Green Day Biography
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
Green Day is a pop punk band
consisting of Billie Joe Armstrong (lead vocals, guitar), Mike Dirnt (bass)
(born Michael Ryan Pritchard), and Tré Cool (drummer) (born Frank Edwin Wright
III). Since their 6th album, the band have included close friend and associate,
back-up guitarist Jason White.
Along with other bands on the
Lookout! label, they are credited as being the pioneers of the pop punk genre
popularizing the genre to the mainstream with 1994's smash album Dookie. Dookie
has been certified diamond (10 million copies shipped) in the United States
since its release. Their second best selling album American Idiot came a decade
after Dookie in 2004 and is enjoying huge critical and fan acclaim. A mere year
after its release, it has been certified triple platinum in the USA, has sold 7
million copies world-wide and won the band a Grammy award for Best Rock Album.
A common and false misperception is
that the band is British. The band however is paying homage to many British
bands and artists, among them classic rock acts like Rolling Stones, The
Beatles, The Kinks and the Who, as well as influential punk acts like The Clash,
and The Sex Pistols.
* * * *
Lookouts: the beginning
At the age of 12, Tré Cool became a
member of the band The Lookouts. Their album attracted some attention, and Tré
began performing at an early age at the Berkeley, California punk club 924
Gilman Street. In 1988, Billie Joe Armstrong (16-years-old) and Mike Dirnt (born
Michael Ryan Pritchard, also 16-years-old) formed "Sweet Children", with
Armstrong on lead vocals and guitar, Dirnt, on bass and backing vocals, and John
Kiffmeyer (a.k.a. Al Sobrante), on drums.
Their first show was in 1988 at
Rod's Hickory Pit in Rodeo, California. A couple months later, they played a
high school party with the Lookouts in a remote mountain location near Willits,
California, where Tre and Kain Kong of the Lookouts lived and attended school.
Only five kids showed up for the party, and there was no electricity in the
house, so Sweet Children had to play using a generator and candlelight, but they
played, as Lookouts singer/guitarist Larry Livermore put it, "As if they were
The Beatles at Shea Stadium."
Livermore, who also ran the
Berkeley independent label Lookout! Records, immediately offered Sweet Children
a deal, and in early 1989 they recorded their first EP, 1,000 Hours, and then
decided, weeks before the EP release, to change their name to Green Day, slang
for a day where you sit around and do nothing but smoke weed (cannabis). The
band were joint-smokers since puberty and Billie Joe got his nickname, "Two
Dollar Bill", from selling joints at that price ($2) at his high school. It is
widely reported that when the boys went to their high school principal to say
that they were dropping out to become a full-time band the principal observed
that there "would be a green day in hell" before they amounted to anything. The
record came out, with the cover changed at the last minute to reflect the new
name, in April 1989.
One year later, in April 1990,
Green Day released their first album 39/Smooth, and that summer set out in a van
on their first national tour. Before leaving, they recorded another four-song EP
called Slappy and while in Minneapolis-St. Paul they recorded a four-song EP of
some of their old songs for the local label Skene Records, and called it "Sweet
Children". (In 1991, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours was released which
re-issued on CD 39/Smooth with all tracks from Slappy and 1,000 Hours.)
After this tour, at the end of the
summer of 1990, Al Sobrante left the band on what was supposed to be a temporary
basis to attend college in Arcata, California. By this time the Lookouts had
become mostly inactive, and Tre Cool, now 17 and living in Berkeley, began
playing with Green Day as a temporary replacement. The combination worked out so
well that he soon became Green Day's permanent drummer.
During 1991, the band toured and
played locally, building up a large fan following, and also wrote and recorded
their second album, Kerplunk!, which was released on Lookout Records in January
1992. The CD version also included the four tracks from the Sweet Children EP.
They continued to tour through 1992 and 1993, ranging as far afield as the
United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, and
Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) When the tour came through the UK, it
was notable for a famous appearance at a Wigan social club called The Den. The
gig would have been a standard stop on an independent punk band's minor UK tour,
were it not for one small fact: the band decided to use their set to stage their
own version of the Nativity, featuring Billie Joe as all three schizophrenic
Three Wise Punks, Mike as Santa Claus and a bad-taste version of the Virgin
Birth featuring Tre as Mary, a roadie as Jesus and a bag of rice pudding and
tomato ketchup as the Holy Placenta. This sort of theatrical show would become
common practice for the band ten years later, only on a much larger scale.
Mainstream success with Dookie
By 1993, Green Day had sold about
55,000 copies of Kerplunk!, a huge amount for the independent punk scene in
those days, and attracted a great deal of attention from the major labels.
Eventually they decided to sign a deal with Reprise Records, leaving Lookout on
friendly terms, and spent the greater part of the year recording their major
label debut, Dookie, which proved to be an almost instant sensation, helped by
extensive MTV airplay for the videos "Longview", "Welcome to Paradise" and
"Basket Case".
In 1994, Green Day embarked on a
nationwide tour and chose queercore band Pansy Division as their opening act. At
the time this was regarded as quite controversial; nonetheless, the tour was a
success. Green Day had made their audience aware that they were not just another
'pop' band with a couple of hit singles. The band joined the lineups of both the
Lollapalooza Festival and Woodstock 1994. Green Day's Woodstock gig included a
gigantic mud fight between the band and the audience, leading to a melee in
which Dirnt lost his front teeth.
They recorded a single called "J.A.R."
in 1995, and followed it up with the album Insomniac in the fall of 1995. It was
a response to the poppy simplicity of Dookie with the album darker than their
previous one. Though the album didn't approach the success of Dookie, it still
sold two million copies in the United States. After that, the band abruptly
cancelled a European tour, claiming exhaustion.
Fall in popularity
Following the cancellation of the
European tour, the band spent the next year-and-half resting in reclusion and
writing new material, issuing Nimrod in October 1997 with a more artistic and
conceptual approach. It reached #10 at home and went double platinum on the
strength of the surprise crossover hit "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)".
After that the band took some time out of the spotlight, issuing the poppy
Kinksesque Warning:, another Top 5 hit, three years later in fall 2000. In 2002
the band issued their first b-side Album Shenanigans, which was received warmly
by fans and included the song "Ha Ha You're Dead", written by Mike Dirnt and
recorded exclusively for this album.
In 2003, during time spent in the
studio, a New Wave band appeared on the scene, known as The Network. This 5
piece band, at first look/listen appears to be Green Day. The front man "Fink"
bears a striking resemblance, visually and vocally to Wilhelm Fink (Billie Joe
Armstrong's pseudonym). John Roecker, director of 'Live Freaky Die Freaky',
starring Green Day and other East Bay punk alumni, and Green Day's DVD
Documentary "Heart Like A Hand Grenade", has spoken of various projects recorded
at Studio 880, including a New Wave album and a christmas album, during the
American Idiot sessions. Studio 880 is the credited studio in The Networks Money
Money 2020 album and Green Day's American Idiot.
Jason White
While making Warning: Green Day
added a fourth member to the band, Jason White (from the Lookout! band Pinhead
Gunpowder). Since then, he has become the semi-permanent back-up guitarist for
Green Day. White had been friends with the band for years, and according to some
sources, he is considered the fourth member. Some say White will never become a
permanent member of Green Day, however, because he is so devoted to his other
band, The Influents (though The Influents apparently broke up around 2003).
In 2005 White played with Green Day
in their video, "Wake Me Up When September Ends"—the first time that any
musician outside the trio appeared in a Green Day video. He can also be seen in
the background of the "When I Come Around" video. White is co-founder of Adeline
Records with Billie Joe. It is rumoured that he is Captain Underpants of The
Network.
Jason White is/has been part of the
following bands: Pinhead Gunpowder: (1997 -Present) The Big Cats: (1997-
Present) The Influents:(1999 - 2003) Green Day (second guitarist): (1999-
Present)
American Idiot: commercial boom
Fighting burnout after Warning:,
the band went into the studio to write and record new material for an album.
After completing 20 tracks — an impressive album according to those few who
heard it — the master tapes were stolen from the studio. The band chose not to
try and re-create the stolen album but instead started over with a vow to be
even more ambitious.
The resulting 2004 album, American
Idiot, was billed as a "punk rock opera", or more accurately a concept album,
telling the story of characters such as St. Jimmy, Jesus of Suburbia (probably
each the same person,) and Whatsername. Two of the tracks, "Jesus of Suburbia"
and "Homecoming", composed in 5 different parts, are multi-movement suites that
are both more than nine minutes long. In Armstrong's words, "One day Mike was at
the studio and he wrote a thirty-second song. I don't know, I liked it so I
wanted to do one too. The one that I did, I connected to his and then Tre did
one and he connected it to mine and so on and so forth until we had about ten
minutes. It was just purely out of having a good time." The song "American
Idiot" has been described by the band as their public statement in reaction to
the confusing and warped scene that is American pop culture since 9/11.
Armstrong has said that they chose to write this way because the band has
obtained respect and sway in the music world, and that this social commentary is
part of their natural evolution as a band.
American Idiot won a Grammy in 2005
for Best Rock Album along with 5 other Grammy nominations. The song "American
Idiot" was featured in the video game NFL Madden 2005. The band at the moment
are touring, promoting the album with a largely successful dates, continuing the
theatrics of the shows from the Warning: and Shenanigans tours by featuring a
horn section dressed as a pink rabbit and a bumblebee, Billie Joe donning a
crown and silk cape for the song "King For A Day" and drawn-out performances of
certain songs like "Hitchin' a Ride" and "Minority", where Billie Joe uses the
instrumental sections to interact with the crowd.
[PSP Update: Green Day wins Seven awards at the MTV
Music Video Awards in August 2005]
Although the American Idiot album
and tour are landmarks for the band, they haven't hinted that they will stop
with it and also said that they don't feel at all at the peak of their careers.
American Idiot will also become a movie and will begin shooting some time in
2006. See also: American Idiot: The Motion Picture
* * * *
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URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_day
Date Article Copied:
July 11, 2005
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