Billie Joe Armstrong was the youngest and wildest of six children. "My Mom graduallly got less strict with each kid", Billie confesses. A musical prodigy, he got his first experience of performing at the of five when he was dragged out to hospices and homes to sing for the patients. His father was a truck driver and sometime a jazz musician, who tragically died of cancer when Billie was only ten. His last and most significant gift to the boy was an electric guitar. The instrument struck no chords with Billie Joe's teachers, who never recognized his gift for music and gave him no real guitar training. "I still can't read music and I only know three chords", he says now, "but that's all you need". Billie Joe's first taste of rock music came not from his school friends, but from a couple of new kids on the block.Every weekend, two brothers named Eric and Matt, would visit their father down the street."They would bring all these new tapes with them, I remember listening to 'Too Fast for Love' by Motley Crue when I was 11 or 12. Then they started getting into Punk Rock. They brought out DOA records, and TSOL and the Dead Kennedy's and stuff like that. Then they started riding Skateboards, and I was like 'Wow, these guy's are cool'". When he was ten he met Mike Dirnt in the cafeteria one day in 1982. They started talking about Heavy Metal and have been Best Friends since that day. Billie Joe and Mike would play along with the records of their favourite Heavy Metal bands like Van Halen and Def Leppard until Mike and Billie Joe decided to only play their own music. Billie Joe and Mike formed a band named Sweet Children when they were in High School and played wherever they could. They changed the name to Green Day and joined Lookout! Records where they made 4 E.P.'s and 1 full album. In 1993 Green Day signd to Reprise Records and released Dookie, which sold over 11 million copies. Right in the middle of Green Day's rise to fame, Billie Joe got married to his wife Adrienne and the day after the wedding, Adrienne found out that she was pregnant and in March 1995, Billie Joe's son, Joey was born.

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