Gimme Something Better (57 page)

Billie Joe Armstrong:
I met a lot of my best friends on that tour. I met Adrienne, who is my wife. I met Jason White, who now plays second guitar with me.

On that tour, John didn’t speak for about a week and a half. And he put on this weird hat and carried a bongo drum. It was basically once for yes, twice for no. He became Mute Man. He was a weird guy. I loved him. He was so smart. He’s one of the guys that I really looked up to. I learned a lot from him. He may have been dealing with some depression, too. I think he had some inner demons that he may have needed some extra help with.

Larry Livermore:
Somewhere in that tour, John let it be known that he wanted to go away to college, get the full-on college experience. He was gonna go to Humboldt State in Arcata.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
It was such a terrible thing, when I found out John was leaving. It was the beginning of summer and we were in Benicia—me, Aaron and this girl from Arkansas—and she was saying, “God, everybody’s leaving. So-and-so is going to this place. And John is going up north to college.” Aaron kind of looked at me and said, “He didn’t tell you that? Oh. That sucks.” I thought it was the end of my band.

Larry Livermore:
They heard about it from other people. John’s reaction was, “Well, we’re not breaking up the band, we’re just gonna go on hiatus for awhile. We can still play shows, like vacations, stuff like that.” To him, it was more just something you do. There would always be opportunities.

39/Smooth: Early Green Day flyer

Billie told me he was just beside himself. He left school, just a few weeks before graduation. Figured all he was ever gonna do was play music, he didn’t know anything else. And suddenly the band was falling apart. They debated for a long time over whether it was right to replace him.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
John told us about Tré. At the time, we were like, okay, we’ll give it a try. This will be a temporary thing. I talked to Larry about it and he thought we should think about it as a permanent thing. And I was like, “No, John’s our guy.”

Larry Livermore:
Around November they said they were gonna do a show with Tré playing. I went to it, and it just jelled really well. I said, I guess that’s the end of the Lookouts.

It dragged on for a few months. John said, “Oh, it’s alright if Tré replaces me for a couple shows. But I’m still the drummer.” A couple times he showed up at shows at the last minute, when Tré was expecting to play, and said, “No, I’m playing.”

Billie Joe Armstrong:
It was rough at first. John ended up playing one more gig with us in Petaluma. Larry was really pushing for Tré. Mike was really pushing. And I started to realize what a great drummer Tré was. I think Tré had even taught John a couple things.

Larry Livermore:
One in particular was a Bad Religion show, one of the bigger shows they’d played at that time. It was very upsetting for Tré. John showed up at the last minute, and Billie let John play. But then afterwards, he said, “That was so fucked. That’s never gonna happen again. Tré’s our drummer.”

Jason Beebout:
Samiam played a show with Jawbreaker at the Women’s Building in San Francisco. I think John had just quit, and was planning to go to school. We showed up and John was parked right in front of the front door. I hadn’t seen him in probably a year. He was out front and was talking with a megaphone, “Fuck this show, fuck Samiam, fuck these poseur sellouts!”

Sergie Loobkoff:
I was friends with John, but he was a strange guy. He was dead serious: “You guys suck!” What? What are you talking about?

Martin Sprouse:
It caught Samiam off guard. It even took me by surprise. He did what he thought was the important thing to do.

Jason Beebout
: He made T-shirts that said “GREED” and “SAMIAM” and was selling them for ten bucks a pop. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or if he was just enjoying being a nut. He was like, “Fuck you guys, you’re just the wrong thing, you’re ruining the scene right now!”

Martin Sprouse:
Jason was like, “Do you hate us, John? What’s going on here?”

Sergie Loobkoff:
I never had a beef with him or anything. But that was really weird. I’d like to talk to him now, because now he’s like an old man like me, and it would be interesting to see what he was thinking.

Martin Sprouse:
It was a big change that we all noticed. You used to know him as this goofy John. When he left Green Day, he became very strong in his beliefs. He didn’t cash his royalty checks from them. It just wasn’t his thing.

Christopher Appelgren:
They did try to cut him into publishing. He just might have not responded, and ultimately they just said forget it. We’re not gonna give you any publishing, any writing credit for these songs. He really holds true to what being a punk meant to him.

Larry Livermore:
John had made a lot of money off the first Green Day record, too. He was getting paid for one-third of the record. I ran into him a few years ago. Some bad blood occurred between us a long time ago, so I tried to work things out, apologize for whatever I’d done. We had a nice chat. He’s very happy and content with his life.

Christopher Appelgren:
When Lookout! negotiated a new deal with Green Day, I was like, “John, we still have some outstanding monies due to you, and here’s what we did with the other guys in the band, and we can do the same with you.” I haven’t heard back from him.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
Tré and I kept getting closer and closer as friends. But he was really obnoxious. To the point where I didn’t even know if I really thought the guy was that cool. We wanted to be more conscious people. We carried the ethics of Gilman into our lives. Those codes were sort of intact. Tré was not even close. Didn’t care what anybody thought, didn’t care what anybody did. He did anything he wanted all the time. And that was really hard.

Bill Schneider:
Tré had a way of being able to offend anybody. He could walk up to anyone, and within 15 minutes, he’d know how to pull their strings. He drove everyone crazy. That was his game back then.

Carol DMR:
Tré was always a smart-ass, and now he’s a smart-ass with a lot of money.

Bill Schneider:
Once Tré started playing with them, it was like, oh yeah, that’s the rest of the package. John was a good drummer, but Tré would just beat the crap out of the drums. He would be sweating from head to toe.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
A lot of our songs were about girls. It was one thing with someone like Dr. Frank singing love songs. But when it comes from a 17-year-old kid, the songs are just gushing. It drew a lot of girls. It was weird. We got a lot of shit from other bands because we had love songs. But I wanted to sing about truth and where I’m at, my relationships with people. Or lack thereof.

