The Man Who Would Not Be King

The next few days were miserable for everyone. The heat was relentless, and it was clear to everyone that they shouldn’t even casually mention Billie Joe or Tré in front of the other. Even separated they were both brutally difficult to talk to, prone to biting remarks, so few dared.

Mike was seen sighing and downing Motrin every few hours. He hadn’t even inquired into what had happened between them, pretty much guessing when he saw Billie Joe push Dennis into a wall backstage after merely trying to ask a question. It all seemed like something he couldn’t stop now, even if he tried.

Tré hung out solely with Pete, high all the time. Billie Joe was losing Annabelle rapidly, alienating her with his foul moods. His anxiety hit him pretty hard again.

But the good news was that with all the tension they had to release, their shows exploded with energy; they had never gotten such good reviews.

The delicately balanced chaos tipped, however, when the entire tour received advance copies of the Rolling Stone article, complete with full-color pictures from the photo shoot the band had done a month before.
***

The Man Who Would Not Be King

Four years ago they put out an album that almost pushed them off the map. Now they’ve reinvented themselves as pop punk Messiahs, preaching the perils of “The Idiot America”. Inside the tortured mind behind the genius American Idiot. By Dennis Moore

In a bus traveling somewhere between the states of North Carolina and Florida, Billie Joe Armstrong sits sprawled out on the couch with his new girlfriend in his lap. I ask if they’ve been together long. He laughs, no. Then he relates the story of how he announced their couplehood to the public, unprepared, in response to a fan-provided question. He hasn’t looked back every since then, he explains, and a good thing too. Armstrong credits her with pulling him out of the burning car wreckage that was his anxiety disorder.

Later on, halfway through a lunch of soggy peanut butter and jelly—hardly the rock star life—, he obliges my request to explain further. He’s 32 and in great shape, having lost his former pudge as part of Green Day’s makeover. Ten years after becoming an accidental teen heartthrob with their seminal release, Dookie, his new look, possibly modeled after The Cure’s Robert Smith but without the frizz, has brought him back to that role. Some teenagers might argue he looks better this time around. American Idiot is poised to sell millions of copies, surely claiming one of the top slots on Billboard for the year. Why, then, with all these things going for him, is Billie Joe Armstrong struggling with anxiety?

“It’s complicated,” he says. Apparently it happened when Green Day hit fame with Dookie, too. Armstrong thinks he’s predisposed to it. He also admits that sometimes situational factors can aggravate things. When I ask him what he has in mind, he answers, “Well, it’s not just fame, you know, I’m used to that, but, you know, with American Idiot, we made a record we were and are really proud of, so it was scary waiting to see how the public would react. Would they like it? Would the old criticisms pop up, that we weren’t really punk? Anything like that, you know, putting your work on the line is terrifying. That’s not all, though, but I think that’s a main reason that it’s back. I’m not only concerned with all that. I’ve been stressed for a very, very long time and it finally caught up with me, I guess.”

Have your sold out concerts brought you any comfort?

Yeah, a little. I know now that people don’t hate the new stuff. They sing along to all of it. I can point the mike to them and let them take over, you know. And that’s a real sign that the audience respects what you’re doing, you know. You’ve made it when they know the words better than you do. So that’s great, it makes me feel like I haven’t just put out a piece of crap. But the thing about anxiety is that it sticks around like a stray dog. You feed it once and it follows you home. You can’t get rid of it, short of shooting it in the face, and no one wants to kill a dog. It’s hard to take that step and starve it of your self-pity and all your ridiculous thoughts.

How exactly would you do that? Do you have a technique?

You have to evaluate everything you think. Okay, was that rational? No. How do I make it rational? Sometimes that’s not enough, though. You know, you really are fucking aware that what you are thinking is totally wrong. But it doesn’t matter. Okay, Mike’s [Dirnt] late to band practice. Mike is never late to band practice. What if something happened? Oh God, he got into a car accident on the way here to the studio. Oh God, Mike is dead. Mike is fucking dead! And it’s my fault because only if I’d called him an hour ago and delayed him for four fucking minutes, he’d still be alive. Oh God! [pauses] No [yells]! You’re wrong, Billie. He’s walking in the door.

Did that really happen?

Oh yeah, tens of times. And I’ll bet he never knew.

