Longview

Longview is the fourth track on Dookie. It was serviced to US radio on 1 February 1994 and physically released on 23 May 1994, and it was the band's first single to top Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart. Dirnt has said he wrote the bass line one night while high on LSD. Armstrong said in 2002 that the bored character in the lyric was based on himself in Rodeo, where there was nothing to do. He later felt guilty about the line saying his mother tells him to get a job, because she liked hers.

The title comes from Longview, Washington, where the band first played the song in spring 1992. Mark Kohr directed the video, which shows Armstrong on a couch watching television in the basement of a house in Oakland where the band lived, ending with him tearing up the couch as feathers fly. It received heavy airplay on MTV and was nominated for three MTV Video Music Awards in 1994. Rolling Stone ranked the single number three on its best singles of 1994. Pitchfork's Marc Hogan called it Dookie's outstanding first single.

Live

At the free Boston show on 9 September 1994, Armstrong jumped into the crowd during Longview, the seventh song in the set. Security cut the power, and a riot followed.