Green Day accepting the GRAMMY for Best Rock Album at the 52nd GRAMMY Aw...

Green Day MTV VMA 2005

Stories Behind The Songs

Why Green Day Hates the iPad

Transformers Tribute Part II - "21 Guns" - Green Day(Cast Version)

Green Day-21 Guns Official Music Video(The Making of)

Tre Cool

Frank Edwin Wright III (born on December 9, 1972), better known as Tré Cool, is an American drummer, best known as the drummer for Green Day. He replaced the group's former drummer John Kiffmeyer in 1990. Cool has also played in The Lookouts Samiam and the Green Day side-projects The Network and the Foxboro Hot Tubs.

Cool has a daughter named Ramona Isabel Wright (born January 12, 1995), with his ex-wife Lisea Lyons, named after his idol, Joey Ramone. He also has a son, named Frankito (which means "Little Frank"), born in 2001 to then wife Claudia. He currently lives with his ex-wife, Claudia in California for their son, Frankito. However his daughter Ramona lives in New York. Tre and Claudia divorced in 2003. In March 2011, he got engaged to his girlfriend Dena.

Cool sang and played guitar on the tracks "Dominated Love Slave" and "All by Myself", from Kerplunk and Dookie, respectively, both of which he wrote and composed (on "Dominated Love Slave", guitarist and vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong played drums). He wrote and sang the subtrack "Rock and Roll Girlfriend" from the medley "Homecoming" featured on the album American Idiot. He also sang and composed the track "DUI" ("Driving Under the Influence"), which was recorded for Green Day's fifth studio album Nimrod (1997) and was due to be released on the compilation album Shenanigans in 2002, but was omitted and can only be found online.

During a radio interview at Washington DC's alternative station DC 101, Cool sang and played acoustic guitar on a short song entitled "Like a Rat Does Cheese," a song about the pleasure of fellatio.

Several live tracks also exist, usually from around 1993, such as "Food Around the Corner", a song from the 1943 Elmer Fudd cartoon An Itch in Time. Another live track, "Billie Joe's Mom" was also recorded.

Cool had also recorded a version of Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain." It was posted on YouTube on August 1, 2007. His cover was mentioned in several news journals.

Green Day - Jesus Of Suburbia (LIVE IN JAPAN HD)

Green Day - American Eulogy (LIVE IN JAPAN HD)

Mike "Dirnt"

Billie Joe : "Mike Dirnt, a man i've been standing to for the last sixteen years. A man who looks really good naked and the best fucking bass player in the history of punk rock music."

Bille credits Mike at "Bullet In a Bible Live" Concert.

Michael Ryan Pritchard (born May 4, 1972) is an American musician, best known as the bassist, backing vocalist and co-founder of the American rockband Green Day. While at school, he would play "air-bass." While pretending to pluck the strings, he made the noise, "dirnt, dirnt, dirnt". As a result, his schoolmates began to call him "Mike Dirnt".

Dirnt was born and raised in California. Mike's mother was a heroin addict. He was given up for adoption when he was a baby to a Native American mother. He has one sister, Myla. When he was seven, his adoptive parents got a divorce. Mike lived with his father for a while, but confrontations sent him back to his mother. He lived there on the borderline of poverty, his sister left home at the age of thirteen. "There were all sorts of things happening," says Mike. "When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my mom stayed out all night, came home the next day with a guy, and he moved in. I'd never met the guy before, and all of a sudden he's my stepdad. We didn't get along for years. Later on, when I hit high school, my mom moved away from us, and me and my stepdad got real close. He instilled a lot in me. The one thing my family did give me is blue-collar morals. But then he died when I was 17."

Dirnt had left home when he was 17 to live out of his truck, but later rented a room in Billie Joe Armstrong's house. He attended Salesian High School(where he briefly played with the band Helder and the Heldernauts), John Swett High School, and ended up graduating from Pinole Valley High School in 1990; Green Day went on its first tour the day after graduation.

However, Dirnt almost didn't graduate. He had missed school because of work, and his mother wasn't around to sign absentee forms. Two unexcused absences caused him to lose a full grade point; and at the end of senior year, he had poor results instead of the grades he'd worked to achieve. "I took my mom aside", Mike says. "I said, 'This is how it is. You have so much shit going on in your life, so if once every semester you ask me if I've done my homework and jump all over my case, that's not right. Have I failed yet? No. And I'm going to graduate if you stay off my back. The one time in your life you chose to have morals, and it's going to fuck me up."

Dirnt met Billie Joe 1982 at age 10 in the Rodeo Elementary School cafeteria, a few months before Armstrong's father died of cancer. He and Armstrong first founded Sweet Children in 1987 at age 15, and they then started their current band Green Day with former Isocracy drummer John Kiffmeyer(a.k.a. Al Sobrante) and then switched to their present drummer, Tre' cool. Some years before, Dirnt moved in with Armstrong because his mother and sister moved away from Rodeo. Dirnt did not want to move away from his new-found best friend and love for music.

