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Hello, sunshine >> Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong feels much better now by MIREILLE SILCOTT
Of course, the minute Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day has his own little-guy issues. And there really is nothing to think twice about in defending Hanson, unless, of course, you are a tattooed-to-prove-it punk rocker yourself. Everyone else will just think you sound nice. Which is the case here. A bloody nice guy. A nice guy, whose Bay Area teenage band grew into Gilman Street's progressive punk scene in Berkeley, California in the late '80s, and sold 10 million chipper, fast-rant albums characteristically called Dookie in 1994. A guy who then declared depression, wrote a record called Insomnia that sold "only" 4.5 million and said the album was "a result of feeling miserable." Armstrong's misery was kind of interesting, just because it was so conventional. Now, he says, on the phone from some U.S. hotel, "oh, I just had the flu, I felt like crap," about a particularly morose Spin interview from 1995. But really, he was bowled over by fame. And it was all hanging out so drastically--all the lonely-at-the-top stuff--that pop-watchers could be nothing if not intrigued. As soon as Dookie hit, the now 24-year-old Armstrong married and had a kid. As soon as touring loomed, he decided it was time to come back to a place that contained stable furniture in it. "Dookie," says Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt, "was like being on a carnival ride that whips you round and round real fast. It was too much." The band say that at points, they tried revisiting old friends at the seminal Gilman Street punk club that bore them. But, of course, they got the "sell-out" tag which, says Billy Joe, "was so inevitable." But Green Day are cut from the same purist cloth, really. Dirnt crabs on for five minutes when I bring up any punk labels from L.A. ("A heartless industry city! Fat Wreck Chords? What a load of shit. I wouldn't listen to that if you..."), and Armstrong says none of the other high-profile bands that came off the Cali scene in the earlier '90s have kept chart clout, "because none of them had our depth, no real punk sensibilities." The Cali-punk explosion which brought bands like Offspring to the fore has now been overtaken by a newfangled ska interest, with teens trading their fat pants for drainpipe trousers. But Green Day, who have just released a return-to-form LP called (characteristically, again) Nimrod, have stuck. And they'll probably stick for a while, because perfect two minute/three chord aggro-pop songs of dweeby self-deprecation and snotty puppy love will always have a place in the sun, no matter which way the winds of change are blowing. With Superdrag at Metropolis Tuesday, Nov. 18, 8pm, $20 plus tax & service
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You've got to wonder about any punk rocker who says, "People should stop picking on Hanson. They should pick on someone their own size."