Interview with Mike from Green Day (4/4/94)
interviewed by Kelly Enriquez and Jen Gore (M=Mike, A=Alter/Native)
A: I hear that you get to do most of the interviews?
M: True story. Well, the other guys don't like to do them as much. I would rather do them
and see them done. Put things in the right words.
A: This isn't going to be in Rolling Stone or Spin or anything like
that. M: Oh I don't care if it's in a zine...that's cool. What's it going to be in?
A: Our program guide and a local Corvallis zine.
M: Corvallis. We had a big party there. It was fun.
A: We heard about that one. So...some basic questions...How old were you when you started?
Were you in high school?
M: Yeah, about 10th grade or 9th grade.
A: We usually do a synopsis on the albums in rotation and on the first album (39/Smooth)
it said "I do believe these guys are still in high school."
M: We were still in high school all but for the second album. For the second album we were
out for a year. We're pretty young I think. How old are you guys?
A: I'm 19. I'm 25.
M: I'm 21.
A: I'm the M.D. and she's the ex-M.D.
M: The ex-M.D.?
A: Music Director.
M: Well...I used to be a doctor.
A: Oops...I'm sorry. I'm so into record company lingo now.
M: That's a really cool name. The ex-M.D. KBVR...is that it?
A: Yeah. I just thought I'd show you this, what they wrote about you on the promotional
thing...it says how you guys dress in drag. Is that for real? Have you guys done many
shows in drag?
M: Drag's really getting kind of trendy, so we stopped. Basically, now we'll only do it in
places that we know are really homophobic.
A: That's cool, Corvallis would be a good place to do that. So did you all grow up in
Berkeley?
M: Around the suburbs of Berkeley. It's like a shitty ol' suburb of Berkeley called Rodeo,
it's actually pronounced Rodao but spelled Rodeo.
A: When you were in high school did they have a really cool scene in Berkely?
M: No. We went to school in the suburbs. It was really shitty. One year the high school I
went to was really shitty. But then I went to a school that was somewhat more alternative.
But there were still a lot of shitheads and everything. It was somewhat more alternative.
There were alternative kids, but you still got fucked with a lot. Kinda lame.
A: So a lot of your songs are about life in suburbia and being bored out of your mind?
M: Yeah. Just sitting around a lousy town. We come from a town where everyone looks
forward to their senior ball and their boyfriends and girlfriends.
A: That sounds like my high school. Sounds like everbody's high school.
M: Well...yeah it kind of is. It's like everyone's big thing...like in the Bay area a lot
of people do a lot of speed and a lot of drugs. And they just sit around and they'd rather
work shitty 9 to 5 jobs and waste out. Instead of actually getting out there and doing
what they would rather be doing. Their only limitation is that they're in this suburban
subculture. The thing with subcultures is...it's just too much of a bad thing.
A: I have a friend who saw you guys on 120 Minutes and she said that you guys looked
really bored and pissed off. Is that true?
M: No. Not really. We actually had a good time that day. We were getting a little bored
because we had to do a thing like 5 or 6 times. It would either be us or Louis Largent
either saying "fuck" or saying "shit" or saying "pot" or
something like that which they didn't want us to say.
A: "Pot" is not allowed on MTV?
M: No drug references.
A: Speaking of bad words, who chose "Longview" for your first single?
M: Warner Bros. wanted it and we wanted it. We were actually the ones who were a little
more hesitant...see whether or not it would hurt our radio play or anything. But Warner
Bros. was encouraging it and I thought that was really cool. So we went with it. I'm
sorry, I mean Reprise was encouraging it.
A: All they do is take liberties with it and cut out the bad words.
M: Yeah. People can figure out what we said.
A: They most certainly can. How about "Welcome to Paradise" was that the band's
idea to re-record that?
M: Yeah, fully. There's a bunch of songs on Kerplunk that we only knew for about a week
literally, and that's one of them, before we went in to record them. That song, the song
"80", the song "No one knows", "One of my lies"...there's a
lot of songs...they all came together within one week. And so, that song in particular we
felt we wanted to represent it as a really strong song. In Kerplunk there's a lot of
spooky stuff going on in the middle [makes weird noises]...all sorts of weird stuff. We
just wanted to show it as a solid song, and we thought it fit better with this album too.
A: So you like the new version of it better than the old version?
M: I like them both, but I think the song fit really well on this album. It's gonna get
it's fair shake now. It's not like we wanted to come out with it as our first single, but
we thought it fit this album really well lyrically, content-wise, and we just wanted to
show what a strong song it was...what a straight forward song it was. A: Did you feel like
you had a lot of creative control as to what went into the album?
M: 100% Actually 150%
A: Did you notice any difference between Reprise and Lookout?
