13 things you need to know about Green Day
A band we all know and love is Green Day. Over the years they’ve provided fans with endless entertainment, and use their music as an outlet to push boundaries in the music industry. With everything we hear about Green Day, do we really know EVERYTHING about them?
When thinking of Green Day most people think they started in the 90s, considering that’s when they blew up. What a lot of people don’t know is that they actually started in 1986 under a different name.
The original name of the band was Sweet Children.
After the huge success of their seventh album American Idiot, the band turned it into a broadway hit which ran from 2009-2011 in the St. James Theater in New York City.
In 1982, lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong lost his father to cancer. He then went on to write the song “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, which appears as the 7th song on American Idiot.
The band refers to their fans as the Idiot Nation.
Over the years the band had received 5 Grammys including: Best Alternative Album for Dookie, Best Rock Album for American Idiot, Record of the Year for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, Best Rock Album for 21st Century Breakdown and Best Musical Show Album for American Idiot.
Tre Cool was not the original drummer of the band. Raj Punjabi was the first drummer to then be replaced by John Kiffmeyer, and finally to replaced by the drummer we all know and love, Tre Cool.
Green Day started with a bang seeing as their first 3 singles, off their debut album Dookie, topped the charts.
In 2015, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The bands came up with the name Green Day due to their interests with marijuana.
After about a year of sobriety, in 2012, Billie Joe Armstrong was seeking treatment for a substance abuse issue. It was later found out he was dealing with abuse issues of alcohol and prescription pills. Armstrong had previously been struggling with substance abuse since 1997.
The band released a statement in December of 2012 that they would stop touring to give Armstrong time to better himself. They returned back to touring in mid-2013.
Bassist Mike Dirnt’s real name is Michael Ryan Pritchard. The name Dirnt was a nickname he had been given in school because of the noise he would make while playing the air bass