Interview From : Guitar World

Guitar World: "How do you explain your early success?"
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Billie Joe Armstrong: "We were at the right place at the right time. We happened to strike a nerve. The whole early Nineties was about that introverted grunge sound, and people were getting tired of it. They were looking for a little bit of a performance, and we happened to do it. That's one thing we have always been capable of--taking advantage of an opportunity. All I did was be honest and sing about myself, and people identified with it. Kids don't sugar coat anything and that was what they saw in us--something that was fast and hard and got the point across."
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GW: "Also, for a punk band you weren't all that threatening..."
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Armstrong: "We aren't Neurosis, but I don't think they are particularly threatening either. We are a pop band. Maybe it's not packaged the same way as Duran Duran--it's definitely more aggressive--but if you strip it down, it's a hook, a melody and has good lyrics--that's all."
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Mike Dirnt: "We write classic pop songs. The way you can tell that is just by taking away the production on any one of our songs. They can be still played on an acoustic guitar and they are still great tunes. You can't say that about techno."
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GW: "Do you like the new wave of electronica?"
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Dirnt: "Let me put it this way: The Prodigy is really innovative because they took techno and applied it to a song format. I think that's really great because now instead of listening to six minutes of crap, I have to listen to only three."
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GW: "Are there things that you like that might surprise your fans?"
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Dirnt: "I don't know. I was heavily into jazz for a while, and that's where "Longview" came from. I've been into a blues phase recently. I've liked slower grooves like Stevie Wonder and old Motown. I'm never influenced by players. I'm influenced by tunes--anything that has it's own motor or it's own pocket."
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Armstrong: "I like early Van Halen--David Lee Roth is a great performer. And I am a sucker for a good song no matter how you package it. I like the Pretenders; I really liked the last Wallflowers record. I like some stuff off the last Counting Crows record, and I think Oasis is pretty good."
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GW: "In an earlier Guitar World interview[August '96], you said that Green Day needed to redefine itself. Have you succeeded in doing so on Nimrod?"
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Armstrong: "From my point of view, it would have been wrong to put out the same kind of record because that would have been boring. But maybe you took me a little too literally when I said "redefine" the band -- it wasn't about turning into Radiohead or something; that was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to stick to what we had done together as a band but also branch out and test our boundaries a little bit. I think we were successful at doing that, and that's why there are so many songs on this album. We didn't want to break away complete from our past or what we do best -- which is write two-and-a-half minute pop/punk songs -- but at the same time, I think we were successful at going outside of that and not looking pretentious or anything."
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GW: "Was that a difficult process for you? Is that why you spent four and a half months in the studio recording Nimrod?"
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Dirnt: "No. We came to this record with a ridiculous approach: record everything. We went into the studio with 40 songs and recorded 30. Eighteen made the record. We wanted to write good old rock and roll tunes. IN the past, we always knew what songs were going to be on the record. This time we decided to let the songs themselves tell us what to include."
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GW: "There are several surprises on Nimrod. What inspired a song like "Last Ride In"? That one sounds like something off an Ennio Morricone soundtrack for a Clint Eastwood western."
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Armstrong: "We jammed on that a lot backstage when we used to play these pseudosurf songs, and it sort of just came up. We said, 'Let's record it and see what happens.' It sounded really good, so we added vibes, strings, horns and a mariachi band. It was a good time on the record for it, kind of, "smoke 'em if you got 'em and hang out before you get pummeled by another song. "
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GW: "'Good Riddance,' which features an acoustic guitar and strings, seems to be an even greater departure from the past."
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Armstrong: "Yeah, we never had strings before, and I never played a song solo with an acoustic guitar. We've always wanted to do that, but we had to approach it slowly, without abandoning anything. The great thing was that it came so naturally. It was something we knew we could do. That song was written just after Dookie came out, and I wanted to save it and wait for the right opportunity."
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Dirnt: "We were in a really creative place for the last year. We got off the road, took two weeks off and then started practicing three to five days a week. We love practicing. We wrote songs and came up with old tunes and came up with everything we could. We are our own worst critics, and if something's not right we'll put it away and come back to it three years later."
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GW: "Aren't you concerned that your punk fans are going to hate the band's current direction?"
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Armstrong: "There was pressure to take a big step forward. We needed to do it. If people can adapt to it, that's fine, but if they can't... I can understand that. When I was 17, I didn't like it when bands changed in a dramatic way."
