Who was Green Day’s ‘St Jimmy’?
The concept album is always the moment where artists cross a threshold in their careers. They could have easily spent their time trying to make the best music that they could out of a collection of singles, but when everything has to be tied to one singular story, that’s when the average songwriter goes from a casual rock and roller to an artist. David Bowie was among the kings of concepts, and the entire prog-rock sphere made it their calling card, but Green Day were thinking outside the box when they decided to create their own tale of an American dystopia.
Billie Joe Armstrong had already seen the ugliness of the post-9/11 version of America, and after ‘Minority’ started their habit of writing political material, American Idiot was the first time for them to play around with a musical story. Armstrong had been a student of people like Pete Townshend, but whereas Tommy was about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who needed music to help him through his darkest times, these characters are psychologically broken by the world around them.
Since the Iraq War was about to be in full swing, a lot of the songs on here are about kids trying to live their lives in a world that’s demanding them to grow up too fast. Blink-182 may have hit upon something that sounded like adolescence, but from the minute the title track started, Armstrong wanted to make a protest record that also doubled as a voice for every kid wondering if they would be drafted.
But outside of the ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ that we’re introduced to, there’s also the character of ‘St Jimmy’ that appears halfway through the album. Since this is technically a love story between Jesus and ‘Whatsername’ throughout most of the album, is ‘St Jimmy’ a third wheel in the relationship or someone one of Jesus’s best friends who’s along for the ride?
So, who is ‘St Jimmy’?
Well, the answer is technically both. Jesus’s track starts by calling himself “the son of rage and love”, and Jimmy may as well be his rageful persona manifested into a person. It’s no secret that many rock stars prance around like living deities from time to time, so this was Armstrong’s way of living out his complete rock star persona, especially at their show in Milton Keynes, where his eyes are wild the same way that Iggy Pop’s were when he played in the 1970s.
In the context of the album, Jimmy is the one person everyone wants to hang out with because they know they will get in trouble with him, but that’s also a double-edged sword. Rage can only get someone so far, and halfway through the record, watching ‘Whatsername’ walk out on Jesus is his first wake-up call to leave his Jimmy persona behind for good.
So when we get to the first movement of the song ‘Homecoming’, ‘The Death of St Jimmy’ isn’t about someone literally blowing their brains out. Jimmy might not return for the rest of the record, but Jesus realises he can’t live with that much anger in his heart. The only way for him to get through the rest of his life is with compassion, and while that means working a dead-end job for a while on East 12th St, he knows he’ll always have the memories of raising hell with Jimmy and the moments of magic with Whatsername.
By being a punk rock spin on someone like Tyler Durden, St Jimmy is more than a simple character in the context of American Idiot. No matter what his or her name is, everyone who’s lived through their teen years has had their own St Jimmy, and it’s up to us whether to keep them around for the rest of our lives or let go of that rage altogether. It’s not an easy decision for anyone to make, but given how American Idiot, the death of Jimmy is what happens when punk-rock grows up.
