Punk rock is part of his DNA, he eats, drinks, and breathes punk rock with all his organs...
So we brought some "punk" facts about Billie Joe Armstrong !!
(Photo: Jonathan Weiner)
1. When he was only five years old he recorded his first song called "Look For Love" with the help of a teacher at the school where he studied.
2. At the age of 10 his mother Ollie Jackson bought him his first guitar, a replica of Fernandes Stratocaster named Blue and Bille goes on stage with it at all "Green Day" shows.
(Photo: Tim Mosenfelder)
3. Bille and bassist Mike Dirnt are childhood friends since fifth grade.
4. Bille's first appearance was with "Green Day's" first incarnation, "Sweet Children" and it was thanks to Bille's mother who worked as a waitress at Rod's Hickory Pit Bar where the band performed in front of 30 people on October 17, 1987.
5. Bille experiences a moment of enlightenment about the music he wants to make while watching a confrontation show between two bands on MTV. One was the pop-punk band "The Primitives" with their hit "Crash" and the other he does not remember at all. He just remembers being furious that "The Primitives" lost and came in second. So he decided he was not going to do anything but Punk Music!
(Photo: Chapman Baehler)
6. Billie wrote the song "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" in 1993, after his girlfriend, Amanda left him and moved to Ecuador. It was meant for the album "Dookie" but did not make it in because it did not fit the music style of the album. The band released it three years later on their fifth album "Nimrod" and the song became a dizzying success.
7. "Green Day" did not do any promotional work for the "Dookie" album, other than just one interview it agreed to hold with the mainstream Spin magazine. After the magazine came out with the article on the album, Bille took the magazine and burned it in front of the fans at the band's performance in Chicago.
8. Bille voiced the character of "Face" in the animated series "King Of The Hill" who was a member of a local band while his other two bandmates dubbed the other two band members in the series.
9. On his 30th birthday, Bille received as a gift from one of his friends a toilet on which were pasted the logos of the most hated bands by Billie like: Creed, P.O.D., and Nickelback.
10. Following the band's seventh album "American Idiot" released in 2004, a Broadway musical was created that was even more successful than the album when it won two prestigious Tony Awards. Bille also participated several times as a lead actor in the play in 2010 and 2011
11. Bille has been suffering from alcohol addiction since about 1997 when in 2012 he experienced a bizarre breakdown on stage during a "Green Day" show. After the incident, he decided he needed help and went into rehab. The band canceled their entire tour that year and in early 2013.
12. In high school Bille got the nickname "Two Dollar Bill" because he sold marijuana cigarettes for $2, hence the name of the band "Green Day" which meant a day when you do nothing but smoke marijuana.
13. The song "Wake Me Up When September Ends" from the album "American Idiot" was written in memory of Bille's father who died of cancer in September 1982 when Bille was 10 years old.
14. In one of the interviews Bille was asked why he left school at such an early age so he replied:
"School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, so why practice?"
15. If Bille had been given the opportunity to play a character in cinema he would have chosen the character of Austin Powers.
(Photo: Austin Powers)
16. In 1995 Bille completely undressed during a performance in Milwaukee and was arrested by the police as a result.
17. When he was little he dreamed of being a football team coach.
18. He owns a second-hand guitar shop called Broken Guitars located in Oakland, California.
19. He has a 1963 Ford Falcon that he disassembled, repaired, and reassembled.
(Photo: classicautomall)
20. Bille has released 14 albums with "Green Day", four albums with "Pinhead Gunpowder", one album with "The Network", one album with "Foxboro Hot Tub"s, one album with "Norah Jones" and produced/played with four other ensembles: SWMRS, The Boo, The Shrives, and The Longshot. 21. During his quarantine due to COVID-19 in 2020 he released an album which was a compilation album of cover songs. The project consists of 14 cover songs as part of the "No Fun Mondays" series of songs, in which Armstrong released a cover song onto the "Green Day" YouTube channel every so often usually on a Monday as the title suggests.
So let's listen to the last thing Bille put out under his wing... Green Day's latest album released in 2024, "Saviors" on: Spotify, Apple Music
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