M: Yeah. There's a big difference between when you spend a lot of money on a record and
when you spend $1500 to $700 on a record. Which is the totals of our other records, $700
for the first record and $1500 for the second record. We had some time to actually pay
attention to what we were doing. The reason things are louder is because you're doing
things in a more contained environment, you've got a bigger studio, better equipment. The
whole album sounds bigger. That's the main difference between any major label album and
any independent album, because the independent albums are recorded on a small budget and
they sound transistor to some extent...like the real high end...and the low end doesn't
kick as much as everything else. That's not a problem...I love that. But radio and tv...a
lot of people have a hard time listening to things that aren't incredibly audible. Like my
dad would tell me "god, the quality of your records...the songs are good and
everything, but the quality is so low-fi." Well, that's what we're recording as, and
I think we obtained the same sound that we would have obtained if the other ones had they
been on a major label.
A: You like the sound of the new album?
M: Yes. I love the sound of this new album.
A: So you're pretty happy with the transition?
M: Yeah, very much. I think we made the right decision, the right label.
A: Was it a consensus to change to Reprise?
M: Yeah, fully. The main reason we switched labels, it took us over a year to make the
decision, because there comes a point where 15-16 year old kids can't put on 600-900
people shows. So you end up dealing with medium size club promoters, and a lot of those
guys are really sleazy. If you have no legal stance, then they're just gonna rob you. 3
out of 4 shows on our tour were being cancelled because the fire marshall would show up
and close down this punk club, either fully close the club or just close the show down and
alert the police and the fire marshall to these clubs. All that's doing is damage to punk
shows. And then we're getting all these people going, "Look at all these other jerks
showing up at your shows." I've had people come up to me now and go, "Man, look
at these people you draw to your shows now, look at them all." I'd say, "You
know what, man, you're fucking racist." That's a problem. If I meet someone and
they're a jock or I meet someone and they're different than me in any way, if they're a
nice person I'll shake their hand, but if they're an asshole and they're letting me know
it, I'm gonna tell them they're an asshole. Our music wasn't created strictly for punks.
But it was put out and we did play to punks because our friends were punks and we like to
hang out and do the punk circuit. And I felt that we gave a lot of the best of us. We've
played close to 1000 punk shows now and it really takes its toll out on you. And it really
hurts even more when I hear people saying, "Well now kids at my school are gonna like
your music, 'cuz it's like the trendy thing to do blah blah blah." To me that's kind
of selfish. Yeah, but you had the music when it first came out there, be glad that you had
it years ago. That's how I feel about it. I get people that are mad at us just for that
and that alone. We don't want to draw any of those legal aspects into punk shows, into the
punk scene at all. We were drawing a lot of people who didn't understand punk shows, so
there would be fights going on. It was all leading to one thing, either quit or go on. So
we're going on. A: We've heard a lot of people say that the fans have been sort of
beligerent towards you guys and yelling out requests in the middle of a song, or stuff
like that.
M: That's cool. They've always done that. That's why we don't have a set list. We play to
the reaction of the crowd to some extent. We don't play everything they yell. We have
somewhat of a format that we play, but we've never had set lists, at least not after our
first tour. The day of our first tour we threw away our set lists and said let's not use
them ever again. So we don't. Decide what songs you're gonna play and have some that you
can work around too, for energy-wise. If the crowd's not real energetic we're gonna try to
make more energy, and if it's too energetic then we've got to give them a break, slow
things down a bit, becuase you don't want anyone getting hurt or anything.
A: So you have a feel for the audience?
M: Yeah, we're gonna play according to the audience reaction.
A: But they never get too out of control? Saying shit to you on the stage...
M: Yeah, they do. Well, some people get pissed off yelling, "Play this, Play
this!" Like a guy at one of our shows was like, "Play Knowledge, play
Knowledge!" This was out in Rhode Island. And I was mouthing to him, "We will,
we will!" But he couldn't hear me and he was all, "Man, fuck you!" Totally
got irate. And I came over and he's all, "Man, I give you respect. Man, fuck
you!" But I talked to him and I said, "Hey. Did you hear what I said? I said we
will, and you said fuck you to me anyway. You know what, fuck you!" And all of his
friends laughed at him. He was like, "I'm sorry." "Yeah, think about what
you're doing first. If I hadn't played Knowledge, would you leave the show hating
us?" It's one of those things, I mean we can't play every song that everybody wants
us to play, but we can try to suffice with the majority of ones that we feel are going to
please everyone.
A: So how's the tour been going?
M: The tour's been going great. Just about every show's been sold out. A lot of good
crowds.
A: Are you tired?
M: Yeah, we're really tired, but we go home for 2 weeks then we go to Europe for 6 weeks.
Then we come back for 2 weeks and then we go out on the road again for 2 months or
somehting like that. So, we're going to remain tired for the rest of our lives.
