The 2005 song Billie Joe Armstrong wanted to be remembered for: “It’s so epic”
The one thing that Green Day will always be remembered for is American Idiot: that goes without saying. You’d think they’d be sick to the back teeth of it by now.
But it’s the mark of a truly iconic album – one that is harder and harder to come by so far in the 21st century – that the band pulled off this feat in the form of their 2005 magnum opus. For all the right reasons, it’s the pillar that Green Day will forever live and die by. Some artists may be uncomfortable with that prospect, but Billie Joe Armstrong seems quite content.
Of course, it hugely helps matters that the track listing of American Idiot is a suite of songs which he genuinely considers to be the pinnacle of his creative genius. Within this, it has to be the warbling lament of the anti-hero, ‘Jesus of Suburbia’, that takes the crown as the track that the frontman wishes to stand up as his legacy.
In many ways, that’s just as well, because after clocking in at a gargantuan runtime of nine minutes and eight seconds, it would be scandalous to let the memory of the song fall by the wayside. You could say it was self-indulgent, but when Armstrong admitted that he felt ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ was an “epic” effort, no one could exactly argue with him.
“I mean, I’m tooting my own horn, but I think it encompasses so much about my life and friendship and family, and it’s flamboyant and big and bombastic,” he said. So, was it really him who was raised on a diet of “soda pop and Ritalin”? Sure, it may not be as literal as that, but the idea of a down-and-out teen yearning to escape his small town was certainly a resonant muse.
Contrasting that between the time in his life that ‘Jesus of Suburbia’, compared to the trajectory of the bona fide rock god he has now, Armstrong noticed the keen differences. “It’s one of those moments where I was feeling like I wanted to take a big risk. It’s so fun to play live, seeing how the entire crowd sings along. It’s just one of those songs,” he said.
It represented the chance to bring the booming concept of the rock opera into the modern day. Armstrong said while he was writing it that he wanted to create the 2000s equivalent of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, after all. But beneath the veneer of that huge undertaking was the true belief that they were collectively forming an album that spoke to the disengaged youth.
The sheer power of that is not something to be sniffed at, even a whole 21 years later. Of course, seeing a man like Armstrong as out-and-out “flamboyant” is another matter to be questioned, but in terms of the legacy streak he wants to leave behind, it was the most striking aspect of Green Day’s appeal that did most of the heavy lifting.
Indeed, for better or worse, the concept of the anti-hero has been something that has sustained through Green Day’s heart in every year since, and likely far into the future. Whether that was sparked by ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ or even further back, it’s clearly the pillar on which the band are standing up for the masses.