I turn to Mike Dirnt, Green Day’s bassist, for confirmation, who had quietly been listening in. He shakes his head and returns to the game of Sudoku he’s been diligently filling in.
So you mentioned that your lovely girlfriend Annabelle Jacques helped break you away from that cycle. Could you elaborate on that?

Uh, yeah. Well I guess she helped me to put a more positive spin on things. A lot of people really underestimate the effect that can have on you. She also taught me to focus less on what could go wrong and more on whether it would matter if it did. And I came out realizing that yeah, you know, a lot of times it doesn’t actually matter. It’s possible to fix things. You shouldn’t despair right away because if you do you might just miss your chance to solve whatever problem it is.

The strange thing is that halfway through his answer, Armstrong switches from looking at Jacques to staring at his drummer, Tré Cool.
***

Green Day formed in the late eighties/early nineties, all three members hailing from northern California. But Green Day as it is now did not always exist. It was Armstrong, Dirnt, and an older kid named John Kiffmeyer to begin with. Soon Kiffmeyer abandoned the group, choosing to go to college. That was when Tré Cool, drummer of The Lookouts at the time, stepped up to the plate. His band was also to become collateral damage to college, and, in his own words, he was drawn to Armstrong’s charisma, “even back then.” Once the final lineup was in place, Green Day quickly shot to recognition.

The year was 1994, and Green Day suddenly went from playing a scrappy all-ages punk club called 924 Gilman Street to selling out arenas. The legendary Woodstock even came calling. The impetus? A pop punk record named after shit. It was remarkable that Dookie didn’t sound like shit. It wasn’t shit at all, and people knew it. The grunge community’s claim to the spotlight was fading away, and music fans quickly turned pop punk into a popular movement. Soon bands like Rancid, The Offspring, and blink-182 rode to success on their coattails. Dookie sold over five million copies that year and to this date has sold enough to earn it a Diamond certification.

What happened next? While still largely successful, Green Day’s sophomore effort, Insomniac, failed to move as many copies. Their next album was saved by the megahit Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). Then the last one before American Idiot came out, Warning, and its flop seemed to seal their fate as a once-popular band slowly fading out of the public consciousness. By the time Green Day hit the studio in 2003 to record their follow-up, the members were frustrated, fighting all the time and creating music they were ultimately dissatisfied with.

And then the masters of the record, titled Cigarettes and Valentines, disappeared. Green Day insist that they were stolen. But if it was mere coincidence that an album they disliked suddenly never was, the incident could not have been more beneficial to the band. Instead of re-recording the lost songs, Green Day decided to take a whole new approach and create a scathing rock opera. The result was American Idiot.

I sit down with Armstrong and Dirnt to discuss the album.

How did you feel when all of the effort you put into Cigarettes and Valentines up and vanished?

Dirnt: I was pissed off. I was angry. I had had way too many arguments and late nights and so much stress over the damn thing that I felt I had wasted the last few months of my life entirely. What was the fucking point? I wasn’t going to get anything out of that time anymore. I think we all felt that way.

Armstrong: Yeah. I felt like someone had just reached into my gut and scooped it all out. I was hollow. You know, for me, I’m constantly writing. These lyrics were thoughts and feelings and ideas that I’d been working on since Warning, some for even longer. And someone went in and took them all away. I still have them written down; I write everything down. But it’s not the same, you know? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use them.

What inspired you to completely scrap the lost album and write the material for American Idiot?

Armstrong: None of us wanted to go back. It was clear that we were either going to have to come up with something inspired or give up as a band. Anyway, I was listening to the radio one night and this song by Lynyrd Skynyrd came on and it was about being proud to be a redneck. And it made me angry. I thought, who could be proud of being ignorant? And that anger helped me write the song American Idiot. The guys liked the idea and we pushed it further into a concept album.

Dirnt: I think the thing that’s great about this album for us as a band is that we all really took part in making it. Tré and I even wrote part of the lyrics. And we’d always loved the idea of the rock opera. We’re all fans of The Who’s Quadrophenia and Tommy.

What do you guys think about American Idiot being seen as “controversial” by many in the media?

Dirnt: [laughs] I don’t really get it. But I guess these days anything that’s said that goes even slightly against the current government makes you anti-American. So even our album, which is largely about the state of America and the people who live in it, not the government, makes us, makes Green Day anti-American.

Armstrong: See, I just don’t get that. I think the album is American precisely because it’s attacking America. If we ignore the problems here in this country they won’t, you know, get fucking fixed. All we were trying to do with our songs is spread awareness, you know, like other punk bands before us—Operation Ivy, for fuck’s sake, The Clash is a big one—so I just don’t understand how American Idiot is even viewed as controversial anymore. It’s the logical progression of what came before, what punk came before it.