A: So from here you're going to Seattle and then
M: Vancouver and then we're going home.
A: So have there been any incidences on the tour that stick out, any really cool shows or
cool places that you remember?
M: All of the shows have been really good. Chicago was great. The crowds up there are
always really nice and they've always been good to us. Florida was really huge. Not that
I'm in love with Florida, but there's a lot of really cool people in Florida,
unfortunately they're stuck there. A lot of them feel that way too. It's a crazy place.
Everywhere we've gone there's been great shows. Last night we played in Salt Lake City.
Thought it was really cool that MCA from the Beastie Boys showed up. He like the show. But
that show got kinda out of hand because kids were jumping off this balcony that was as
high as this roof onto the crowd. I don't mind stage diving, just as long as people are
courteous of others. If there's 5 or 10 people standing around and they're not packed
together and a guy just jumps on them and lands all of his weight on one guy's neck,
that's wrong, or a girl's neck for that matter. I would say 60/40 the girls have taken the
bulk of the landings on this tour. It's pretty brutal. Like 5' tall, 20 lb girls in the
front catching these 200 lb dudes jumping out. And this guy who was jumping off the top
was like 180 lbs. He jumped off twice and the second time he jumped off he knocked himself
out. He was out cold. He was literally passed out. Everybody got out of the way, he hit
the ground and they had to drag him outside. It was like, you're an idiot.
A: Do you keep playing when something like that happens?
M: No, we stop. If there's a fight, if something like that happens we stop. Actually we
stopped when they found him. 'Cuz the guy was an idiot. I mean, you shouldn't jump from
that high. And this crowd was spaced out too. It wasn't like completely packed.
A: It's going to be pretty packed tonight.
M: You think so?
A: Yeah, I'm sure it will sell out...for $5. How did you manage to keep the show price so
low?
M: We lost a lot of money. We basically paid for it out of our own pocket. Believe it or
not.
A: Was it worth it?
M: Yeah, it's worth it. But there are times when I get really frustrated 'cuz kids are
yelling at us anyway, thinking we're making a lot of money 'cuz we're on a fucking major
label. MTV doesn't pay you. Unless kids go out there and buy your records, you're not
making anything. We're still not making anything. We've lost thousands of dollars on this
tour. Something like $15,000. Doesn't sound like a lot, whatever, but I guess it is. I
don't really care about the money thing. I just don't like people rubbing it in my face,
saying that I'm a rockstar. A rockstar is two things, a rockstar is an asshole and a rock
star is rich. I'm neither of the two. I'm nowhere near either of the two. It really
bothers me too. Some people will come up to us and ask us the weirdest questions. Just ask
us money questions about this and that. When we're selling our t-shirts for really cheap
and we're not making a dime off of them. To keep our t-shirts this low, our merchandise
guy gets really upset when people bitch about a $10 t-shirt. Any lower than that and we've
got to pay. After this tour, our prices have to go up a little bit, because we can't aford
to keep paying to play. This tour has been physically exhausting, playing 10 days on 1 day
off and that whole day off is driving. Then another 6 days on 1 day off driving. Another
10 days on...this whole tour we've had one day off where we didn't have to drive. So it's
physically exhausting. That's how we did it, and it worked out real good...all of the
shows have sold out. People have gotten our shirts and that's rad. I don't know if we
stepped on our own foot by having people expect $5 shows every time we come around because
we can't do it. It's too expensive. A: But the people who read the program guide will
know.
M: Well...I don't care. Waah for me. So what? We booked our own tour, that's our own
situation. [someone comes in to tell Mike that he is needed for the sound check] Well,
I've got to do a sound check. Any other questions? A: What is a Green Day?
M: Well, Green Day is just a song, but a Green Day is a day with lots of green bud where
you just sit around taking bong hits, hanging around. You guys smoke pot? [answers deleted
to protect the not-so-innocent]
A: How old is Larry Livermore really?
M: I think he's about 150. His brother's Yoda.
A: Are there any bands that are younger in age than you that you really like?
M: Smoking Popes. Potatomen, Lawrence is in that band but the other members are all
younger. Smoking Popes are from Chicago.
A: We posted on the Net asking for questions and somebody posted "How do boogers and
snot affect your life, specifically your leisure time?"
M: Specifically my leisure time? [someone peaks in again to tell Mike that he is
desperately needed on stage] Ok...Mainly they affect my life when I'm on stage, 'cuz they
all come out onto my face. Shake your head enough and it will happen to you too. In my
leisure time, I don't know. Let's just not pick that one [laughing].
A: What about the fascination with dogshit? Dookie and all the dogshit all over the cover?
M: We personally believe that dogs are going to take over the world. And when they do
they're gonna hit everyone with shit.