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GW: "When you say 'pressure' are you talking about your record company?"
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Armstrong: "I think it came from inside ourselves, not from the record label. I don't really talk to anybody from the label."
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GW: "Did you feel that you needed to change after the relative commercial failure of Insomnia, which sold four times less than Dookie?"
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Armstrong: "Not at all. Dookie is like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours--it's just one of those records that everybody bought. Going into Insomniac, I don't think we were necessarily into selling records; I think more what we wanted to do was put a stop to Dookie. I think we could have gone at least another three singles--we could have played that record out for another year, easy. We wanted to get over the sophomore slump that we knew was coming and not wait another year and a half to do it, because then it would have been that much harder."
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GW: "You weren't disappointed that you didn't take a lot of your new fans with you?"
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Armstrong: "A lot of those people weren't really fans. They belonged to record clubs, or they bought the record because they wanted to put something that was being played on pop radio in their record collection."
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Dirnt: "The idea of four million people in the world buying Insomniac, a record that we knew wasn't commercial, that we knew was draining and exhausting, would have been unfathomable to me. It was a hard, aggressive record. It was about getting all these emotions and anger out now, so we could get to the next record. And here we are. In a lot of ways, that's our favorite record to date."
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GW: "Around the time that Insomniac was released, it seemed that Green Day was at a crossroads. You quit in the middle of a European tour, amid constant rumors that the band was on the verge of breaking up."
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Armstrong: "We never thought about breaking up, but it really wasn't fun anymore. And it was beginning to get to the point where we were doing it for the wrong reasons."
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GW: "You mean money?"
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Armstrong: "I think so, and we didn't want that to be our drive. We wanted to go home and create music. We were beginning to fake it. It was time to stop and realize why we loved music to begin with. We needed to leave it for a while. Get into our personal lives. Find familiar faces and places and be grounded again, because that's where the best songs come from."
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GW: "Mike, you were also having panic attacks in Europe..."
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Dirnt: "I was totally burnt out. We had been on the road for five years straight. Also, I had headaches for two weeks. I used to bang my head really hard with a microphone at the beginning of our shows, and we had different mic covers in Europe. I didn't know it and slammed myself in the head really hard."
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GW: "Your recent experiences have obviously left their mark on the current album. Billie, it seems that you were writing lyrics from an older, wiser perspective. 'Hitchin a ride' for instance..."
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Armstrong: "It's about drugs, alcohol and falling off the wagon---your basic rock story."
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GW: "Have you stopped drinking?"
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Armstrong: "Yeah, it's been a couple of weeks. It's something I have to struggle with. My problem is that if I had a beer, I'd be drinking for the next month. I don't know if I want to quit drinking forever, but it's something I want to do right now because I have a lot of responsibility. We'll see what happens--Talk to me in six months and I'll probably be drooling on myself. I have an addictive personality. I end up getting fucked up too much. But at the same time, I don't want to come across as the new, clear Billie Joe."
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GW: "Are you trying to quit because it affects your ability to be creative?"
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Armstrong: "No, I was fucked up the whole time we were writing this record and while we recorded it. For me it goes hand in hand. Sometimes I feel I need to be fucked up to write songs. I'm not the most honest person in the world when I'm straight, and I need some booze or speed to beat it out of me."
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GW: "I assume 'King for a Day,' a song about dressing up in women's clothing, isn't autobiographical."
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Armstrong: "It is. Everybody dresses in drag at one point or the other. Didn't you ever put a dress on?"
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GW: "No."
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Armstrong: "Oh, well. I thought it would be really funny to do that song because it has this Oi! sound to it in the chorus. I wanted to see a bunch of fraternity guys singing about dressing in drag and not know what they were singing about."
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GW: "On Nimrod, you have expanded your scope as a player quite a bit."
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Armstrong: "I looked at my guitar playing more as a tool this time. I didn't want to go outside of what I can do, but I also didn't want to keep playing only power chords. I wanted to noodle around a little bit and write these nice little leads and just add stuff that made sense with the song. I'm more of a rhythm player than a lead player. The stuff that I do play that is more like a solo is a rhythmic kind of thing that blends in with a melody. I'm no Steve Vai, and if I were to attempt to do what he does it would sound like shit."
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GW: "Do you have any regard for that kind of playing?"
