Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong discusses his hits and misses in new podcast series

"It felt really good to actually talk about it and break the songs down and the history of where my head was at"

Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong has opened up about his biggest hits and misses in a new podcast series.

The new Audible Original series, Welcome To My Panic, arrived yesterday (April 22) and sees Armstrong opening up about his personal and professional life. Armstrong also re-imagines some Green Day classics on the series including ‘Basket Case,’ ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),’ ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ and ‘American Idiot’, which appear alongside his spoken-word segments.

Speaking to Billboard about the new series, Armstrong said: “It felt really good to actually talk about it and break the songs down and the history of where my head was at, what’s changed and what hasn’t changed. I always speak of my music in terms of the spaces that I was in. I always had these pictures in my head of where I was at writing songs.”

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In one part, Armstrong opens up about writing some classic Green Day tracks and in others, reveals more about his childhood years – including after his father passed away from cancer.

“‘Basket Case’ was a really weird time for me. I just remember being in Berkeley and working the songs out with Mike and Tré. A song that was really fun to rework I think was ‘Time of Your Life,’ because instead of doing an acoustic version, I did kind of more of an electric version. This is a great excuse to dive into that.”

Speaking about 1982, the year he lost his father whilst also meeting future bandmate Mike Dirnt, Armstrong described it as the year the “earth shook for me”. The experience eventually led him to write ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends.’

“I think of [September] as being the new year in a lot of ways, especially [because kids are] back to school,” he explained to Billboard. “Sometimes you lose touch with people that you’re actually close to for two, three months because of summer vacation, and then you see them later and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, you look like a different person right now.’ It takes one summer to become a full-on punk rocker.”

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Speaking about Green Day’s postponed tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer, Armstrong said he was hopeful it could happen this year.

“It’s looking promising that we’re gonna do Hella Mega later this year in the United States. It’s so crazy that it got put off another year because of COVID. This tour is three years in the making at this point.

“So hopefully, if the world would open up, and everybody will be able to get into stadiums, we’d be able to get a big, giant barbecue fiesta of rock and roll music.”

In other news, a Green Day fan recently reimagined the group’s ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’ single, as if it had appeared on ‘Dookie’.

YouTuber Sz.G. Music has re-worked 1997 hit ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’ into a version that could have appeared on their 1994 debut album, ‘Dookie’. Instead of being a heart-rendering acoustic number, the track is turned into an all-out punk hit – complete with a bass line that sounds remarkably similar to that of ‘Dookie’ album track ‘She’.

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