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Music Artists Green Day

Green Day is a musical group from California, consisting of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, Tre Cool, Jason White, and Jason Freese. Green Day is widely credited, along with fellow California bands The Offspring and Rancid, with reviving mainstream interest in and popularizing punk rock in the United States during the mid 1990s. Their success has influenced other prominent pop punk bands like Sum 41, Good Charlotte and Blink-182.

The band has sold over 24.2 million albums to date in the United States, and over 53.1 million records worldwide. Green Day's breakthrough album Dookie has been certified diamond (10 million copies shipped) in the United States since its release in 1994. Their second best-selling album American Idiot, released in 2004 (a decade after Dookie), has been certified quadruple platinum in the U.S., and won the 2005 Grammy Award for "Best Rock Album". Green Day has in total won three Grammy Awards, several MTV Video Music Awards, and other industry and fan-based awards. They are also second only to the Red Hot Chili Peppers for most #1 hits on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, with eight #1s, to the Red Hot Chili Peppers' nine.

History
Lookout: the beginning(1986–1992)
At the age of twelve, Tré Cool became a member of the band The Lookouts. Their album "One Planet One People," released in 1986, attracted some attention, and Tré began performing at an early age at the Berkeley, California punk-rock all-ages venue 924 Gilman Street.

In 1986, Billie Joe Armstrong (aged 14) and Mike Dirnt (also aged 14) formed Sweet Children, with Armstrong on lead vocals and guitar and Dirnt on bass and backing vocals. Despite rumor to the contrary, John Kiffmeyer (a.k.a. Al Sobrante) was not a part of this endeavor. Their first show was on October 17, 1988, at Rod's Hickory Pit in Vallejo, California where Armstrong's mother was working.

In 1989, Kiffmeyer's band Isocracy broke up. Kiffmeyer sought out Armstrong and Dirnt to form Green Day, while other members went on to form Samiam.

Lawrence "Larry" Livermore, who played guitar for The Lookouts and ran the Berkeley independent label Lookout! Records, offered the band a record deal after having the band play. The band, he said, played like "The Beatles at Shea Stadium", according to Livermore's biography of the band on Lookout! Records' web page. In early 1989 they recorded their first EP, 1,000 Hours. The first Green Day show was played at Contra Costa College in San Pablo where Kiffmeyer attended as a journalism student.

In 1990, I.R.S. Records attempted to recruit Green Day, but they made it clear that they were loyal to Lookout! Records and that I.R.S. was a "cheesy" and "washed up" label.

They recorded two other EPs this year; Slappy and Sweet Children, which included some older songs for the Minneapolis, Minnesota indie label Skene! Records. In 1991, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours was released, which included both 39/Smooth as well as the tracks from Slappy and 1,000 Hours.

In mid 1990, Al Sobrante left the band temporarily to attend college in Arcata, California, shortly after the band's first tour. By this time the Lookouts had become mostly inactive, and Tré Cool, now 17 and living in Berkeley, began playing with Green Day as a temporary replacement that hasn't left.

In January 1991 they wrote and recorded their second album, Kerplunk!, releasing it on Lookout! Records. Touring through 1992 and 1993, expanded to Europe.

The band began recording demos of their new material, and eventually they left Lookout and signed with Reprise Records. Signing to Reprise caused some problems, as they had long since said [citation needed] that they would never sign to a major label. Reflecting on the period, Armstrong told SPIN magazine in 1999, "I couldn't go back to the punk scene, whether we were the biggest success in the world or the biggest failure ... The only thing I could do was get on my bike and go forward."[3]. They spent the greater part of the year recording their major label debut, Dookie. Released in January of 1994, Dookie was a commercial sensation, helped by extensive MTV airplay for the videos "Longview", "When I Come Around", and "Basket Case".

That year Green Day embarked on a nationwide tour with queercore band Pansy Division as their opening act. The band also joined the lineups of both the Lollapalooza Festival and Woodstock 1994 where they started the infamous mud fight.

