A Lean, Green, Rock Machine

12/10/2000 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Neal Weiss

The further the years extend from the days of 1994, when Green Day broke into the mainstream with its neo-punk hits "Longview" and "Basket Case," the more out of step the Berkeley, California trio sounds in today's rock landscape. Modern Rock 2K is all about the rap-metal of the Bizkit et al, and Green Day's punkish pop style of the last half-decade now feels downright complacent in comparison.

It's a reality that may or may not have been in back of the minds of vocalist/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool when they made Warning, Green Day's sixth album. But if the group was concerned about obsolescence, they reacted not by remaining defiantly punk or by, perhaps, incorporating turntables and raps into their sound, but in the best of ways--by letting their style continue to develop into a greater guitar-pop maturity.

As a result, Warning is potentially the band's most enduring album, one in which spirited acoustic guitars propel songs that suggest less the classic British punk of the late '70s than the Village Green Preservation Society style of classic British rockers the Kinks a decade earlier. And while Armstrong and Dirnt looked blank-faced when LAUNCH asked them about their interest in the Kinks during a recent interview at a Los Angeles hotel, they made their point elsewhere--that substantial music, and not substantial airplay, is what made Warning go 'round.

LAUNCH:
So, first things first: I talked to Tre on the Warped tour for a little while, and he called the new record an "instant classic."

BILLIE JOE:
Well, for Tre, being humble is one of his many, many finer points.

MIKE:
And that's a quote from Tre [laughs].

LAUNCH:
Well, tell me a little about it. You make this record, and then you play it back--what do you hear?

BILLIE JOE:
I think we just took it to the next level after Nimrod. We just sort of waited for inspired moments and took our time. I have to say, we did try to go in and make the most classic Green Day record we possibly could, and you know, we didn't want to put any sort of filler or anything. It's always been sort of something we've stuck to since the beginning, and that's just to write good songs. That's what this record is about.

LAUNCH:
Did you set out to do anything different this time out? Was there any sort of a plan of attack?

MIKE:
We didn't go to band practice and try and pound out songs. Billy really waited for inspired moments, especially lyrically inspired moments. And you know, we weren't forcing songs. When we'd have two, three songs, we'd start another one and we'd go, "Uh, that's not working today. Let's go work on the ones that do work." Whereas on the last record, we were just pounding songs out, as many as we could. Nimrod was like, "OK, let's record 40 songs and see what songs pop out and make an album." With this one it was kind of like, "Hey, let's just see what songs pop out and make a record without forcing anything, and, you know, have an actual life to live and breathe through these songs."

LAUNCH:
And how about the acoustic guitar? It's pretty prominent in the record.

BILLIE JOE:
We wanted to try different instrumentation. The thing is, "acoustic" could be like a four-letter word to a lot of kids. We wanted to make it sound rockin'. I'm not writing "Time Of Your Life" again or anything like that.

MIKE:
I think the real irony is that for years and years, when people think of us, they think our heavy guitars and the sounds that we've had on our records. But we've written most of our songs on acoustic guitar. When we wake up in the middle of the night to write a song, Billie doesn't run to his amp and plug in his guitar, he picks up an acoustic guitar and starts jamming on it. And you can play an acoustic guitar like an electric guitar, you know, i.e., Pete Townshend. It could rock, you know.

BILLIE JOE:
I sort of approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument than something that's fragile. I don't have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing. But that's something I sort of learned about just being a musician, anyways, is to attack your instruments, don't let it attack you.

LAUNCH:
You mentioned "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)." Was the success of that song on your mind when you sat down to write this record?

BILLIE JOE:
Whatever we do in the past, we just leave that and go to the next chapter or next era or whatever. We always want to try to keep reinventing ourselves and come out with something new, without changing our clothes. Not that we're trying to have a new image or anything like that. I think we're just acting our age, trying to make something that [documents] where we're at in this particular time and exercises our vulnerabilities. And to make the best record that we possibly can.

MIKE:
I don't think we're trying to write the next sound for the radio in the future, you know? We just live for here and now, and we don't write songs for the radio, 'cause Lord knows what they're going to be playing tomorrow. If you were to ask me two years ago if the radio were to sound like this...

LAUNCH:
Any concern about losing some of your hardcore base, or is that something that just comes with the territory?

BILLIE JOE:
I don't know who is going to be liking this record and who isn't going to like this record. And that's not up to me to decide. I mean, that's up to the people--whatever they want to get into, they can. I don't really care. I think the main thing for us is to make a record that we like, and we like this record a lot. We put everything we had into this record, just like we do with every other record that we make, and I'm not gonna sit and try to market myself to anybody. If you feel like getting into this record, then do it; if you don't then don't, you know...it's as simple as that.

