“If I would’ve known that back then”: The one aspect of fame Billie Joe Armstrong will always regret
Third time’s a charm. That’s the case when it comes to the commercial success of Green Day, their February 1994 album Dookie was a lively post-punk hit that catapulted Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool to worldwide fame, the record sold its first million copies by August of that same year.
Grunge had dominated the landscape of music for years, and the heaviness of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains made Green Day’s arrival refreshing and immediate. Although receiving critical acclaim, radio airtime and signing a major record deal with Reprise Records for the record, the newfound attention also garnered “the best kept secret in rock ‘n’ roll” push back.
Their new signing found them banned from the Californian punk landmark 924 Gilman, a venue they had played countless times previously. Going mainstream had its downsides, but the venue had a strict “no major labels” policy. “We got some backlash after Dookie got huge. The mistake that I probably made was taking the bait. If I would’ve known that back then, I would’ve just ignored the bullshit. But when you’re a sensitive twenty-four-year-old person, it’s difficult to just ignore things like that,” Armstrong told Esquire as part of a ‘What I’ve Learned’ feature, in which he also confessed a love for The Bachelor.
Woodstock 1994 would feature one of the most memorable Green Day sets of all time. The festival, which was ironically billed as ‘Three days of peace and music’, quickly became a mud fest as the crowd pelted the stage with handfuls of mud. After days of rain, the festival grounds had become a swamp and the band would only antagonise the crowd further, throwing mud back with Armstrong calling them “rich motherfuckers” and “mud hippies”. To make matters worse, bassist Mike Dirnt was mistaken for a fan by a security guard, losing a tooth in the process.
Green Day are no strangers to controversy, even in recent years the Green Day frontman has been banned from two Las Vegas radio stations after naming the city “the worst shithole in America” during the band’s San Francisco Oracle Park show. He was also kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight in 2011 for refusing to pull up his pants.
In 1996 more controversy took place and Armstrong took the bait as mentioned above, flagging Jane Addiction frontman Perry Farrell as a “fucking asshole” after Farrell dismissed them as a “boyband”. Farrell was the stage manager of Lollapalooza at the time. Frustrated with the comment, Armstrong dedicated their song ‘Chump’ to Farrell live onstage. In Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival, stage manager John Rubeli recalled, “I can’t think of a single time that Perry pushed back or vetoed a band — except for Green Day. … He was like, ‘They’re a boy band. I don’t want to book a boy band.”
What’s more, a punk band that pelted their audience with mud back in ’94, now have a Broadway musical adapted around one of their albums. Anything but punk posers, the backlash Green Day received for Dookie only allowed them to showcase their authentic spirit of rebellion.
