The first song Billie Joe Armstrong learned on guitar
Billie Joe Armstrong would never be described as the most competent guitar player in the world. For all of the great songs that he has made with Green Day, some of his lead lines have always been fairly rudimentary, sticking to doing melodic solos rather than anything too flashy that would get him laughed out of the punk clubs. Although Armstrong has never claimed to have leads as his strong suit, he did pick a daunting place to start.
Long before he had even started to play the guitar, Armstrong was originally a singer as a child, making his first record when he was just entering preschool entitled ‘Look For Love’. Once he started learning some of the music his friends were listening to, it wasn’t long before he started to ask for a cheap guitar.
When talking about his upbringing, Armstrong remembered his early days working on his chops with an old guitar, telling Entertainment Weekly, “I got my first guitar when I was eight years old. It was a Hohner Les Paul.” While the sounds of pop-rock may have been his first exposure, getting Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B Goode’ under his fingers really turned his life around.
After being shown the song by a guitar teacher, Armstrong remembered the feeling of being able to play the lead section of the track, saying, “It was the first song where I realised, ‘Oh, I’m playing something!’ It shaped everything I did after that, subconsciously, for the rest of my life.” Though Berry’s ode to the teenage punk may have spoken to Armstrong at the time, it was just a matter of time before he moved beyond the classics.
When originally jamming with school friend Mike Pritchard (later Mike Dirnt), Armstrong gravitated towards the sounds of metal at first, learning everything he could about bands like Van Halen and Iron Maiden. While never making it past the sounds of guitar solos, Green Day was formed after Armstrong got an education from the underground punk scene.
With Dirnt by his side, Armstrong started to devour every punk record that he could get his hands on, being enamoured with everything from the crusty local punk acts like Crimpshrine to the sounds of early alternative music like The Replacements and Hüsker Dü. By the time he summoned up the courage to get onstage, Armstrong had already begun writing his own material, woodshedding the first songs that would appear on Green Day’s debut, 39/Smooth.
Regardless of their live repertoire, Armstrong always found a way to incorporate those old classics into his material, occasionally playing a punk rock version of ‘Johnny B Goode’ during their first handful of shows. Little did Armstrong know that that style would become valuable later in his career.
Amid the time between making the side project Foxboro Hottubs, Armstrong found himself moving back into classic territory, creating an album that was a garage rock take on old-school rock and roll. Armstrong had grown past the rudimentary guitar songs of his youth, but the youthful energy from a song like ‘Johnny B Goode’ never truly left his DNA.
