A poet, elegantly wasted”: Billie Joe Armstrong crowns Jim Morrison the first true rock star
There was never a specific point when rock and roll was officially born. All genres evolve rather than arrive at one particular moment, but there are always moments where things change in music, and everyone realises that a certain style is taking over the world. While Billie Joe Armstrong has been around to live through a few of those sea changes throughout Green Day’s history, he always had his own definition of what a proper rock star was supposed to look like.
When Green Day first began, though, the last thing that they wanted to do was be the flamboyant rock star who strutted their stuff across the stage. The punk scene in northern California never catered to that kind of ambition, so anyone who ever bothered to sign a major deal with a record label was either branded as a sellout or critiqued for never being a true punk to begin with.
But Armstrong learned really quickly that no one should shackle themselves like that. As soon as Dookie hit it big, the cold shoulder from his old fans may have stung a little bit, but now that he was free to do whatever he wanted, he figured that he would spend his time making some of the best music that he knew how to make.
This is why the mid-period of the band between Dookie and American Idiot is a thrilling ride for anyone looking to dig deeper. Despite having ‘Good Riddance’ on it, Nimrod is one of the most eclectic albums the band ever made, and while the fans were running scared for something as downtempo as Warning, songs like ‘Holiday’ and ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ probably couldn’t have been made without ‘Minority’ coming first.
Going into the realm of rock operas may not have been what everyone expected, but by adopting different characters, Armstrong was able to create the perfect outlet for his anger. ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ was meant to be about the archetypal burnout kid caught between passion and aggression, but listening to a song like ‘St Jimmy’, Armstrong had a very specific image in mind for what the sleazy rock star was supposed to be.
Although he had a healthy respect for the golden age of rock, Armstrong felt that Jim Morrison was ground zero for him in terms of what a frontman should be, saying, “I loved the Doors. I think Jim Morrison is the first real rock star. There’s people like Little Richard, who was doing the flamboyant thing. But Morrison took it to another level, being a poet, elegantly wasted. In getting that fucked up, he was trying to reach a new consciousness.”
Then again, it was probably for the best that Armstrong found a place to let out all of those emotions. After all, that kind of “elegantly wasted” look was what ended up driving Morrison to an early grave, and once Armstrong was able to come out of the darkness after his meltdown at the iHeartRadio Festival, he was a much stronger person than he was when working on the Uno, Dos, and Tre trilogy of albums.
That doesn’t stop a lot of people from continuing to follow in Morrison’s footsteps time and time again. There might be some naysayers to this day who stand by the fact that Morrison was a drunken buffoon posing as a poet, but when listening to tracks like ‘Riders on the Storm’ and ‘The End’, it was clear that he was in tune with some sort of musical magic beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