Now that you’ve brought punk rock to the mainstream for a second time, a decade later, do you think it’s safe to say that Green Day are the Kings of Punk?

[both laugh] Dirnt: Maybe Billie Joe is, but Tré and I couldn’t possibly take that title.

Armstrong: What? That’s ridiculous, Mike. I’m no more of a king than you and Tré are. I wouldn’t be fit to rule anything [laughs]!

We take a break from chatting for a while and share a joint while playing a board game. Clue. It’s Dirnt’s favorite, apparently, and he makes no secret of his uncanny skill. Five games are over in a span of a half hour. Dirnt wins every time, firing off his guesses for weapon, perpetrator, and crime scene with almost prophetic certainty. I wonder, in my half-baked state, whether the THC from the pot has bonded with his brain molecules in such a way that he knew everything. He only lets us flounder clueless through the game before becoming impatient at six minutes in since he’s already known the answer ahead of time. I’d never doubted that the bass line for Longview came out of that mind, but now I am sure that things of that nature are a daily occurrence for him.

After dinner—fast food from a rest stop area— the festivities quiet down. With only a few hours left of the drive to go, fatigue hits. Cool, distant all day, retires to his bunk. Dirnt immerses himself in a book. Armstrong and his girlfriend doze off together on the couch. I take the opportunity to convert my notes into some of this article. It turns out these notes will be my last written with the open consent of the band.

The bus eventually rolls into the venue parking lot, where the band and I will be camping for the night. Cool and Armstrong leave to get cigarettes, but not before a look passes between Cool and Jacques. Curious, I decide it might be worth it to follow them. What did the tacit exchange mean? Is Cool about to confess to Armstrong that he and Jacques had been having an affair behind his back?

The silence on the way to the gas station store doesn’t provide any answers. I begin to lose hope, think myself ridiculous for darting between trees in shadow. Nearing the station, Cool seems to broach an uncomfortable topic. Unfortunately, with the area brightening up, I am out of earshot.

The trip into the store is brief, but leaves me enough time to find a better position in case they resume the conversation right away. They do, and Cool asks a question that would confuse anyone familiar with Armstrong’s relationship: “Did you sleep with her last night?”

Armstrong answers the affirmative as I desperately try to grasp what business this is of Cool’s. Luckily my tape recorder manages to pick up the following, helped by the fact that they slow down and subsequently stop walking.

Cool: You didn’t have to do that, you know. No, you shouldn’t have done that. [pauses] If you even loved me at all.

Armstrong: Tré, why do you always have to be so fucking cynical? I did it…well, I don’t really know why I did it, and I’m not gonna make up excuses, but I fucking love you. Right now. You know that.

My heart nearly stops as I gather the implications of what they’re saying. The two men are the ones engaged in an affair. And I have stumbled right into the middle of a secret lovers’ quarrel.

Cool: Billie, I don’t know that, and that’s the problem. I think it’s best if we just forget this ever happened.

And just like that, it’s over. The two share one last kiss, and my presence is revealed by my camera’s flash.

I am sure that this revelation will go unappreciated by Green Day. After all, sneaky camera work is for the TMZs of the world, and not serious publications like Rolling Stone. However, my editors and I feel that, for a man who boldly asserted his bisexuality in print and took Pansy Division, a gay band, on a national tour, it is a shame that Billie Joe Armstrong chooses to mask his sexuality here at the expense of a person he is close to. Hopefully this article will someday allow him to become a real role model for the gay youth community. For now he refuses to be king, though his fans wait patiently. RS
***

Tré put down the article and rubbed his eyes. He felt irritated, more at the fact he couldn’t help but wonder why Dennis used contractions in his writing if not in his speech, than at the actual article.

He bent closer to the magazine to study the one candid shot that accompanied the story. The caption read, “Armstrong and Cool lean in for a revelatory kiss.” The photo was pitch black; their faces had absorbed the light from the flash. He studied himself and then Billie Joe, noting casually that it was actually a good photograph of them. He creased the page around it and tore it out neatly. Then he folded it in half and put it in his pocket.

Finally, Tré closed the magazine, got up, and tossed it into the trash can. “Oh, the shitstorm this is gonna brew…,” he said under his breath.