Green Day

Rodeo to Gilman Street

Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt were both 15 when they started a band in 1987 in Rodeo, California, with bassist Sean Hughes and drummer Raj Punjabi. Their first show was on 17 October 1987 at Rod's Hickory Pit in Vallejo. They called themselves Sweet Children. Punjabi was replaced by John Kiffmeyer, Hughes left, and Dirnt switched from guitar to bass. Larry Livermore of Lookout! Records saw an early gig and signed them. The name changed to Green Day in 1989, shortly before the EP 1,000 Hours, after Bay Area slang for a day spent doing nothing but smoking marijuana. In 2001 Armstrong called it the worst band name in the world.

Lookout! released their first album, 39/Smooth, in 1990. Late that year Kiffmeyer left for Humboldt State University, and Tre Cool of the Lookouts filled in and stayed. Kerplunk (1991) was the first album with Cool. It was recorded in four days across two sessions on a budget of $2,000, sold 10,000 copies on its first day in the UK, and became one of the label's biggest sellers.

Dookie

Kerplunk and 39/Smooth brought offers from several major labels. Armstrong thought they were looking for grunge imitators. The band signed instead with Reprise in April 1993 after meeting Rob Cavallo, who had impressed them with his work for the Muffs. They played him Beatles covers for 40 minutes, and the five-album deal made him producer of the first record and let them keep the rights to their Lookout! albums. On 3 September 1993 they played their last show at 924 Gilman Street, the Berkeley club where they began, and were banned for signing to a major.

Dookie was recorded in three weeks and released on 1 February 1994. Its video for Longview was on MTV from 22 February, and Basket Case and When I Come Around followed. The album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 and won the 1995 Grammy for Best Alternative Album. Their Woodstock '94 set became a mud fight in which a security guard mistook Dirnt for a fan and broke two of his teeth. In 2024 the album was selected for the National Recording Registry, and it is certified 20 times platinum in the United States. Pitchfork's Marc Hogan wrote in 2017 that it has become one of the greatest teenage wasteland albums of any generation.

Insomniac, Nimrod and Warning

Insomniac (10 October 1995) was a darker, heavier answer to Dookie's success, and the band cancelled a European tour afterwards, citing exhaustion. Nimrod (October 1997) went the other way. Armstrong called it the record he had wanted to make since the band started, and it reached for folk, hardcore, surf rock and ska. Its acoustic ballad Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) became the band's most commercially successful single and a graduation staple. Warning (2000) was certified only gold.

American Idiot and after

In 2002 the band recorded an album called Cigarettes and Valentines, until the master tapes were stolen in November. Cavallo asked whether the lost songs were their best work, and they decided to start again. The result, American Idiot (21 September 2004), was a punk rock opera about Jesus of Suburbia, and it became their first number one album in the United States. It won the 2005 Grammy for Best Rock Album, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams won Record of the Year the next year. The title song, American Idiot, became a protest song whose lyrics Armstrong has changed on stage since 2016.

21st Century Breakdown (2009), made with producer Butch Vig, was another three-act rock opera and went to number one in the United States and the UK. A Broadway musical of American Idiot opened in April 2010 and won two Tony Awards. Green Day were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, their first year of eligibility, by Fall Out Boy. Saviors followed in January 2024, and on 8 February 2026 they played at the opening ceremony of Super Bowl LX. They have sold roughly 75 million records worldwide.

Green Day yanked punk rock out from the underground and into the mainstream.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame