Gimme Something Better (56 page)

Slappy: Mike Dirnt at Gilman

Jason Beebout:
It was really obvious from the very first time you saw them play. I remember being totally jealous, like, “Fuck, they’re totally playing guitars, in time.”

Richard the Roadie:
I’d seen Sweet Children play in Davis and all these other places. As flowery as the music was, they were as political as Econochrist and other bands. As far as their show ethics. All ages, really low door price.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
We really didn’t know if we were going to be a band anymore. John Kiffmeyer from Isocracy came up and said, “I heard you guys were looking for a drummer. My band’s breaking up and I really want to be in your band.”

Jason Beebout:
John just decided this one day to join ’em. And that kind of broke up Isocracy. John and I had gone up to Willits to hang out with Larry and Kain and Tré, and got to know them pretty well. We came back and suddenly John had gotten hooked up with Billie and Mike. I remember him telling me, “I got this great new band.” I was like, “Really?” “Yeah we’re gonna be huge. The singer’s a genius.” It was like, okay, whatever. John was always really full of shit about stuff. But then he started playing with them.

Larry Livermore:
Nothing had jelled until John came into the band. He gave a lot more than just the drumming to the band. He also was the organizer and babysitter, ’cause they were very young. I think he was about two years older, maybe three. He was definitely more mature and serious. And he had a car.

Frank Portman:
Their first show was either with us or Sweet Baby. I do remember seeing them and thinking, okay, these guys know how to write good songs, which is this incredible anomaly among most rock bands.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
We could never get a gig at Gilman while Tim Yohannan was running the place. I gave him a demo, and then I called him. “No, I haven’t listened to it yet.” I called him again. “It’s a bit too pop.” I remember saying, “We don’t care, we’ll play with anybody. You can put us anywhere. What about Sweet Baby Jesus? I mean, they have the ‘sweet’ in their name, too!” And he said, “No.” He probably had enough bands from Pinole. I was about 15.

James Washburn:
That was very defined, that they weren’t allowed to play there. But when you listen to their first stuff, it really is just sappy, pop happy, and it doesn’t fit the lines of punk at all.

Larry Livermore:
They’d been a band a couple months. John called me up and said, “I’m in a new band with these two really cool dudes. Know of any shows where we could play? We’re having trouble getting shows.”

I said, “Tré wants us to play at some high school party.” He was at this point going to Willits High School, in Mendocino County. “It’s way up in the mountains, it’s on a dirt road. The weather’s bad, it might snow. I don’t know if anybody’s gonna come. And there’s definitely no money involved.” And John said, “We’ll be there.”

Billie Joe Armstrong:
On a mountaintop in Garberville, with the Lookouts. It took us forever to get there, and when we pulled up, Tré said we had to go way up in the woods to this house where this girl was throwing a party. There was no roof, no electricity.

Larry Livermore:
Five kids showed up. Not even the kid whose house it was. It was like his parents’ cabin up in the hills. We actually had to break into the place and find a generator. Most of the places up there are pretty easy to break into, because there’s not a lot of crime. You don’t want to make it so somebody has to chainsaw the side of the house open to get in. The generator was only enough for the band, so we had candlelight. Sweet Children played for five high school kids who’d never been to a punk show before.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
These kids from Willits and Garberville holding candles and sitting on the floor. We had played maybe four songs, and some guy came up and asked us to move our van so he could get out. John said, “You are gonna sit down and you are gonna listen to every song that we play, because I am not going to move the van.” So we played. Larry just loved it. He thought it was great.

Larry Livermore:
Billie was very gentlemanly. Had this kind of arrogance and aloofness at the same time. “Thanks for coming, I really appreciate you being here.” It was like, “Yes, I know I’m a star.” I’ve always said, although it was these five kids by candlelight, it was like the Beatles playing at Shea Stadium.

Afterwards, he came to me and he said, “What did you think of our band?” Very shy, and 16-year-old like. I said, “I wanna put out your record.” I had no doubt. They were like the Beatles to me. They had the potential to be that big.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
We just loved those first 7-inches by Crimpshrine, Operation Ivy, Isocracy and Corrupted Morals. And now Lookout! wanted to do a record with us. So we had to meet David Hayes, too. The day we were supposed to meet, we went over to the Ashtray. I had never been there before and it had these really flimsy stairs. My feet flew out from under me and I went
boom, boom, boom
all the way down the stairs on my tailbone.

So I was in total agony when we met up with Larry and David Hayes. I couldn’t sit on my butt. We were talking about doing some 7-inch, and John was arguing with Larry. John had a little napkin, and he had pieces of his eyebrows sitting in this napkin. It was just this nervous habit. Larry said, “Are you picking your eyebrows and putting them in a napkin?” And John said, “Yes, I am.” And Larry said, “That’s fucking disgusting.”

David and Larry were at each other’s throats, too. Mike and I were really young and we couldn’t figure out what everybody was arguing about. When Larry went to the bathroom, David said, “Forget everything he just said.” We were like, “Oh my gosh.”

Larry Livermore:
We put out a 7-inch the next spring, in ’89. They changed their name to Green Day, basically a few weeks before the 7-inch came out. We had a big argument, had to change the covers and everything.

James Washburn:
Actually, I think John came up with the name Green Day.

Ralph Spight:
We played this show with them, Halloween 1989 in Santa Rosa. Victim’s Family and Green Day. It was a benefit. And people wouldn’t give Green Day ten bucks for gas to get home in their fucking VW van. This alleged benefit, and people fucking left them stranded with their van.

Nick 13:
I remember seeing Green Day in 1989. Billie Joe still had long hair, and their only release was their first 7-inch. They were opening at the River Theater in Guerneville. MDC was headlining. That was a really cool show. It was the original lineup of MDC from 1980. That was definitely more of an old-school punk crowd.

Noah Landis:
Green Day opened up for Christ on Parade at Klub Kommotion, which was in the Mission on 16th Street, a great funky place with a bunch of old sofas. They played with such exciting energy. So tight and with so many hooks. All these riffs that just go
bam!
and get you. People were just jumpin’ up and down. They were all about having a good time. You can’t knock that. We all wanna have some fun.

Adam Pfahler:
Jawbreaker moved here and we were like 24 years old. Green Day were probably just getting out of high school or something. Their first record had tons of hooks all over it. And I was like, “Wow, this is just like a pop record.” We were still listening to the Pixies and Nirvana and Government Issue.

Martin Sprouse:
They were geeky kids. I remember seeing Green Day, and someone came up to me, and I said, “What’s up with this band?” And he said, “We call ’em cotton-candy punk.” ’Cause he had seen ’em a lot and it was like, oh, they really write catchy-ass songs. They played one New Year’s Eve at Gilman and they tore it up. Everyone had fun. Tim Yo was dancing around. This was way before they were even remotely popular.

Bill Schneider:
Billie did windmills on his guitar, and Mike always sang harmony.

Gavin MacArthur:
The first time I saw them it was in a backyard in Pinole. I asked Dave Mello, “Who’s this band?” Dave says, “It’s Green Day. You’ve never heard them? They kind of make you bob your head like this”—he bobs his head—“for about five minutes, and then, you know, that’s about it.” And that was exactly what it was. They came on and they started playing, and I went, “Wow, this is great!” And then I got bored. But for five or ten minutes, it sounded really fantastic!

James Washburn:
Green Day played my 16th birthday party. About four songs into it, Billie’s mom called. He didn’t do his chores. So he had to get a ride back to his house so he could feed the dogs. ’Cause his mom would whup his ass. She was a redheaded firecracker. Billie’s dad passed away when he was ten, so mom, as a waitress—she had to deal with all these kids. Billie’s the last of six, so she had her ass-whuppin’ tactics down. He had to get a ride home, feed the dogs, come back, and then they finished their set.

John Geek:
My friend Talia used to date Mike when she was in junior high, and he was a sophomore or junior. She gave me a demo, with the stuff that was on
39/Smooth
. I was about to go into ninth grade, and remember listening to it on a trip with my parents. They just thought it sounded like the Beach Boys. They were like, “Oh, this is really nice.”

Fraggle:
In late ’89, early ’90, people weren’t going to shows anymore in the East Bay. Gilman had peaked in ’88. The bands didn’t draw people in. Ten or twenty people would show up. And you can’t pay rent on that. Once Green Day hit, late 1990, things started picking up again. More and more stuff started happening. A new generation of kids showed up.

Christopher Appelgren:
One of the biggest shows I remember, in 1990, was the record release show for Green Day’s first album, and Neurosis’s album
The Word As Law
. And also the first 7-inch Lookout! put out by the Mr. T Experience—and Samiam, their first 7-inch. So it was this big release show for basically all of our records.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
We were putting out an album, so we were expected to play last. We were like, “This is bullshit.” Mr. T Experience was a bigger band—they were playing Berkeley Square and in San Francisco clubs.

Christopher Appelgren:
Billie Joe was really nervous. Larry had to talk him into agreeing to play after the Mr. T Experience. The show was amazing, all these bands. They sounded beautiful and incredible and giant.

Larry Livermore:
If it hadn’t been for John, they probably never would have come to Gilman. He got them their first shows there.

James Washburn:
John Kiffmeyer was very important to Green Day. Too bad he wasn’t a better drummer, but he was an excellent
person
to come in. Because he completely embraced Mike and Bill as Green Day.

Bill Schneider:
John was the leader of the band. They were little kids and John was like the puppet master. It was like, “They’re mine, my precious.”

James Washburn:
He had already been completely versed in being a punker, where Mike and Billie weren’t. They weren’t in other bands, they didn’t really consider themselves a punk band. They didn’t really have the skill of booking shows. John was very connected because of Isocracy, and so he knew people and places.

Oran Canfield:
I met Tré when I was 13. I ended up living with an ex-Sufi clown who started Camp Winnarainbow with Wavy Gravy. I went to Winnarainbow every year for a number of years. It was a theater and circus camp. Awesome but totally insane. Members of the Grateful Dead were counselors, all their kids went there. Country Joe’s kid went there. There was sweat lodges. We sang the national anthem but we had to do it standing on our heads. Really bizarre stuff.

I was a junior counselor there and so was Tré. I was kind of the camp’s poster child. I joined the circus, and won the international juggling competition. But I was really shy and timid. I didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with the other kids. The counselors, on the other hand, would get me high.

When I met Tré, I could kind of relate to him. The camp was in Laytonville and he was from Willits. Lawrence Livermore took him under his wing, and that’s how he got into the punk stuff. I was very impressed ’cause he could play the drum solo to “Burning Down the House” at 13.

Noah Landis:
I remember seeing Tré Cool play with the Lookouts. He was the worst drummer I’d ever seen. We played with them at the Bandshell in San Francisco at a Food Not Bombs rally and he was really young and really small. I was like, that kid is horrible! Man, he sure turned that around. He can play the shit out of those drums now.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
The first time I ever saw the Lookouts, Tré was onstage wearing an old woman’s shower cap.

Larry Livermore:
The Lookouts got back together and did some recording. I asked Billie to come in and do some lead guitars and sing some backup vocals. That would have been the first time that Billie and Tré actually played together. And then in 1990, Green Day went on their first national tour.