Marc Spitz - Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day

MARC SPITZ

NOBODY LIKES YOU

INSIDE THE TURBULENT LIFE, TIME, AND MUSIC OF GREEN DAY

For suburban punks everywhere

CONTENTS

MEET THE NEW PUNKS...

Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey; very few rock n roll bands are able to fill it. The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, U2, Dave Matthews Band, and local heroes Bon Jovi and, of course, Bruce Springsteen have all pulled it off at one point in their careers. Sometimes the football team that plays home games here cant bring in the 78,000 fans it takes to sell out this massive, cavernous building. Inside the big bowl, it seemed like a guitar chord had to travel several hundred yards across the field before the back row could tell it had been strummed. Giants Stadium was not a place for the self-conscious.

It was shortly before 9:00 p.m. on September 1, 2005, and emo-core group Jimmy Eat World had just walked off a stage the size of three small punk club spaces placed end to end. It was almost time for Bunny to do whatever it was Bunny did each night.

Dressed in a black long-sleeve shirt and red tie just as every other crew member, Bill Schneider, the coordinator of this massive production and a burly man with a vaguely Elvis-like hairdo, stalked through the concrete-wall dressing rooms to make sure every member of his team was aware of the time. Some of them nibbled at the cheese, crackers, and fruit that had been placed on the tables. Others gazed at the television screen. The Best in Show DVD flickered away as it had the previous night. This was a backstage area full of small rituals. Comfort and intensity coexisted surprisingly well.

Thirty minutes!

The bass player, Mike, usually coiled and hyper, was ill with the flu and seemed grayish and drawn. He lifted himself off the couch and padded down in his sneakers to the exercise room to suffer through a few miles on the stationary bicycle.

The lead singer, Billie Joe, compact, with a thick head of dyed black hair, fiddled with the arm bands on each of his sleeves. One read RAGE. The other read LOVE. He put on his shoes and walked over to the mirror to apply his kohl black eyeliner in lines thick enough to be picked up on the Diamond Vision screen. Close up, he looked fey. Later, from the back rows, while invoking the spirit of a street tough named St. Jimmy, hell seem possessed.

Fifteen minutes!

The drummer, Tre, strong-chinned and jerky, bounded into the practice space and began emulating three-decade-old Keith Moon drum fills hed clearly memorized.

Ten minutes.

The singer, drummer, bass player, second guitarist, and horn and keyboard players gathered by the dressing room door and ran through harmonies for two of the most vocally complicated numbers in that nights set. The singer played guitar as they warmed up.

Bunny!

The door to the stage opened. A scream, like a Boeing jet engine, was heard as the beloved cheese-disco hit YMCA by the Village People pumped out of the stadiums massive speakers. Then, an intoxicated pink bunny rabbit staggered across the giant stage and clutched its plush and aching head in mock hangover agony while attempting to lead the masses in the songs spelling dance. (Bunny is actually a crew member, and sometimes Bunny really is hungover.)

At 9:25 p.m., Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones was pumped out over the field. It was always the last song to play on the mix CD that traveled with the band from city to city. (Small rituals.) When the Ramoness track faded, the lights went out and another solid, wall-like wave of painful white noise rolled around inside the hollow venue. Also Sprach Zarathustra, composer Richard Strausss piece of crescendo-building classical gas, played on the crowds communal suspense. In the twentieth century, the composition had become a sort of sound track for pomposity (Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey), disco smarm (it was a big hit for Brazilian instrumentalist Deodato), and the bloat of Fat Elviss white jumpsuit years. In the twenty-first, it functioned as an ironic but affectionate nod to such things. The band about to take the stage knew this well. In some ways, the members were as shocked as anyone that they had made it into that elite group with Mick, Keith, Bono, and... Dave. After all, they were supposed to be outsiders by nature and by the code of ethics theyd adhered to and had also been haunted by since their teens: punk rock. In other ways, this was where the secretly ambitous and competitive trio, with their unabashed love for pop music, meant to go. These had always been the two opposing sides of Green Day. In the early nineties, their ambitious and pop-loving side inspired them to leave their cozy but limited independent label; sign with a major one; record an albums worth of radio-ready, three-minute-long, irresistable, and oddly family-friendly music; and show the world what most of their peers in the indie scene already knew: Punk was some catchy stuff. Although they received a beating then at the hands of fundamentalists, Green Day never compromised their sound; they merely favored one side of it. Whenever they tired of being labeled as sellouts, balladeers, or cartoon pinups, theyd favor the other side (as they did with their second major label release, a menacing and frequently ugly bit of punker-than-you music that could stand combat boot to combat boot with any struggling, young, van-touring outfits best). This duality was mirrored in the bands domestic life as well. Sometimes they were larger-than-life public figures: performers, businessmen, and spokesmen. Other times they were boyfriends, husbands, and dads, faced with home improvements and diaper-changing duties (which is about as real as you get).

The practicality they embraced in these moments was anti-star to the core. Interviews with major rock magazines were frequently scheduled in hotel suites simply so their children would get a chance to swim in the pool for a few hours. The members would show up for photo shoots wearing their own T-shirts, Dickies trousers, and sneakers, and any visual artiste or eager stylist who attempted to point them toward a rolling rack of costumes was met with a firm No, a working-class sneer, and sometimes a finger to the chest.

Throughout the late nineties such constant personality swapping hobbled the band professionally and creatively. It destroyed a few families as well: Mike is divorced, and Tre is twice divorced. By the end of the decade, Green Day seemed less agile, like veteran athletes who trained only when necessary. In photos, they appeared apathetic, puffy, and weary.

A little more than two years ago, it would not have been shocking to see Green Day at the midpoint of a summer festival bill, slotted under bands almost half their agesand playing the old hits because they had nothing new that could match them. They could have toured the House of Blues and shed circuit for the rest of their careers, making enough of a living to pay their bills. It wouldnt have been a glorious end for Green Day, who were once so genuinely exciting. As far as the rock n roll cycle goes, it wouldnt have been an uncommon end either. Plenty of bands whove impacted the culture in one way or another now feel as if theyve got nothing left to prove and are happy to collect their pop pensions well into middle age.

Where they arrived in 2004, however, was truly shocking. Their commercial and artistic resurgence was almost unprecedented in the pop world (Elvis Presleys 68 comeback television special, Bob Dylans Grammy-winning