James Washburn:
The girls dancin’ in the front. They’d put their hands down at their sides and kinda flop around, just like if you’re fishin’ and you pull the trout outta the water and it flops around on the ground. My friend Richard called it the Trout Dance.

Fat Mike:
NOFX played with Green Day in Petaluma, and they went on before us, and the whole front was full of girls. We were like, “Cool!” And then we came out and were like, “Where did they go?”

Billie Joe Armstrong:
We would play Santa Rosa or Petaluma, and tons of girls would show up. Then they started showing up at Gilman, it would be 75 percent women. It almost feels funny to say, but we never took liberties or anything like that.

Bill Schneider:
All the cheerleader girls from the suburbs would put on their heavy mascara and their funny clothes and come to Gilman. And you’d be all, “Whoa, this is a whole different place.”

Jason Beebout:
You know every 14-year-old girl was creaming her jeans, every time Billie said the word “love” in one of his songs.

Bucky Sinister:
They would squeal just like they were on the fucking
Ed Sullivan Show
. They were losing their shit.

James Washburn:
I think everyone was jealous. I mean, who doesn’t want chicks? Chicks want chicks. Everybody wants chicks. Chicks are cool. And I was hangin’ out with them, so I thought it was cool as hell.

Billie Joe Armstrong:
There were a lot of really strong women in the scene who could beat up the guys, like Todd and Kamala and Adrienne. So there were as many girls as guys in our immediate crowd who might have thought, “Fuck Green Day! They write stupid, fuckin’ sappy love songs.”

Nick 13:
In sixth grade, we’d go to a party and put on our music, and it would be Black Flag, the Misfits or the Ramones or whatever. People would immediately bum out and want us to take it off, or want us to leave. And when people started putting on Green Day, the girls and jocks that would have bummed out didn’t try to get us to change the music.

Anna Brown:
We used to make fun of Green Day because they were
so
poppy. Which is funny because they kind of became punker as they went on.

Ben Sizemore:
Billie, he sang. He didn’t scream.

James Washburn:
I did a Green Day van trip with Lucky Dog. That motherfucker, he was so impossible to tour with. But I’m sure I was impossible half the time, too. It’s a community effort. Bein’ an asshole sometimes takes more than one person. So we went on this van tour. It was more a trip for Billie to go see Adrienne. Billie’s heart went pitter-patter. So we drove for 36 hours straight to Minnesota. Played only two or three shows, and parties that sprung up while we were there. But these shows were completely sold out.

A few times it was really trippy. I remember this one guy that hunted deer a lot. He had venison salami, and he was like, “Fuck, man, welcome to the Midwest! Bay Area boys are outta their element here!”

On this trip, Lookout! Records was still very small and they had just released
Kerplunk
, their second album. We were at a show that was absolutely shoulder to shoulder packed. I remember Bill stopping in the middle of a song, and the entire audience knew every single word. I was thinking, I’m in the fuckin’ middle of Minnesota! I knew what was coming, what we know today as Green Day. That was ’91.

Jason White:
When they played in Memphis and Little Rock, people showed up in droves. I don’t even know how they knew about ’em.

Bucky Sinister:
Almost every other band just sounded like shit. They wouldn’t practice or they’d show up fucked up. Green Day always sounded good. Like ’em or not, they fucking sounded great. Every time. They worked hard and they looked good. That’s a combination right there.

Matt Wobensmith:
The best show I saw of Green Day was at a punk picnic in Golden Gate Park. This was maybe in ’91 or ’92. There was this tradition of having these punk picnics. So we were in this meadow, a Sunday afternoon and everyone was waiting for the beer to show up. There was like 20 million crusty punks there and a who’s who of East Bay bands: Blatz, Filth, Econochrist, 23 More Minutes, like everyone. And Green Day.

Finally the keg arrived. These two dudes carrying it across the field. And it was the most comical thing, because a whole fucking mess of crusty punks ran after them. With their dogs and everything, like, “Beer! Beer!” They were just pathetic. You could make a sitcom about crusty punks. We’ve talked about it.

The bands played, and Green Day went on, and they were maybe into their second song. And suddenly here came a whole bunch of cop cars, sirens, making their way over to the meadow, and you knew they were gonna unplug us. Green Day didn’t miss a beat. They played harder and they played faster and they played better than ever. The whole crowd was watching the cops. But Green Day had their backs to them, didn’t care, didn’t know, or whatever, playing their heart out. I’ve never enjoyed a band more.

Jeff Ott:
Lucky Dog, who was in Crummy Musicians, East Bay Mud, Fifteen, some other bands, he would roadie for them. I specifically remember a night before he was going to go roadie with them. Probably ’91 or ’92. We were sitting around drinking, and for the first time, I got it. I was like, “This is the last time they’re gonna be in this sort of a thing.” It was sort of odd. Green Day is gonna make a giant record and it’s probably gonna sell a lot.

I have lots of thoughts about Green Day as a band and everything that they’ve done. But I have very different thoughts about Bill and Mike as the people who would split their last Top Ramen with me. So while I politically didn’t like what was happening, some part of me felt just good for them.

Jesse Luscious:
I always thought that Green Day musically was whatever, but live they were just a force to be reckoned with. What a great show.

Jason White:
The night after I moved here, we went to Gilman and saw Econochrist, DOA and Rancid. Billie Joe was playing second guitar with Rancid that night. Todd, my girlfriend at the time, said, “The word around town is that a major wants to sign them.” People were talking about it.