’86’: The song Green Day used to hit back at their old fans
One of the biggest sins in the punk community is the idea of selling out. Even though artists might want to reach the broadest audience possible, just as many fans are willing to call them corporate waste if they dared to sign to a major label and get their music out of their local scene. Although Green Day was always bound to move on to more extraordinary things past their California punk scene, Dookie became an albatross around their neck when they returned home.
Coming from the underground landscape, most of the band’s output was done through the help of indie label Lookout Records, home to other notable Northern California bands like Operation Ivy. While ground zero for the scene was the punk squalor 924 Gilman Street, Green Day was treated like pariahs of the neighbourhood once songs like ‘When I Come Around’ and ‘Longview’ found their way onto the radio.
For most of the band’s core audience, this was the ideal way to cash in and sell out to the establishment, with the Gilman Street venue banning the group from ever playing there again, not lifting the ban until the 2010s. When Billie Joe Armstrong got around to making the next record, though, he would let out all of his anger through his music.
Treated like Dookie with some bad attitude, Insomniac became one of the band’s most furious efforts, creating works that reflected their frustrations with finding their core audience. While most of the tracks had to do with the same core topics of their major label debut, Armstrong brought in one new song that reflected how they felt about their former fans.
Halfway through the album, ‘86’ seems like the same kiss-off track that Armstrong could have written in his sleep. Having turned in millions of songs like this on works like ‘Chump’ and ‘Geek Stink Breath’, Armstrong wrote about showing someone the door after they betrayed you, which had more than a few things in common with their predicament.
Framed as a conversation between the protagonist and a former friend, this song takes the perspective of every kid who worshipped Green Day back in their club days. Rather than be happy about the group’s success, Armstrong sings about a punk who never has the time for the band anymore and cautions them never to show their face around their old neighbourhoods again.
The animosity is palpable, looking at footage of the band performing the song. As opposed to the traditional nastiness that Armstrong could spit out during his prime, their performance of the track on David Letterman is particularly savage, with Armstrong looking like he is one wrong move away from throwing his guitar down and throwing punches at the first person who calls him a sellout.
Even though the band couldn’t outrun the pinup punk label, their next album Nimrod would show them deliberately going against the grain, making songs with no concern about whether they fit into the punk aesthetic like ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’. Green Day may have still had the ethos, but their need to expand their musical horizons meant them outgrowing the neighbourhood they initially came from.