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Armstrong: "Just bad regards. I'm just into getting a good, powerful sound. Whatever benefits the song is what I try to play. Mike is a great bass player and Tre's a great drummer, and it's about letting them play. I'm more of a backup. We are a very tight unit, and I work with them to enhance the song rather than go off on long, pretentious guitar solos."
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GW: "What are your limitations as a player?"
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Armstrong: "Solos. I am not a guitar player's guitar player. I'm a songwriter. I come from that Pete Townshend tradition: let the song take its course and build a sound around it. It's hard for me to talk about. One of my limitations is that it's hard for me to talk about guitar playing. I just do what I'm capable of, which is not that much."
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GW: "What's behind your signature guitar sound?"
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Armstrong: "A blue guitar with stickers on it. [laughs] Actually, it's a Fernandes Strat copy that I put a Seymour Duncan humbucker in. A lot of my sound is due to strumming; I use my thumb. It's that half-pick and half-thumb which gives it that thwack. Also, I don't play with my wrist -- I play with my whole shoulder and hit it really hard."
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GW: "You use Marshall heads?"
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Armstrong: "Yeah, but on this record I used a whole lot of different things. I used an orange Fender Bassman, a Hiwatt and a lot of Bob Bradshaw stuff. 'The Grouch' has a Les Paul Jr. plugged into a really heavy Marshall for that think sound. On 'Redundant' I went through a Leslie."
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GW: "What kind of acoustic guitar did you use on 'Good Riddance'?"
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Armstrong: "[laughs] I don't know. One with strings and a hole in the middle"
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GW: "What about your gear, Mike?"
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Dirnt: "On this record I used Precision basses because my old Gibson G-3 didn't sound good with the new songs. I used a '66 and '69; they have a real warmth on the low end, and they have this London Calling midrange. For this record I knew we weren't going for the huge guitar sound; this gave me more room to get in there. I needed to play a real punchy bass on the old records because the guitar frequencies were everywhere and I needed to get right through the middle. I recorded Dookie with a P bass too, and you can hear the bass distort on 'Welcome To Paradise'. I use Mesa/Boogie amps, MB 2000's. They're half-tube and half-solid state. I wanted to custom-make my own sound, and Mesa/Boogie was really willing to work with me. They made me 6x10 cabinets, and we put those on top of a 1x18. I think I'm nailing it. I have an MB 2000 running each one of my 6x10 cabinets and then a MB 2000 running both of my 18's."
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GW: "Tell me, do your former friends in the punk underground still give you a hard time about becoming part of the 'mainstream'?"
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Dirnt: "Some asshole a while back in San Francisco turned to Billie and started snickering, 'Why don't you try to sound more like Minor Threat?' I said, 'That makes sense, and sell 30,000 records instead of 20 million?' People think that because we play the type of music we do, we don't get hardcore music. Excuse me, we probably get it better than you do. We write hardcore tunes just as heavy as they get. 'Take Back,' on the new album, is a total example of that."
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Armstrong: "Besides, I think we are beyond that now. We have beaten that subject into the ground. We are just a band, just music, just an escape."
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GW: "On a commercial/major label level, is punk rock dead?"
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Armstrong: "Yeah, on that level it's dead. The signing frenzy is definitely over. But everything goes in cycles, and now we are headed into a New Wave kind of thing. Bands are doing more electronic music, like The Prodigy, or doing in the Oingo Boingo/Cars direction. No Doubt sounds like Oingo Boingo to me."
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GW: "Give that attitude, I'm surprised that you picked 'Hitchin A Ride,' and not one of your more radical departures from the past, as the first single"
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Armstrong: "We don't really pick the singles, the record company does. I couldn't really pick a single, I'm too close to the songs. We really trust Rob Cavallo, our producer; he's like part of the band. But I think he's right that it's good to save a song like 'Redundant' or 'Good Riddance' 'til later, because after you have released those, where do you go from there? I don't want to shoot my load too early."
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GW: "Any future plans you can divulge?"
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Dirnt: "We are going to hit the road and play smaller places--1,500 to 3,000-seat venues. We want to play record stores and cause a total disturbance. We want to meet people on a more intimate level. And my plans are to just get up there and kick ass."
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Armstrong: "I want to be a songwriter, and there really is no crime in that. I want to continue to write basic songs and start a few riots. God, nothing beats a good riot

Thanks to Andre Jones for typing out this interview for me :)

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