home. Maybe stop at Taco Bell on the way home.

Bring her back something special.

Yeah, but next thing, you know, we're closing down the bar. They know who I am, so they'll keep the bar open for another hour. And then we're just shit faced. And I'd come home and then the next morning, I couldn't get out of bed. You have a son that's been up way before you.

And then the shame sets in.

The shame.

And now you gotta drink more because the shame's there.

Well, I would try to get my shit together. I mean, that's the last time. And then either something celebratory or some kind of release that I needed to have. And it just was the cycle that started off on the weekends, but then all of a sudden you'd be on tour. I would get really bad stage fright.

Well, this is the other thing I wanted to ask you about. is that crazy dichotomy between what you experience on the stage. And then, nine minutes later, you're in your hotel room.

Yeah.

And you're like, what do I do now? I don't think it's a natural experience for a human to have. And I don't think it's super easy to navigate that enormous chasm between that experience and then back in a hotel room by yourself.

On tour, there was times I would go into my room. I sit there and I know that my bandmates and crew were in the bar.

Yes, yes.

And I'm sitting there and you're just like white, knuckling it. Yeah. And then I find, ah, fuck it, I'm going down. And they're like, Billy! It was like, Norm!

Yeah.

You know, everyone's happy to see you. Yeah. Here, let me go have a drink.

You need something to like, lower you back down to reality. It's not an easy transition, I don't think. I can't even imagine being in a stadium with that amount of energy and humanness and the power of it.

I did five years of sobriety and then I fell off and now I'm sober again.

Is your life generally better when you're sober?

Fuck yeah. Especially now, the second time I've been sober, all alcohol does for me is get in my way. It gets in the way of my relationships, it gets in the way of being productive in my music and it gets in my way of enjoying the things that I like. now, being a 51-year-old man. Even just taking a hike in the park, I get more gratification from.

Yeah, and also, don't you think, once you start drinking, you're basically just hitting pause on any forward momentum in any relationship, any forward momentum in your life? and as you're running out of time, you're like, I can't really hit pause.

Yeah, then all of a sudden you're like, I've gotta be the phoenix rising from the ashes. You know, cigarette butts and tequila and beer, and whatever human garbage can that I feel like right now. Right.

You can get romantic about that part.

Yeah, because then all of a sudden you're like, see, I could do it. And then you're like, well, you're just gonna do it again.

Yeah, you're on fucking repeat. That's all that's happening. So of the pressures, again, it's astounding. you guys have been together for so long. There's the fame, there's the success, there's marriages, there's whatever, everyone's relationship was substance.

That's a hard one to answer. We've had a very similar experience going through life and whatever happened with Green Day, we had all done together every single step of the way. Sometimes it could be as simple as going, I got a new song, you want to hear it? And then I'll do a demo and I'll play it. They get the, fuck.

That's a blessing.

Yeah, they're like, that song is sick, bro. You know, and then I'll write, well, I'll write 11 more. And then we get together and jam and shape the song and arrange it, see what it needs, leave Mike and Trey at their parts and things like that, to writing bass lines and Trey writing some of his signature, amazing drum parts. And then all of a sudden it becomes a Green Day. And I just think, we just love what we do.

Right, and that's the bond.

Yeah, but have you guys had to learn how to talk to each other and communicate? Like we have, for sure. Yeah. There's been so many, almost, we're not doing this anymore moments. Yeah.

There's definitely times where I've been kind of a dick to try to get my way about something. And there's times where I feel like I'm not being heard.

or- Underappreciated, undervalued.

Yeah, and then I could say the same thing about them. We're always able to have those deeper conversations about feelings.

Yeah, yeah, well, it's the thing that probably brought you together initially. There's something so beautiful about those friendships that start at 10 years old. There's a level of built-in goodwill and benefit of the doubt that you maybe can't really offer to people that enter your life later.

Inevitably, we've always been able to hear each other and been there for each other. When times got hard for any of us, whether it's been like a divorce or death in the family, or someone has gotten ill, we've always tried to just be there. It's really unique. Yeah.

Did you watch Some Kind of Monster?

Yes.

Did you find that enthralling? Just really quick, that's the Metallica doc. Yeah. And they have to bring in a psychologist to help the band.

The psychologist was a good call, you know? It was hard to watch.

That's what I would imagine.

Because I always thought of them as being like the mighty Metallica.

The closest thing we had to Led Zeppelin.

Yeah, there was more of a mystery and mystique about them. There was just like that muscle of being Metallica. All of a sudden, you're watching this shit go down and you're like, oh my God, these are real people having real problems.

And Hatfield in particular, I'm like, oh wow, yeah, that man, they're like man's man. He's fucking hunting boar in Russia. But he's also drinking a half gallon of vodka and he's sad and miserable and lonely. Whoa.

Lars trying to navigate through that and then having a member of the band quit, him, just trying to be the guy to pull it together.

Hold everything together. He's like the person in the marriage that wanted to fight for it and a lot of people didn't want to. That's what it felt like to me.

Yeah, well, that's sometimes why people fight, because they're fighting to keep it together. They're not fighting to fall apart. In a good relationship, when you get into those deep arguments that you get hurt feelings, you know, I'm so sorry I disrespected you, but just know that I'm fighting to keep this together, not fall apart.

Right, that's important to know a lot of times.

Yeah, it was a tough watch, just seeing them so vulnerable.

I'm so delighted they released that, though. I think that's like the most helpful thing they could do.

It was just like right out in the open. And when they started the documentary, they had no idea where it was gonna go. No. They thought they were documenting the new Metallica album.

They're gonna sit down and write a fucking awesome album, and that was gonna be that. They're in the Presidio. This is gonna be cool. So glad we'll be capturing this.

And it's funny, because whose decision was it to go, keep rolling the cameras?

Well, Berlinger, I think that's the name of the documentarian. He is incredible. I think he also did the My Brother's Keeper. He's a deep fucking, like. he was the man for the job on that.

We put out Dookie as an album. It was just phenomenally huge. And then Insomniac, it's interesting when it comes to metrics for people, because, like the next record sold, I don't know, over a million. When the gatekeepers are looking at it as something that's not successful, all of a sudden you're burdened by your own success. So you're trying to get away from it.

I could almost come to hate that album if I were. you. Like, fuck that thing. fucked us up. We're selling a million and people are disappointed.

Why don't we call the record Dookie? We just named it after shit.

Can we take one second for that song? Because this is an interesting story. You were at a party with a girl, a college party, and dudes pulled out like an acoustic guitar or something.

Yeah, it was a bunch of like ponytail guy types.

But you weirdly walked away from it and you're like, I kind of want to try this acoustic guitar thing.

Yeah.

And then this song again, you can't aim for something like this. It happens. And then to see it, like Monica was just saying on the walk-in, she's like, I'm pretty sure my chorus sang that song.

Yeah.

And I said, of course you did.

God, I wish I had a snare drum right now.

You like it. Stop acting like you, don't like it.

Well, it's the second time you've said it in an hour.

But you hadn't heard it.

I know, I know.

But anyways, of course she sang it. And, as you said, it's played at wedding ceremonies and funerals and bar mitzvahs. That is a thrilling experience.

Yeah, and the song, it's about sort of a bittersweet breakup and trying to have a level head about it. This is a goodbye.

You know what? It's kind of similar to Taylor Swift's, The One.