Green Day's Woodstock '94 gig was one for the history books: a huge mud fight ensued between the band and the audience. So many mud-covered fans got up on stage by the end of the set that one of the security guards mistook Dirnt for a marauding fan, tackled him, and broke several of his teeth while attempting to haul him off the stage.

He used to play a Gibson G3 bass, but during Nimrod., Tre Cool accidentally broke it on stage trying to show fan Brendan Taylor how to spin a bass around his back. Armstrong then sent Dirnt's bass tech out to get him a new bass. It resulted in a '69 Fender Precision Bass. He later asked Fender to make him a custom P-Bass, and the result is modeled after the '51 P-Bass with a '59 Custom Shop "Hot Rod" Split-Coil Pickup, a BadAss II bridge and a thinner neck. It was released in early 2004.

All about Billie Joe Part 2

Billie Joe is also a guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock band Pinhead Gun Powder and provides lead vocals for Green Day's side project Foxboro Hot Tubes.

Apart from working with Green Day and side-band Pinhead Gun Powder, Armstrong has collaborated with many artists over the years. He has co-written for The Go-Go's ("Unforgiven") and former Avengers singer Penelope Houston ("The Angel and The Jerk" and "New Day"), co-written a song with Rancid ("Radio"), and sung backing vocals with Melissa Auf der Maur on Ryan Adams' "Do Miss America" (where they acted as the backing band for Iggy Pop on his Skull Ring album ("Private Hell" and "Supermarket"). Armstrong has produced an album for The Riverdales. He has also been confirmed to be part of a side project called The Network, which released an album called Money Money 2020. Money Money 2020 was released on Adeline Records, a record label co-owned by Armstrong. Armstrong also provided lead guitar and backing vocals on 3 songs for The Lookouts' final extended play IV (1989).

Armstrong's first guitar was a Cherry Red Hohner acoustic, which his father bought for him. He then received his first electric guitar, a Fernandes Stratocaste rthat he named "Blue" when he was eleven. His mother got "Blue" from George Cole who taught Armstrong electric guitar for 10 years. Armstrong says in a 1995 MTV interview, "Basically, it wasn't like guitar lessons because I never really learned how to read music. So he just taught me how to put my hands on the thing." Cole bought the guitar new from David Margen of the band Santana. Cole gave Armstrong a Bill Lawrence Humbucking pickup and told him to install the pickup in the bridge position. After the pickup was destroyed at Woodstock '94, Armstrong then used a Duncan JB model. "Armstrong fetishized his teacher's guitar, partly because the blue instrument had a sound quality and Van Halen–worthy fluidity he couldn't get from his little red Hohner. He prized it mostly, however, because of his relationship with Cole, another father figure after the death of Andy". He toured with this guitar from the band's early days and still uses it to this day."Blue" also appears in a number of its music videos such as "Longview", "Basket Case", "Brain Stew/Jaded", "Hitchin' a Ride", and most recently in "Minority".

Today, Armstrong mainly uses Gibson and Fender guitars. Twenty of his Gibson guitars are Les Paul Junior models from the mid- to late-1950s. His Fender collection includes: Stratocaster, Jazzmaster, Telecaster, a Gretsch hollowbody and his copies of "Blue". He states that his favorite guitar is a 1956 Gibson Les Paul Junior he calls "Floyd". He bought this guitar in 2000 just before recording their album Warning.

Armstrong also has his own line of Les Paul Junior guitars from Gibson, modeled closely after "Floyd", Armstrong's original 1956 Les Paul Junior.

He plays several other instruments as well. He recorded harmonica and mandolin parts in the past, piano parts on 21st Century Breakdown, and plays drums live from time to time.

All about Billie Joe

Billie Joe Armstrong was born in Oakland, California on February 17th, 1972. He was the youngest of six children in a family of wide musical talent. His mother worked as a waitress in a local diner, Rod's Hickory Pitt, and his father worked as a jazz musician and Safeway truck driver.

Billie Joe always shone above his siblings with his clear musical ability. From a young age, he was cheering people up at local hospitals with his beautiful singing. He attended singing lessons and was always destined for greatness. The first clear sign of this was when at the age of only five, he recorded his very first song at a recording studio in Berkeley. The song was called "Look For Love" and found him an interview with a local radio station, a clip of which can be found as the introduction of one of Green Day's songs: "Maria."

At the age of 11, Billie Joe's mother, Ollie, gave him his very first electric guitar, which he named Blue because of its pale blue color. Billie Joe treasured this guitar, a Fender Stratocaster; although little did he know, it was the beginning of a lifetime career in music. He continues to use the guitar today, and has had many replicas made.

Billie Joe formed a very strong relationship with his father, who died of cancer of the esophagus in 1982. His mother soon found herself a new husband whom none of the six children liked and caused Billie Joe to write his first song "Why Do You Want Him" which appears on Green Day's debut album, "1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours". He released a lot of his anger out on his guitar playing the hardcore punk rock songs he still sings today; unfortunately, he also released a lot of his anger with physical violence, both at school and at home, with his stepfather.

The creation of American Idiot (what really led to its creation ?)

