GREEN DAY FACTS
-Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt went to Pinhole Valley High School in Pinhole Valley, California
-Green Day’s original name was ‘Sweet Children’ and included a different drummer by the name of Al Sobrante
-Green Day made their debut at Rod’s Hickory Pit in El Cerrito Thirty friends gathered to hear the first-ever Green Day concert. Billie Joe’s mother, Ollie, got them the gig because she was working there as a waitress at the time.
-924 Gilman Street, a DIY punk Venue in Berkeley became world famous after hosting Green Day, Rancid and other Bay Area legends early in their careers
-The song ’86’ off of Green Day’s sophomore release, Insomniac, was a direct retaliation against people who barred them from returning to Gilman
-In 2001, Green Day snuck back on the Gilman stage and played a secret show after punk band ‘The Influents’ finished their set. None of the staff knew this plan, but deep down I bet they all gave them back their punk cred.
-Green Day was signed to Lookout! Records in 1990 and released two albums, 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk! before hitting it big with 1994’s Dookie
-Mike Dirnt and Billie Joe Armstrong have recently created a coffee company called ‘Oakland Coffee’
-‘Dookie”s first three singles all topped Billboard’s Modern Rock chart: Longview, Basket Case and When I Come Around
-Billie Joe Armstrong was given his first guitar at the age of 10. It was a Fender Stratocaster that he nicknamed “Blue”. Billie received unconventional lessons, never fully learning how to read music, but rather learned finger placement.
-Mike Pritchard, bassist for the band, goes by the last name ‘Dirnt’. He got this name in high school, where he constantly played air-bass-guitar while singing “dirnt, dirnt, dirnt”.
-The song “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is a tribute to Armstrong’s father, who died of cancer in September 1982.
-During a mud fight started by the band at Woodstock 1994, Dirnt was so covered in mud that he was mistaken for a stage-rushing fan. Security roughed him up so bad that he lost some teeth.
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