Billie Joe Armstrong awakened to a slew of confusing texts on New Year’s Day.
The night before, the Green Day frontman played a benefit for Project Chimps, a sanctuary for former research chimpanzees he helped found, with The Coverups, his side project with Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt.
Armstrong wasn’t thinking about Green Day’s pre-taped performance of “American Idiot” that aired on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” during which he changed the lyric, “"I'm not a part of a redneck agenda" to "I'm not a part of the MAGA agenda,” a substitute he’d been making in the song in concert for several years.
But the tweak apparently resounded on the larger platform, sparking ire or cheers depending on political leanings.
“I was so surprised,” Armstrong says. “When I woke up to texts from people like my brother saying, ‘That was so (expletive) cool what you said onstage,’ and I was like, what? Chimpanzees? Then all of a sudden it’s Fox News and Elon Musk and Tom Morello. I was like, ‘Ohhhhh, I said that.’ It just shows you how easily triggered people are and the power of music and how it can get people talking. It’s not like I put out a tweet. I changed one word and it was all over the place. Job well done, I guess.”
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While Green Day has never been as aggressively political as Rage Against the Machine or Black Flag, the trio of Armstrong, Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool has also never flinched in their lyrical depiction of an unsettled and divisive America.
On Friday, the band releases its 14th studio album, “Saviors,” a collection of 15 brisk, pointed songs unfurled over 45 minutes. They’ll also hit the road May 30 in Europe before landing in the U.S. July 29 for a two-month stadium tour with the Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and The Linda Lindas.
Along with the new music, the guys – all 51 – are also celebrating a couple of milestones: 30 years since the release of their major-label debut, “Dookie,” and 20 for “American Idiot,” their most socially incisive album inspired by the George W. Bush presidency.
Green Day will perform both albums in their entirety during the The Saviors Tour, as well as a smattering of new material and plenty of vintage hits.
“I think (those albums) have aged great,” Armstrong says, seated between Dirnt and Cool during a video call. “When we first recorded ‘Dookie,’ we wanted to accomplish something we could play 20 years later. With ‘Idiot,’ it has a way, especially around election time, of always coming up. So I think of that record as topical when what was going on in 2004 still resonates today.”
For “Saviors,” named for a song on the album that is about “feeling desperate for answers and leadership and getting out of the mess we’re in,” says Armstrong, Green Day reunited with longtime producer Rob Cavallo.
The architect behind some of the band’s most consequential albums – “Insomniac” and “Nimrod” as well as “Dookie” and “American Idiot” – hadn’t worked with Green Day since their moderately received 2012 trilogy, “Uno!,” “Dos!” “Tres!”
As expected, their 30 years of shared history benefited the band in the studio.
“Rob has that energy that translates to us,” says Cool. “If we get confident, maybe we’ll try stuff and he’ll help us walk away from it when it’s right.”
Adds Dirnt, “He’s fiercely energetic and competitive. We’ve made some amazing rock records together and it’s a hell of a drug when you get it right.”
Many of the songs on “Saviors” touch on the malaise infecting the country.
“The American Dream is Killing Me” talks about “my country under siege” and “Living in the ‘20s” opens with “another shooting in a supermarket,” both indicative of the “observing and reporting” approach the band took with the album.
“With ‘another shooting in a supermarket,’ people keep saying we can’t make this normal. And guess what? It is normal. This is our society and unless there is some change, it’s going to be here forever,” Armstrong says.
He also points to the lyric, “ever since Bowie died, it hasn’t been the same” in the typically pungent rocker “Strange Days Are Here to Stay” as both prescient and a reminiscence.
“Me and my friends have said that when (David) Bowie died in 2016, it was the beginning of the weirdness,” Armstrong says. “We’re dealing and living in our own hypocrisy, whether it’s personal or political.”
Amid the punchy guitars and taut, metronomic drums, Green Day pauses – as they have in the past with “Wake Me Up When SeptemberEnds” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life”) – for lyrical reflection couched in acoustic guitars and strings with “Father to a Son.”
All three members have sons, but the genesis of the ballad emanates from Armstrong, who dedicates the song to sons Joey, 28, and Jakob, 25.
“Becoming a father, I was so young and it was on-the-job training for sure. As all parents do, you make mistakes and try to be honest with yourself – is this right and am I doing a good job?,” Armstrong says. “Sometimes you’re not. And sometimes you say the right piece of wisdom that actually works.”
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