Green Day: ‘If you want to experience British culture, go to see Millwall play’
Green Day are celebrating 30 years of Dookie and 20 years of American Idiot on a stadium tour this year, and their new album Saviors (out 12 January) straddles those era-defining releases. Covering inequality and the alt right, it’s as political as American Idiot, while references to dating apps and free weed chime with Dookie’s slacker vibe. Saviors also reunites them with longtime producer Rob Cavallo for the first time since 2016. “It was crazy. I texted Rob one day and he replied saying ‘you wanna make rock’n’roll history again together?’” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong explains. “I was like, I was just texting to say hi … but fuck yeah, let’s have some fun!”
You recorded most of Saviors at RAK Studios in London. What’s your favourite thing about the city?
Billie Joe Armstrong, vocals and guitar: I went to a lot of football games: Arsenal, Leyton Orient, Fulham. I went to The Den to see Millwall. That was amazing. Man, if you really want to experience British culture that’s what you should do. Football is like a fucking religion. It’s like being at a big rock concert. You practically need earplugs! I’ve always wanted to check out all the different divisions, not just the world-class teams like Arsenal and Man City. I wanted to go to some of the lower-league games – especially Millwall, which has that gritty, pissed off, underdog, “no one likes us and we don’t care” vibe. It reminds me of being an Oakland Raiders fan.
The album is critical of US society in a similar way to American Idiot. Why did you return to the more political side to Green Day?
BJA: When we released our last album, Father of All Motherfuckers, everybody was a pundit. Everybody had an opinion and everybody hated Trump. It was such an obvious, easy thing to jump on that bandwagon, but at the same time completely ineffective. So just allowing time to pass by and seeing how the world has changed, and how America has changed – especially through social media and conspiracy theories and then Covid hitting – allowed me to collect my thoughts about everything going on in the last five years and how things have become so divisive.
What makes a good political song? Tré Cool, drums: Something that gets people’s hair to stand up on their arms or neck, and causes an emotional reaction.
Mike Dirnt, bass: Being honest about whatever you’re feeling. And pointing out that you’re thinking about something or posing a question, more than telling people what to think.
BJA: I think a lot of my lyrics come from feeling lost. It could be feeling lost like you literally don’t know where you are – the GPS is wrong in your car or something like that – or [being into] conspiracy theories and feeling like you’re trying to find the truth in something but it’s missing. It’s about trying to find the truth, but it has to come from the heart in the same way that a love song does.
It seems like conspiracy theories are something that really stand out to you as a sign of our times. Is that the thing that stresses you out the most?
TC: You have to find the humour in it. Like … the Earth is flat?! But you’ve got to realise that some people are gonna believe this shit, and they’re gonna look on the internet and find something to back it up. And if they find something that proves that they’re wrong, they’re gonna yell conspiracy.
MD: I think people also want to find something to believe in. There’s so much information out there nowadays. It’s chaos. You can find something to back up anything, you know? You have to stop and think things through a little bit.
BJA: I saw a video where the interviewer is asking people whether they think it’s right for everyone to own a gun, and one guy goes: “Yeah man, you can’t fight fire with water.” [laughs] That’s America, right there! Or at least a big chunk of it.
You debuted the first two singles off Saviors at the nostalgic When We Were Young festival. What do you think of the revival of 90s/00s punk and emo music in the last few years?
BJA: Emo was dead – then just five years later we’re having emo club nights. Like, aren’t you supposed to wait another five years for this? My Chemical Romance just broke up! I think streaming and the way things go viral now [is fuelling it]. There’s this band the Walters that broke up four years ago and suddenly they have this song that’s everywhere. Same thing with Deftones – all of a sudden their music is showing up on all these TikTok videos. There’s this new algorithmic way of discovering new stuff. It’s really prevalent in rock music and it shows how people are paying less attention to the radio [and other traditional platforms].
Your album announcement posed four questions: What would Andy Warhol do? What would John Waters do? What would Quentin Tarantino do? And I’ll put the fourth question to you now: what would Green Day do?
BJA: I think a lot of people are curious about what Green Day has to say, and what we’re going to put out, in this era that we live in. Tarantino, for example, takes from so many different places, whether it’s blaxploitation movies or kung fu movies or gangster films. For us? We still love playing punk rock, we still love singalong stadium rock, we still love powerpop and things like that. So we were able to look at our career and take the time to really grab ahold of the truly inspired moments.
• Saviors is released 12 January on Reprise Records. Green Day’s UK tour begins 21 June