Insomniac (1995–1996)
In 1995, a new single for the Angus soundtrack was released, titled J.A.R.". The single went straight to number 1 on the Billboard Charts, and was included as a B-Side on their new album, Insomniac. Green Day fired their managers for releasing the single early, putting money before the music.

Also in 1995, Green Day released their fourth album, Insomniac. Insomniac was a much more darker response to the poppy, melodic Dookie. Winston Smith designed the cover art, titled God Toled Me To Skin You Alive. On the cover art, several hidden images can be seen. A naked woman, and 3 skulls, one skull for each member of the band.

Green Days appearance changed in 1995, too. Instead of the cartoony hair dye that Billie Joe used in the Dookie days, he dyed his hair to be the grungy, natual hair color, bottle blonde.

Insomniac also had one song, 86, which was about never being able to back to the punk scene. "86" is a term used by officials at 924 Gilman Street for ejecting someone out of the club. 86`s lyrics include lines such as "There's no return from 86".

nimrod. (1996–1998)
Following Insomniac, Green Day was back in the studio by 1996, at work on a new album. The result was nimrod., an experimental deviation from the band's classic pop-punk brand of music. This new album was released in October 1997. It provided a variety of music from upbeat pop-punk to an acoustic ballad. "nimrod." entered the charts at number 10, thanks to the surprise hit Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) was official theme for the 1998 PGA Golf Tour, and was played on the final episode of the TV show Seinfeld, which was perhaps the most watched finale in the history of television. It was also played when Wendel Clark retired. This ubiquitous song was also heard on "ER".

The band took a two year break.

Warning: (2000–2002)
In 2000, they released Warning:, a step further in the style that they had hinted at with nimrod. The album's recording was marked by band members' significant reduction of marijuana intake, which had marked most of their adult lives. Critics' reviews of the album were mixed, some of them deeming the album simply mediocre. Though it produced the #1 hit "Minority" and a smaller hit with "Warning", some observers were coming to the conclusion that the band was losing relevance, and a decline in popularity followed. While all of Green Day's past albums had reached a status of at least double platinum, Warning: was only certified gold. Although the band felt this was some of their strongest work to date, the lack of success fueled questions regarding the band's future, not only from fans but by the band members also.

The release of a Greatest Hits compilation, International Superhits!, and the token complementary assemblage of B-sides, Shenanigans, only fueled the theory that Green Day's career was on the rocks. A 2002 co-headlining tour with blink-182 helped to resurrect some of the band's popularity, and earned the group many positive concert reviews. The band decided to take some time off after the Pop Disaster Tour closed, to spend time with their families and, ultimately, to decide whether maintaining the band was in anybody’s best interest anymore.

American Idiot and Bullet in a Bible (2003–2005)
Fighting burnout after Warning:, the band went into a studio to write and record new material for an album, believed to be titled Cigarettes and Valentines. After completing 20 tracks, the master tapes were stolen from the studio. The band, understandably upset, chose not to try to re-create the stolen album (Armstrong feared that it would take their fan base "back to about 50"), but instead started over with a vow to be even better than before. In addition, they underwent serious "band therapy," engaging in several long talks to work out the members' differences after accusations from Dirnt and Cool that Armstrong was "the band's Nazi" and a show-off bent on taking the limelight from the other band members.

After a restoration of band democracy, the creative floodgates opened as well, with each member trying different things every day in the studio — most notably the creation of two 9-minute tracks for the forthcoming Green Day record. Billie Joe also stated he previously feared playing "corny" guitar solos if he let loose, but eventually decided "I'm gonna play the fucking thing..." on this album whenever needed, showing his new-found courage. The resulting 2004 album, American Idiot, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, the band's first ever album to reach #1, backed by the success of the album's first single, "American Idiot." The album was billed as a "punk rock opera" which follows the journey of the fictitious "Jesus of Suburbia".Also the album marked a significant growth in the band as musicians. On the background of their pop punk landmark albums Kerplunk and Dookie, American Idiot was noted by critics as far more mature and musically eclectic than its predecessors and is often cited as their best work to date.

