Billie Joe Armstrong’s bizarre naked first meeting with Roger Daltrey
Every musician has dreams of meeting their favourite artists in person. From a chance meeting to shooting the breeze about music, everyone has a certain image in their minds when it comes to meeting their idols. Then again, Billie Joe Armstrong seeing the full-frontal of his idol was probably not what he had in mind.
When putting together Green Day for the first time, Armstrong was moulding his songs after underground punk acts like Crimpshrine and Operation Ivy. Once the band catapulted to a major label, their focus started to become more widespread for the album Dookie.
Having a significant blend of pop flair with their traditional brand of punk, Armstrong was unashamedly pulling from acts like The Jam, The Ramones, and Cheap Trick when sculpting his first hooks on ‘Basket Case’ and ‘When I Come Around’. By the time the decade started to turn, Armstrong found himself combing through the classic rock playbook when putting together his next masterpiece.
Putting together bits and pieces of songs for the track ‘Jesus of Suburbia’, Armstrong found himself returning to The Who for inspiration, recalling: “I loved ‘A Quick One (While He’s Away)’ by The Who, and I decided I’d love to write a song that felt like a mini-opera It felt like I was in uncharted territory, really for the first time. I’d taken my songwriting to another level”.
As Armstrong took to the road, he ended up coming face-to-face with his idol in a steam room, recalling to The New York Times, “When were playing in Vancouver. I was a little hungover and I figured I’d go into the steam room. I went in and I’m like, ‘Great, there’s nobody here’, and then, ‘Oh god, there’s [an] weird old guy naked right in front of me. So I turn my head and he leaves”.
After thinking he was out of the woods, Armstrong got another visit from Mr Strange Naked Man, only to recognise his face, explaining, “Here he comes again. So I’m sitting there and he says in this thick Cockney accent, ‘Do you want it hotter?’. I look up and I say, ‘Yeah sure’ and I say, ‘Oh my god, you’re Roger Daltrey’. There he was in all his glory”.
While Armstrong was originally taken aback, Daltrey had recognised Armstrong first and originally thought it was cool that he met one of the members of Green Day. Then again, Armstrong most likely didn’t have to say how much he idolised the work of the Mod rockers.
Though the episodic songs from American Idiot owe a considerable debt to the songbook of Pete Townshend, Armstrong’s mellower material on albums like Warning also feel indebted to 1960s rock, having the same approach rootsy approach predominantly featured on early Who and Kinks albums.
Armstrong’s flair for classic rock would only grow stronger on the B-sides released for the album 21st Century Breakdown. Between a handful of tracks that didn’t work for the album, the band tore through their version of ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ as well as Bob Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and Elvis Presley’s ‘That’s All Right Mama’. While there’s been no word on whether Armstrong has met Dylan yet, here’s hoping he meets him in less exposed circumstances.
