Billie Joe Armstrong turns 40 today. It’s a milestone for the California native and high-school dropout who, as a founding member of Green Day, sold millions of records in the ’90s, repeated that success in the ’00s and opened the ’10s as, gulp, a respected member of the Broadway community.
Yup, even though he’s now officially middle-aged, Armstrong is just getting started, balancing his punk-rock background with the deft skills of a global communicator. With the Broadway version of his band’s rock opera “American Idiot” arriving in Minneapolis on Tuesday for a weeklong run, we look at the history of Armstrong, Green Day and “American Idiot”:
Feb. 17, 1972: Billie Joe Armstrong is born in Oakland, Calif., the youngest of six children. His father is a part-time jazz musician and a truck driver. His mother waits tables to help pay the bills.
1982: Armstrong’s dad succumbs to cancer. In happier news, Armstrong meets Michael Pritchard in the school cafeteria. The two start teaching each other songs from the radio and form a lasting bond. “The first conversation we ever had was about music and songwriting,” Pritchard said in 2004.
1987: Armstrong and Pritchard discover the 924 Gilman Street Project, an all-ages, volunteer-run punk-rock club in Berkeley. They soon realize punk is their future. As Armstrong once said: “There was the really educated people, as well as leftover burned-out hippies. And lots of local punk-rock kids. We sort of represented the teenage runaway faction.” They also meet a young drummer who had already changed his name from Frank Edwin Wright III to Tre Cool.
1988: Joined by drummer John Kiffmeyer, Armstrong and Pritchard, who had adopted the name Mike Dirnt, begin establishing themselves as the band Sweet Children. Larry Livermore, owner of the then-new indie label Lookout Records, sees the guys live and persuades them to sign with his fledgling company.
1989: Now called Green Day – the name supposedly refers to the band members’ love of marijuana – the group releases its first studio recording, the four-song EP “1,000 Hours.”
1990: Green Day’s first full-length album, “39/Smooth,” hits stores. The album sleeve includes a note that the band rejected a deal from I.R.S. Records and opted to stay with the much-smaller Lookout. The release gives the band enough momentum to tour and, while playing a gig in Minneapolis, Armstrong meets a young student named Adrienne Nesser. By the end of the year, Tre Cool has become the band’s full-time drummer.
1992: Nirvana’s “Nevermind” pushes Michael Jackson from the top of the Billboard charts in January. Every record label in the country starts looking for the next big punk-rock thing. Later that month, Green Day releases its second album, “Kerplunk,” which reveals a keen pop sensibility lurking in the noise. It includes “2,000 Light Years Away,” inspired by Armstrong and Nesser’s first kiss, and the first version of “Welcome to Paradise.”
1993: The underground success of “Kerplunk” opens a bidding war for Green Day, and the band signs with Warner Bros. The group spends three weeks in the studio recording what would become “Dookie,” an album named after its slang term for diarrhea.
1994: “Dookie” hits record stores and produces five singles, including “Longview,” a song about masturbation and boredom; the re-recorded “Welcome to Paradise”; “Basket Case,” a top 10 hit in England, Australia, Norway and Sweden; “When I Come Around,” the band’s second-biggest single of the ’90s; and “She.” It goes on to sell more than 10 million copies. Other albums from that year to achieve similar sales include TLC’s “CrazySexyCool,” Garth Brooks’ “The Hits” and “The Lion King” soundtrack. Armstrong and Nesser marry in a five-minute ceremony in July. Soon after, she learns she’s pregnant and gives birth to a son nearly eight months later. (Another son followed in 1998, and the couple remain happily married.)
1995: While “Dookie” is still doing big business, Green Day issues its fourth album, “Insomniac.” With its darker tone and less-immediate songwriting, it sells just 2 million albums in the U.S. and, worldwide, half the copies of “Dookie.” Band members are still in their early 20s, but it seems Green Day may have peaked.
