Green Day have used the sound of their engineer being whipped by a dominatrix as the intro to ‘BLOOD SEX BOOZE’, a track on their forthcoming new album ‘WARNING’.
The album, the follow-up to 1997’s ‘Nimrod’, has been provisionally slated for an October 2 release.
During an exclusive interview with Steve Lamacq – to be broadcast on his Evening Session show on BBC Radio One tonight (July 26) – frontman Billy Joe Armstrong explained how they came up with sample for ‘Blood Sex Booze’.
“That’s our engineer Tone taking his first flogging,” he said, “Tone‘s our 19-year-old engineer. We brought in a very professional dominatrix, Mistress Simone and she just cracked at him. I think it was his first experience of pain… we set mikes up in the room and recorded the whole thing and that’s the intro to the song.”
Armstrong also revealed that the new record, produced in part by longtime R.E.M. associate Scott Litt in the band’s Oakland studio, is more considered than previous records by the band. He added that it has the feel of “an old Stones album, you turn it up loud and it should just surround you”. Billy Joe also said he’d been inspired by the Tom Waits album ‘Rain Dogs’.
The tracklisting for ‘Warning’ is as follows:
‘Warning’, ‘Blood Sex Booze’, ‘Church on Sunday’, ‘Fashion Victim’, ‘Castaway’, ‘Misery’, ‘Deadbeat Holiday’, ‘Jack Ass’, ‘Waiting’, ‘Minority’, ‘Macy’s Day Parade’.
The title track, debuted at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit Concert last October, looks like being the new single. No release date has been confirmed, but should appear during early September.
In the wide-ranging interview, Green Day‘s first with UK press in some 18 months, Armstrong discussed the band’s plans for UK dates, how they feel about the last album in retrospect and what they make of the burgeoning nu-punk scene in the USA. Green Day are currently on the Vans Warped tour alongside Mighty Mighty Bosstones, NOFX and other nu-punk names.
To hear the interview in full, tune into BBC Radio One from 8pm tonight.