Green Day are cleaning out their closets. The veteran punk trio will be offering up more than 100 pieces of gear from the past 25 years, nearly 50 of Billie Joe Armstrong’s guitars, as well as five of Tre Cool’s drum sets in the Official Green Day Reverb Shop, which launches on Feb. 7.
“If you hoard the right shit long enough, they call you a collector,” said Cool in a video announcing the sale with a video montage of the gear on the block, which includes burned-out kits and some rare Cool-designed drums. “So I’m selling off just a wee bit of the collection. I’m not doing it any justice sitting around when someone could be using this stuff. I haven’t really sold anything ever — this is the first time… I”m probably just going to buy all this stuff back at like three in the morning, because I’m going to have a hard time parting with it.”
The bottom line for Armstrong is that after 25 years of collecting guitars and amps, he simply has too many to deal with, some of which he’s used and some that just kind of sat there collecting dust. “Every guitar to me has its own character of whatever you want to do or whatever you’re looking for. Or just something that reflects who you are — the kind of songwriter you are, the kind of guitar player that you are,” he said. “I love all guitars, they’re awesome.”
Trending on Billboard
Among the items on the block are: one of Armstrong’s first-ever guitars, a Harmony Stella Parlor acoustic used to record “F.O.D.” from 1994’s Dookie, a rare 1958 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top guitar that’s one of his favorites, a hand-painted 1970s Gibson L6-S electric guitar, a signed Gibson Billie Joe Armstrong Signature Les Paul Special electric and speaker cabinets that are still mud-caked from the band’s Woodstock ’94 set.
A number of Cool’s kits will also be in the mix, as well as more than 20 pieces of bassist Mike Dirnt’s gear, including a dozen amps he used from 1997-2003. Click here to see images of all the pieces.
Watch a video of the items for sale below.