1997: Green Day’s fifth album, “Nimrod,” experiments with the band’s sound, dabbling in surf rock and ska. Early sales and reviews are underwhelming. The second single, the acoustic ballad “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” gives Green Day a surprise boost in popularity, despite longtime fans complaining the group had gone soft. The sentimental song sells 2 million copies and becomes a staple for everything from televised sports montages to high-school graduations.
2000: Album No. 6, “Warning,” expands on the softer elements of “Nimrod,” and the word “mature” starts popping up in band profiles and reviews. Armstrong tells a reporter: “I didn’t think I’d even be alive at 29, let alone be still making music and be in a band at this age.”
2001: With “Warning” sputtering at retail, the Warner Bros.-era singles compilation “International Superhits” arrives in time for Christmas, apparently signaling the end of Green Day’s time in the spotlight.
2002: Green Day hits the road on a joint tour with fellow pop-punks Blink-182, who are a far bigger draw and claim the closing spot on the bill every night. The mainstream has largely moved on, but a new generation of kids attends the tour and some go on to start their own bands. That leads to a mid-’00s boom of new groups obviously influenced by Green Day and Blink-182, who quietly become the Beatles and the Stones of Generation Y.
2003: The band members hit the studio to make “Cigarettes and Valentines,” an album that would mark their return to hard-and-fast punk rock. But the master recordings are stolen, and rather than attempt to re-record the songs, Green Day decides to start from scratch.
2004: Inspired by the Who, Armstrong writes a rock opera influenced by both his (romanticized) punk-rock past and his growing distaste for post-9/11 American political discourse. It sounds almost like an entirely different band from the one that was cracking poop jokes a decade earlier. “American Idiot” instantly revives the band’s career, winning two Grammys and selling more copies in the States than Green Day’s last three albums combined, while posting a worldwide sales total nearly equal to that of “Dookie.” As Armstrong later says: “The thought was always that it would be staged or we’d create a film or something.”
2005: Green Day spends the year on the road, playing nearly 150 shows across five continents. They draw fans of all ages, including a significant number of kids 10 and younger. After years of battles over unpaid royalties, Green Day follows numerous other bands and pulls its early albums from Lookout, a move that leads to the dissolution of the label.
2009: After writing upward of 45 songs and spending three years off and on in four recording studios, Green Day releases another rock opera, “21st Century Breakdown.” It doesn’t quite earn the same acclaim and sales as “American Idiot,” but it cements Green Day’s place as a major worldwide rock band. Meanwhile, Broadway director Michael Mayer, who turned “Spring Awakening” into a Tony-winning triumph, takes on the task of crafting “American Idiot” into a stage musical. It premieres at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in September and breaks attendance records for the company.
2010: “American Idiot” opens on Broadway in April. Armstrong steps in to play the role of St. Jimmy for a week in the fall. The New York Times says of the production: “(it) possesses a stimulating energy and a vision of wasted youth that holds us in its grip.” The show wins a pair of Tony Awards for scenic and lighting design, and Mayer earns a Drama Desk Award for outstanding director of a musical.
2011: The “American Idiot” cast recording wins a Grammy. Armstrong makes additional appearances in the production, as do singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge and AFI’s Davey Havok. The Broadway production closes in April after 421 performances, 27 previews and nearly $40 million in gross ticket sales. The first national tour launches in December.
2012: An eight-city U.K. tour of “American Idiot” is booked for the fall. Talk intensifies of an “American Idiot” film adaptation, possibly starring Armstrong. Green Day is reportedly working on its ninth album, which may include a song dedicated to the late Amy Winehouse.
Pop music critic Ross Raihala can be reached at rraihala@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5553. Follow him at Twitter.com/RossRaihala.
What: “American Idiot,” a musical based on the works of punk-rock trio Green Day
When: Tuesday-Feb. 26
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave., Mpls.
Tickets: $90-$35
Call: 800-982-2787
