Green Day
Green Day’s great ‘resurrection’ track, American Idiot brought old fans back on board and pulled in millions of new ones.
One of the great ‘resurrection’ tracks brought old fans back on board and pulled in millions of new ones.
15 AMERICAN IDIOT Green Day From: American Idiot, 2004
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tthe time they recorded American Idiot, Green Day were finished, washed-up, done. The California trio could still fill a room on the fumes from 1994’s Dookie, an album that had chimed with a rock scene that needed cheering up after Kurt Cobain’s suicide and grunge’s death rattle. But creatively and commercially it had been a long decade’s downturn, capped by the ignominy, on 2002’s Pop Disaster Tour, of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool trading headline status with their thunder-stealing successors Blink-182. “For some fans,” wrote biographer Ben Myers, “it was total confirmation that Green Day had lost it and were resorting to touring with their own lightweight doppelgängers.”
But perhaps these thirty-something punks still had something up their sleeves. Measured against the globe-shaking events that washed in on the ripples from George W Bush’s election and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the rebirth of Green Day might have seemed like a footnote. For fans of back-to-basics rock’n’roll, though, American Idiot’s title track was a joyous chink of light, puncturing the West’s febrile mood with a fistful of brittle chords and a clarion call: ‘Don’t want to be an American Idiot/Don’t want a nation under the new mania.’
If a creative rebirth seemed unlikely, then Green Day’s politicisation was unthinkable. To date, the band’s most-quoted line came from slacker anthem, Longview (‘When masturbation’s lost its fun, you’re fucking lonely’). But when they released American Idiot as a single in August 2004, the formerly bleach-haired and goonish Armstrong seemed like a rock star reimagined by Tim Burton and Noam Chomsky, now chronicling the itchy paranoia, mediaorchestrated hysteria and gormless White House administration playing out on rolling news channels. ‘Well maybe I’m the faggot America,’ he raged.‘I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.’
Locking swords with George W and his redstate support was a risky move for any rock band; only a year earlier, the Dixie Chicks had been blacklisted by the country scene for criticising Bush from the stage in London. To his credit, Armstrong was unrepentant. “We live in times of terror, and now is the time to speak out,” the singer reasoned of his new-found ire. “We wanted to face danger, put it on the line and tell people what we think. Rock’n’roll is supposed to be dangerous. That’s where we come from.”
American Idiot’s polemic wouldn’t have counted for much, of course, if the sugarrush hooks hadn’t forced the song on to every radio playlist across the planet. Despite opening a punk-opera concept album that was often musically sprawling – consider the nineminute, five-section Jesus Of Suburbia – the title track couldn’t have been leaner, simpler or more whip-smart. With Armstrong citing his preference for Quadrophenia’s “power-chord, mod-pop aesthetic” over weightier works like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, American Idiot wasn’t much more than a four-chord thrasher; it didn’t even have a riff.
Yet the scalded attack of Armstrong’s playing reminded you just how powerful a well-struck electric guitar could be. And when the band dropped out then exploded back in at the 2:22 mark, the effect was akin to a detonation. Especially when you watched the heavyrotation music video, in which Armstong mimed blowing his head off.
With 16 years of hindsight, there’s a case that Green Day’s American Idiot retooled the concept album for the post-millennium. But as the title track flew to No.3 in the UK in the summer of 2004 – reconnecting with older fans who’d drifted away, and kids who heard something in the singalong venom of these kohl-eyed provocateurs – it achieved something every bit as noble. In a world gone to hell, American Idiot’s three-minute riot was a reminder that rock still had something to say – and adhered to the old punk maxim that anyone in possession of three chords, at least two fingers and a guitar turned full-up could say it. Not so dumb after all.
14 BY THE SWORD Slash featuring Andrew Stockdale
Slash’s first solo album (this was before Myles Kennedy And The Conspirators came on board as a fixed part of the equation) was peppered with big-name cameos: guest vocalists including Ozzy Osborne, Iggy Pop and Lemmy (not to mention relative curve balls like Black-Eyed Peas singer Fergie) made for a tantalising track-list – a legit A-list ensemble if ever there was one.
And yet even in such exulted company it was comparative rising star Andrew Stockdale who stood out. The Wolfmother frontman had spent the previous five years being lauded as one of the next great rock voices (his band were justifiably compared to Led Zeppelin more than anyone else in the early/mid00s wave of guitar music), and on By The Sword he proved to be an immensely effective foil for Slash’s swaggery, thick-set riff. Stockdale’s excitement for the project – which put him in a room full of some of rock’s biggest names – presumably helped. “When I went to LA to record I met Lemmy, Dave Grohl, Alice Cooper and all these icons,” Stockdale said at the time. “Dave Grohl was in the back room with a bottle of Scotch, and when I walked in he’s like: ‘Hey, you gonna come and sit?’ [laughs] I was thinking: ‘There’s no way I’m gonna say no to drinking a bottle of Scotch with Dave Grohl!’” From: Slash, 2010
13 DIAGNOSIS The Wildhearts
“It’s about the mental health institutions and the medical health profession in this country, and about how it’s letting people down,” Ginger told us last year, regarding this centrepiece of The Wildhearts’ comeback album, Renaissance Men. “How the system is broken, and how the suicide rate is not getting any less. There’s still five and a half or six thousand people committing suicide every year.”
