February 2020 | Rolling Stone | 57
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Things were getting really scary. I’m such a dedi-
cated songwriter and musician, and when Dookie got
so big — it was on par with becoming one of the big-
gest pop records of all time — I really wanted to be
like, “I’m a rocker. I’m a punk rocker. That’s what
matters to me more than being some kind of pop
star.” That sort of fueled that record.
Everything was happening. I got married, I had a
kid, I was 23 years old, and people were climbing in
my trees to look inside my house. It was the scary side
of becoming a rock star, or whatever. You can’t con-
trol the outcome of your life. I wanted to show the ug-
lier side of what Green Day was capable of.Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
NIMROD, 1997
I wrote this back when I was writing for Dookie. It was
for a girlfriend who was moving to Ecuador. I went
to this house party in Berkeley, where all these col-
lege students were passing an acoustic guitar around
and singing songs — a “weird dudes with ponytails
and an acoustic guitar” kind of moment. I remem-
ber going, “Oh, man, I should try doing an acoustic
song,” so I wrote that song about her and the end of
our relationship. “Tattoos of memories and dead skin
on trial” — I had tattooed her name on me, and then I
had to get it covered up, that’s all that was.
It’s about trying to be cool, accepting that, in life,
people go in different directions. This was a wildly
different direction: I was getting ready to go on tour
and promote Dookie, and had a single on the radio,
and everything was starting to happen. She was mov-
ing to Ecuador to continue her studies and live with a
family there. People come into your life and it’s won-derful, but they seem to go out of your life as quickly
as they came in. That’s what the song’s about.
So I wrote it in ’93 — the whole song was done —
but I didn’t think it was going to be for Green Day
at all. Then when we were doing Insomniac, I did a
demo for it, but it wasn’t right for that album, either.
I didn’t really know what to do. When we made Nim-
rod, I was just like, “Let’s see what happens.” We put
this little string quartet on it, which was going way
outside what Green Day was known for. And it was
amazing. It opened up a brand-new world: “Oh, fuck,
we can do so much more.”
It took on a life of its own. I was definitely not
thinking about weddings and graduations when I
wrote it. A girl just sent me a message on my Ins-
tagram [saying] she had a brother that just passed
away, and that became the song her family would lis-ten to that they related to their experience. It’s really
beautiful when you think about it.Minority
WARNING, 2000
After “Time of Your Life,” I started getting into play-
ing more acoustic guitar, and I really wanted to have
more for Warning. And there was also a lot of kind
of bad pop punk that was starting to happen, and
I wanted to go against that genre. This felt like the
next step. I had been getting into listening to more
of the Kinks and the Who, who found a lot of power
in an acoustic song, and used the guitar almost like a
drum. “Pinball Wizard” is so percussive. I wrote this
right before the election between George Bush and
Al Gore. I started feeling the political wheels start-
ing to turn toward conservatism a little bit. I think
that song is sort of about declaring that you’re step-
ping out of the line, you’re not part of the sheep, and
trying to find your own individualism. It felt like we
were diving into something that was more concep-
tual for sure.
I’d like to go back and rerecord that album. It was
right when Pro Tools started happening. I want to
go back and just do everything more live, because I
think “Minority” live is a lot better than it came out
on the album. But that’s just one of those things that
you think about too much.Jesus of Suburbia
AMERICAN IDIOT, 2004
I loved “A Quick One” by the Who, and I decided I’d
love to write a song that felt like a mini-opera. We had
a studio that we could work everything out at and ex-
periment, and Mike, Tré, and I had been coming up
with little 30-second vignettes and trying to connect
them in the studio.
After I wrote “American Idiot,” I was like, “Who
is this character?” Then the ideas started firing at
me: “I’m the son of rage and love/The Jesus of Sub-
urbia/The Bible of none of the above.” It felt like I
was in uncharted territory, really for the first time.
I’d taken my songwriting to another level. It starts al-
most doo-woppy, and then it ends up almost going
into this sort of Black Sabbath direction. It’s kind
of around-the-world-in-eight-minutes or something.
And Jesus of Suburbia ended up becoming the char-
acter that ran throughout the entire album.Holiday
AMERICAN IDIOT, 2004
That was a time when our country was moving into
a war for fictitious reasons. A lot of it had to do with
politics and oil. It felt like the country was beginning
to come apart. I think the catalyst of where we’re at
now, really, is with George W. Bush. So this song was
just about trying to find your own voice and your own
individuality and questioning everything that you see
on television, in politics, school, family, and religion.
I was jumping into character a little bit. I want-
ed something that sounded very nasty. I definitely
wanted to do something that was provocative. So I
was like, “Sieg Heil to the president Gasman,” invok-
ing old Nazi Germany propaganda films, contrasted
with the American branches of government. I was
just kind of messing around and using the English
language against itself. With the riff, I was messing
around with chords in a different wayHAVING
A BLAST
Green Day
onstage in
Brooklyn,
2013“^
You feel, ‘Oh, my
God, am I ever going
to write another song
again?’ And then
something pops up
and you go from
feeling like a loser to
king of the world. „
[Cont. on 93]