LAUNCH:
There's saxophone, there's some Farfisa organ, there's lots of great tones all over this record. Were the recording sessions a "Hey, let's try this" type of environment?

BILLIE JOE:
We wanted to bring in new instruments, but we didn't want to really lose the edge or the energy that me, Mike, and Tre have. That's definitely the one thing that we want to keep intact, is the glue that we have between the three of us. But it's fun to bring in harmonicas and mandolins and, you know, a Mariachi band, Italian funeral band, or whatever. I think in essence this is the most rock 'n' roll record that we've ever made.

LAUNCH:
As opposed to a punk record?

BILLIE JOE:
I don't know. I mean, punk is something that is always going to be with us, and to try to explain it would be stupid at this point.

MIKE:
I think this record is definitely out on Broadway, as far as not hiding behind any severely distorted guitars or whatever. It's very much a band record. I think one thing that describes this record is that we recorded it in a different way. Our other records might have been recorded more like, if you put a Who record on at a party, it kind of takes over the party. I think we recorded this one more like an old Rolling Stones record, where you turn it on and it just adds a little life to the party and some ambience and good feeling, you know?

BILLIE JOE:
But it'll still take over the party, anyway [laughs].

MIKE:
It'll still take over the party, but you can get in to the record a little more. I think.

[Mike excuses himself to go to the restroom]

LAUNCH:
How about the themes of Warning? Is there a message you're trying to get across at this point in your career?

BILLIE JOE:
I think so. I mean, I really wanted to step outside of myself. I think that when rock stars--or whatever they like to call themselves nowadays--tend to get pretty big, a lot of them go way deep inside themselves and shut out the world. That's sort of what happened to me a little bit; I think I sort of shut out the world around me and became disconnected with what is going on. I think it's vital to have some sort of connection, and you have to be some sort of member of society to comment on it. Or else people just sort of are like, "Oh, you're just this whiny rock star, what are you talking about? What's going on with you besides what you're talking about yourself?" So that's what this record is about, about channeling my anger and my angst into things that are really important, and to try to find something that comes out of it that's positive. If you want to know the truth, do I want to change the world through music? Well, f--k yeah I want to change the world to a certain extent, yeah. It needs to be changed, it needs a kick in the ass. There's a line in "Macy's Day Parade": "Then I realized what it took to see the difference between thieves and crooks/When all along it was me and you." It's sort of about the lies and deceptions that you have growing up, and [how] you have to find your own way around; it's sort of a make-or-break situation in your life.

[Mike returns]

MIKE:
It's a boy.

[laughs all around]

BILLIE JOE:
It's important to be able to channel your anger into the world around you a little more and not become so self-centered. There's a lot of people that [didn't] vote this year just because of a lack of a better selection. The way I look at it, every dollar that I spend is a vote. Where are you going to put your dollar into? What is worth investing into? Is it gonna be the Starbucks in town, or is it gonna be your local coffee place, or small business people that are trying to just put food on the table?

LAUNCH:
That reminds me, it seems like lots has changed economically and socially in the Bay Area since you started. Have you witnessed that?

BILLIE JOE:
The Bay Area in general is losing its culture, especially in SF, where it's almost a cliché to say that the dot-com companies are moving in to take over now. There is no rent control in SF, and as of September, over 2,000 musicians were kicked out of their practice spaces because they're turning the downtown area into a place for condominiums. And a lot of artists are losing their live/work spaces. It's kind of scary, because here is a city that thrived on its cultural diversity, and now it's basically just turning into a place for the high-tech boom.

MIKE:
Suits, ties, and cubicles.

BILLIE JOE:
Which is scary. There's no balance within that. Also for kids, going to schools is becoming more and more difficult, and babysitters and child-care has become so outrageously expensive. There are girls and boys that are making $20 an hour so you can go to work so you can support your family or whatever, but someone else is spending more time with your family because you have to end up going to work to pay for them and their job. Like I said, it's just kind of scary, and it's something that people really have to think about it.

LAUNCH:
Last question: Any thoughts on what Green Day has accomplished in the last decade?

BILLIE JOE:
It's hard to look back when you're thinking about the future so much. You know, we've done a lot of things, like when we started playing punk-rock music, it had already been a proven fact that you couldn't get famous or get big or be a millionaire off of being in a punk-rock band, and we've definitely broken those rules [laughs]. But we've tried to take it in and just move on. It's been a pretty strange journey, indeed.

MIKE:
We're fortunate right now to still be a band and still be playing music. I mean, I kind of look at it like, well, we are a band, we've banded together, and we look at it right now as for life. Who knows how long we'll be playing together, but it's been 12 years already, and most of my friendships don't even last that long. That's pretty fortunate, and more than you can ask for.