Green Day: Rebels With a Cause by Gillian G. Gaar

Author:Gillian G. Gaar [Gaar, Gillian G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857120595
Publisher: Music Sales
Published: 2009-10-27T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Going Down to Jingle Town

“You can’t keep writing the same song over and over again. Lyrically, I think there’s a lot more said on this album then there has been in the past.”

— Billie Joe to Teen People, November 2000

At the beginning of 1999, it was announced that Green Day would open for The Rolling Stones on five dates in February. But the band pulled out almost as soon as the announcement was made. The official reason given was that they wanted to get to work on their new album, but in fact they wouldn’t start recording until the following year. As when the European Insomniac tour was cancelled in 1996, the band needed a break after the relentless touring of the previous year. Tré also later spoke of the turbulence in their personal lives; both he and Mike divorced their wives during this period (Tré remarried in March 2000). Mike also had some health issues to sort out; what he feared was a heart condition turned out to be simply a digestive disorder. For his part, Billie Joe admitted his own marriage had been “pretty rocky,” but he and Adrienne managed to keep their relationship together.

The band also managed to keep the relationship between themselves together, taking a month and a half off after the Nimrod touring had ended, then going back into their usual routine of rehearsal. “Band practise isn’t an event for us,” Mike told Guitar World. “It’s what we do. We enjoy it, but we take it very seriously. We always have.” Songs began to materialise during rehearsals, but instead of deliberately trying to build up a backlog, as Billie Joe had for Nimrod, the band opted to let the songs emerge naturally. “We wanted to make this record in our practise space,” Billie Joe told Guitar World. “No writing in the studio. Sometimes I think being in the studio can have disadvantages creatively. You can feel stifled a little bit.”

“The last record was just us going in and pounding out songs,” Mike told the Denver Rocky Mountain News. “We were saying, ‘Let’s just keep writing tons of songs and find the record within that.’ This time, Billie wasn’t forcing himself to write songs. We were letting the songs happen and letting the inspirational moments show up when they do.”

But what was more unusual was that the band played only two shows over the next 17 months, the fewest they’d ever played in their entire career. Even more unusually, the two they did play were concerts more associated with an acoustic performing style. The shows were two of Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit concerts, the Bridge School being an organisation that works with children who have physical and speech impairments. Young had long been a supporter of the school, as his wife Pegi was a co-founder; the Youngs’ son also attended the school.

The 1999 Bridge School Benefit shows were held October 30 and 31 at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. Young, Pearl Jam, a reunited Who, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, and Lucinda Williams were among the others on the bill.

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