“Chase that down now”: The song Billie Joe Armstrong was forced to make
Every great song has to come from a place of love if it’s going to get anywhere. As much as people like the idea of having their music be an assembly line of perfect tunes, the only way that someone can be inspired is to give their creativity room to breathe rather than have someone breathing down their neck to get their songs finished. But while it can take inspiration a long time to arrive, Billie Joe Armstrong figured out the hard way that sometimes it takes hard work to get everything finished properly.
Going through all of Green Day’s albums, though, it was always going to be hard for them ot reach stable ground after Dookie. Any band would be celebrating having an album that big during their lifetime, but looking at the backlash from their punk peers, it’s no wonder that Insomniac sounded so angry. And if people thought that they were about to stop experimenting, they were about to be absolutely disgusted once they heard an acoustic guitar on a punk record.
Throughout the late 1990s, Armstrong was more than happy to play whatever he wanted to, regardless of whether there was a market for it. Acoustic ballads? Absolutely. Ambient instrumental pieces? Sure, why not? Having an album that’s the equivalent of a folk-punk record? There’s no question: just do it. With the 2000s getting started and nothing hitting the same heights as Dookie, though, they needed a stunner to get them going again, and Armstrong had all he needed when he saw George W Bush screwing over the US.
While the message behind American Idiot may have flown over some people’s heads, Armstrong was more than happy to give a middle finger to Bush. As much as people liked having their favourite pop-punk band back, this was a sign of what could happen when those teenage kids grew up and started making personal tunes like ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ and ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’.
But when something successful happens, it’s never easy to follow it up, and 21st Century Breakdown was no different. Getting production guru Butch Vig in the producer’s chair was a step in the right direction, but he wasn’t looking to sit back and make the cleanest record he could. He knew he was working with professionals, and when Armstrong came in with the beginnings of ‘Restless Heart Syndrome’, Vig wouldn’t stand by and watch a classic tune get away.
“With that song, I was kind of like ‘Oh, I’ll wait and record it five years from now.’ But Butch [Vig] was like, ‘No, no no. You gotta chase down that melody now and you gotta find those lyrics”.
Billie Joe Armstrong
When discussing the album later, Armstrong remembered Vig sitting him down and making him flesh out the rest of the idea, saying, “I showed him the melody to ‘Restless Heart Syndrome’. It’s weird the way you sometimes start a song, but don’t finish it. With that song, I was kind of like ‘Oh, I’ll wait and record it five years from now.’ But Butch was like, ‘No, no no. You gotta chase down that melody now and you gotta find those lyrics.”
And judging by how it turned out, Vig did the band a great service by getting that tune off life support. While it’s far from the most single-ready tune in their catalogue, it’s one of the most adventurous moments in the band’s later career, featuring a beautiful piano line and the kind of guitar solo that most people didn’t think the band had in their arsenal any more.
Since the song also repeats the mantra of ‘Know Your Enemy’ before the guitar solo break, it also makes the album strangely come full circle, almost like Pete Townshend used different musical motifs when making Quadrophenia. Although 21st Century Breakdown tends to get left out of the conversation of classics when it comes to Green Day, ‘Restless Heart Syndrome’ proves that they were still as adventurous as they’d ever been.