Another noticeable difference was the members of the band having discarded their trademark instruments. Billie Joe Armstrong changed his guitar from the replicas of the Fender Stratocaster Copy he had been playing since the age of 10 to a Gibson Les Paul Jr.. Armstrong does however continue to use his Strat copy at some point in every live show. Mike Dirnt used his Gibson G-3 bass guitar for several of their albums leading up to Nimrod, but now plays a custom Fender Precision Bass. Exact duplicates of his guitar are made by Fender, and they are called the Mike Dirnt Precision Bass. Tré Cool also severed his longtime association with Slingerland, which he had been using since Nimrod years, and started using Ludwig-Musser drums.

American Idiot also marked a major change of image. While in the past they had dyed their hair in different colors (ranging from red to green to pink and back again) and appeared in mostly variegated clothes, here they started wearing fitted black shirts with skinny neckties and also dyed their hair in more plain colours like platinum and black. In addition, Tre and Billie Joe began to wear heavy eyeliner in their media appearances.

American Idiot won a Grammy in 2005 for "Best Rock Album" and was nominated for 5 other Grammy awards. The song "American Idiot" was featured in the video game Madden NFL 2005 and "Holiday" in the game Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, in which Billie Joe Armstrong is also an unlockable character. The music video for "American Idiot" was voted 'The Greatest Rock Video Ever' in a Kerrang! Magazine Poll. In the Australian Triple J's Hottest 100 for 2005, Jesus of Suburbia entered at #61 making it the longest song ever to place in the chart at 9 minutes and 8 seconds. Green Day also won two Kids Choice Awards Blimps in 2006 for Favorite Musical Group and Favorite Song (Wake Me Up When September Ends).

Through 2005, the band toured, promoting the album with about 150 dates — their longest tour in their career — visiting Japan, Australia South America and England where they drew a crowd of 130,000 people over two days - one of the largest crowds ever drawn for a rock concert. This tour continued the theatrics of the shows from the Warning: and Shenanigans tours by featuring a horn section dressed as a pink rabbit and a bumblebee, Armstrong donning a crown and silk cape for the song "King For A Day," and drawn-out performances of certain songs like "Hitchin' a Ride" and "Minority", where Armstrong used the instrumental sections to make popcorn with the crowd, a staple of Green Day's live performances. While touring for American Idiot, they filmed and recorded the two concerts at the Milton Keynes National Bowl in England, which was voted 'The Best Show On Earth' in a Kerrang! Magazine Poll. These recordings were released as a live CD and DVD called Bullet in a Bible on November 15, 2005. This CD/DVD featured hits from American Idiot as well as older songs from Dookie among others. The DVD featured behind the scenes footage of the band, and showed how the band prepared to put on the show. The final shows of their 2005 world tour were in Sydney, Australia and Melbourne, Australia on December 14 and 17 respectively (where, eerily enough, the show saw small bursts of rain during "Wake Me Up When September Ends", an odd occurance for the Australian mid-summer). On January 10, 2006 the band was awarded with a People's Choice Award for favorite group.

On August 1, 2005, it was announced that Green Day had rescinded the master rights to their pre-Dookie material from Lookout! Records, citing breach of contract regarding unpaid royalties that had been ongoing for some time, and with other Lookout! bands as well. As of October 2005, it is unknown whether a label affiliated with the band (Reprise, Armstrong's own Adeline), a reissue specialist like Rhino, or another label entirely will reissue the Lookout!-era material. As a result of Green Day reclaiming the masters from Lookout! Records, the independent label laid off two thirds of its nine-person staff and delayed its new release plans for the rest of 2005.

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