The Green Day album Billie Joe Armstrong doesn’t remember making
When a band starts building up a huge repertoire of songs, some definitely stand out more than others. Even though every track tends to feel like musical offspring, it’s much more forgiving if an artist forgets about that one little idea that they had when they were 15, as opposed to the track that earned them their first platinum record. While Billie Joe Armstrong may have a few success stories with Green Day’s back catalogue, he said that the famed trilogy of albums in the 2010s has been wiped from his memory.
Before they had decided to make one of the most expansive pieces of their catalogue, they had already reached the biggest heights any band could ever reach… for a second time. Although no one expected a group with a decade under their belt to reach the same heights as 1994’s Dookie, the uphill battle to make American Idiot gave them a new lease on life with the pop-punk crowd.
Since no record executive was going to tell them not to copy their new model, 21st Century Breakdown was the next phase of their ambitious side. Throwing punk out the window almost entirely, their next conceptual piece was more in tune with classic rock, making tracks that could have been put out by a late-era Beatles project with sprinkles of hard rock here and there.
While no one would fault the band for wanting to take a break after two major album cycles, Armstrong felt that he had too much creativity to keep inside himself for just one project. In the leadup to Uno, Dos, and Tre being released, he had spoken about being in the most creative time in his life and being on a roll with different song ideas.
Once fans had the albums in front of them, every other song tended to be much more disposable than what came before. Even though there were some great pieces to cherrypick from every project, the entire process felt like way too much Green Day all at once. In the background of everything, though, Armstrong was nursing a massive addiction that no one was paying attention to.
After taking to the road to promote Uno, Armstrong first started to spiral when the band performed at the iHeartRadio festival. Going on a rant halfway through their set, he would smash his guitar midway through ‘Basket Case’ and leave the stage, complaining that they weren’t given ample time to play their set.
While the band were in damage control, Armstrong would check himself into rehab shortly afterwards for various addictions. By the time Tre was eventually released, the frontman even put his hand up to admit that he had no memory of what the past few months of recording were like.
When speaking to Kerrang, Armstrong recalled being in a daze trying to put the albums together, saying, “I think the last records, I dunno, I was pretty fuzzy. It was pretty cloudy in my head, so I can’t really remember that much about it. It was great, and I think there were some really great songs on there, but it’s… You know, we took a break. We took the sort of break we needed.”
Although the band would come back strong with Revolution Radio, their trilogy is the sound of a happy face being thrown on the darkest period of the band’s life. You can try squinting your ears when listening to the album, but underneath all of the melodic hooks is Armstrong beginning to crack up.