Cigarettes and Valentines was an unreleased studio album from punk rock band Green Day that would have been the proper follow-up to 2000's Warning.In the summer of 2003, the album was nearly finished when the master recordings of 20 tracks were stolen from the studio. Instead of re-recording the album, the band decided to start from scratch, leading to the creation of American Idiot.

Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong said the album's material was "good stuff." Musically, the material on Cigarettes and Valentines was hard, "quick-tempoed punk" songs in the vein of Green Day's Kerplunk and Insomniac. This sound would have contrasted the group's previous two studio albums,Nimrod and Warning, which displayed more rock/ska and folk punk genres respectively. Bassist Mike Dirnt described the band's decision of returning to the sound found on their older albums, stating, "We've had a nice break from making hard and fast music and it's made us want to do it again." However, Green Day would later call the theft a "blessing in disguise," believing the album wasn't "maximum Green Day". Dirnt admitted that backups of the tapes were made but claims that "it just wasn't the same as the originals." Cigarettes and Valentines was never even roughly mixed, according to various interviews with the band, hence no "legitimate" versions of songs, track lists, artwork, etc. exist.

Green Day - Welcome To Paradise [Live]

It's been green-lit, killed, resurrected and put on the back burner, but now it appears that the long-in-the-works film version of Green Day's American Idiot album might finally become a reality.

On Wednesday (April 13), Reuters reported that Universal is in negotiations to pick up the screen rights to the Broadway version of "Idiot," and has hired Michael Mayer — who directs the stage production — to shoot the movie version.

Reuters also reported that Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning writer of 2008's "Milk," is "in discussions" to write the screenplay, and that Tom Hanks will serve as producer on the film, along with Green Day themselves. (Hanks and his business partner Gary Goetzman were producers on the film version of the Broadway smash "Mamma Mia!" the musical based on the songs of ABBA.)

All of that means that, after a voyage that started way back in 2004 — when Billie Joe Armstrong told MTV News that the bandmembers were "talking" to screenwriters about adapting the album for the big screen —American Idiot could finally find its way to your local multiplex.

In 2006, Armstrong promised fans that the film version of Green Day's hit album would "definitely ... happen," but the band instead turned their attention to creating their next album (2009's 21st Century Breakdown) and a stage version of Idiot, which premiered at Berkeley, California's Berkeley Repertory Theater in '09 before heading to Broadway. Still, they remained adamant that a film would be coming, with Armstrong telling The Associated Press that it would echo the feel of cult classic "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Hanks' reported attachment to the project is also interesting, considering that last year, Green Day dismissed his involvement as "just talk."

A spokesperson for Green Day could not be reached for comment by press time.

Meanwhile, the "American Idiot" musical will officially end its Broadway run on April 24, with Armstrong reprising his role of St. Jimmy.

History of 21st century breakdown album.

21st Century Breakdown is the eighth studio album by the American punk rock band Green Day. It is the band's second rock opera, following

American Idiot, and their first album to be produced by Butch Vig. Green Day commenced work on the record in January 2006. Forty-five songs were written by singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong by October 2007, but the band members did not enter studio work with Vig until January 2008. The writing and recording process spanned three years and four California recording studios and was finished in April 2009.

21st Century Breakdown was released May 15, 2009 through Reprise Record. Armstrong has described the album as a "snapshot of the era in which we live as we question and try to make sense of the selfish manipulation going on around us, whether it be the government, religion, media or frankly any form of authority". The singles, "Know Your Enemy" and "21 Guns" exemplify the themes of alienation and politically-motivated anger present in the record.

he album is divided into three acts: "Heroes and Cons", "Charlatans and Saints", and "Horseshoes and Handgrenades" and is set in Detroit, Michigan. Its loose narrative follows a young couple named Christian and Gloria through the challenges present in the U.S. following the presidency of George W. Bush. Bassist Mike Dirnt has compared the relationships between the songs to those in Bruce Springsteen's Born to rule, saying that the themes are not as tightly interwoven as in a concept album, but that they are still connected. Many of the record's themes and lyrics are drawn from Armstrong's personal life and he sings in the first person narrative style style about abandonment and vengeance in "Before the Lobotomy", "Christian's Inferno", and "Peacemaker". Rolling Stone noted that the album is "the most personal, emotionally convulsive record Armstrong has ever written".

The title track's opening lyric "Born into Nixon, I was raised in hell" references Armstrong's birth year of 1972, while "We are the class of '13" references the fact that his eldest son, Joseph, will graduate from high school in 2013. Dirnt has expressed his belief that "Last of the American Girls" was written about Armstrong's wife Adrienne, who he claimed is steadfast in her beliefs and assertively defends them. Armstrong has cited his "disconnected" childhood—he was raised by his five older siblings after their father's death, while their mother worked graveyard shifts as a waitress—as the roots of the discontent expressed on 21st Century Breakdown. "East Jesus Nowhere" rebukes fundamental religion and was written after Armstrong attended a church service where a friend's baby was baptized.

Green Day live 1990 NEVER BEFORE SEEN RARE SHOW!

New Look Of The PuNkS