The fact that the Wildhearts frontman was able to turn that into an uncompromising, life-affirming rock song tells you everything you need to know about him as a writer. Spitting with pain, rage and, ultimately, hope (the chorus declared ‘You are not your diagnosis, simplified for them to understand’), Diagnosis married the polemic of a protest song to the dirty, snappy propulsion of Powerage-era AC/DC.
Hopefully this won’t be the last we’ve heard from The Wildhearts. But if it is, then what a way to go. From: Renaissance Men, 2019
12 ELECTRIC WORRY Clutch
‘Bang bang bang bang! Nur-nur-nur-nur-nurh! Vamanos vamanos!’
Honestly, there are several Clutch tracks from the past 20 years that could have legitimately made it on to this list (just think of everything on Earth Rocker, Psychic Warfare, Book Of Bad Decisions…), but in the end the vote was clear: it had to be Electric Worry. Part original, part early blues cover (half of each verse is taken from Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Fred’s Worried Life Blues), it’s the Marylanders’ most rabble-rousing, head-nodding, beer-throwing banger to date. Guaranteed to put hair on your chest and deepen your voice by about an octave. From: From Beale Street To Oblivion, 2007
11 I GOTSTA GET PAID ZZ Top
The idea, as ZZ Top’s mainman Billy Gibbons told Classic Rock, was simple: to “bluesify” 25 Lighters, a 90s hip-hop anthem about crack dealers by DJ DMD and rappers Fat Pat and Lil’ Keke, from ZZ’s home city of Houston, Texas. But the Top reinvented the song to such a degree that, as Gibbons explained: “It was classified as a derivative work, not a cover song.”
I Gotsta Get Paid, its title a refrain in 25 Lighters, turned out to be one of ZZ’s most badass songs. As producer Rick Rubin told Gibbons: “It sounds like something from another planet.” PE From: La Futura, 2012
“It’s a mystery what the song’s about. No one knows.”
Josh Homme
10 NO ONE KNOWS
Queens Of The Stone Age From: Songs For The Deaf, 2002
With its monstrously catchy riff and refrain that even those who are not fans of QOTSA recognise, it’s easy to assume – with the benefit of distance and time – that No One Knows was an instant home run. Critics adored it. It charted well (Top 20 in the UK, No.1 in the UK Rock And Metal chart). And if you’ve been at a rock club or heavier indie night any time in the past decade or so, chances are you’ve moshed along to it a lot of times. So it’s strange that bassist Nick Oliveri considered it an unlikely choice for a single.
“When they were talking about doing it as a single, I was like: ‘This is a five-minute song, dude. There’s a jam part in here, a bass part, a drum thing. What do you mean, single?’ y’know?” he says. “They’re going to cut this song up. The last thing I want to do is have anybody edit our song. But we kind of felt we could get behind any of the songs, and whatever single they wanted to choose, the one they wanted to get behind, we just said go ahead.”
Queens’ 2002 album Songs For The Deaf included several potential singles, among them Go With The Flow, Gonna Leave You and First It Giveth. The follow-up to 2000’s Rated R, it was yet another remarkably consistent album from beginning to end. It also featured a star-studded line-up of guests: Dave Grohl played drums, and Mark Lanegan, who sang backing vocals, is credited with Josh Homme as a co-writer of No One Knows.
Of all those tracks, the latter packs in the most eccentricities, from its tempo shifts and unexpected layers to the jabbing, toy soldier-marching guitars and Homme’s swooning alt.crooner delivery.
When asked about any memories he had of the writing and recording sessions for the song, Oliveri replies: “When we were recording it I was thinking: ‘This is badass; we’re playing with Dave Grohl!’ No, I’m kidding [laughs]. That was pretty much a Homme tune from start to finish. I think Lanegan lent a hand in that one as well.”
“Me joining the band was more about playing the drums than joining Queens Of The Stone Age,” said Grohl, who of course played drums with Nirvana before starting and fronting Foo Fighters. “Playing on their album was more about playing drums seriously for the first time in eight years than actually joining the band. So it was a really cool experience in that it recharged that love of crazy rock music, which is why I started doing this in the first place.”
The hard-to-decipher lyrics made fans wonder what the song was about, exactly. Drugs (‘We get these pills to swallow’)? An expedition via desert (‘I journey through the desert’) or ocean (‘I drift along the ocean’) seems somewhat obvious. Or a love song (‘I realise you’re mine’)? But perhaps it’s that element of mystique – its many elements of mystique – that makes it such an enjoyable and addictive rock anthem.
When Homme was interviewed on MTV shortly after the release of Songs For The Deaf, he said that in terms of subject matter he was as much in the dark as the fans: “It’s a mystery what that song’s about. No one knows. It’s kind of almost Beatles-esque with a driving beat, and it’s kind of jumpy.”