The Oakland-Area Punk Rockers Are Headed to the Tonys, Where Their "American Idiot" Is Up for Best Musical
(CBS) "Time of Your Life" was a huge hit for Green Day, whose music drives a Broadway rock show nominated for three awards at the Tonys next Sunday. Tracy Smith now with a Summer Song ...
The following is an update of a story first broadcast on May 24, 2009.
Call it punk rock for grownups. In an age where many rock bands have the lifespan of a butterfly, Green Day has gone the distance and they've done it by going their own way.
They've sold roughly 50 million albums, filled stadiums worldwide, and filled the airwaves with a brash, aggressive - and often politically charged - sound.
They've also created pop classics, some of which have found their way into movie and TV soundtracks, including one of the final episodes of "Seinfeld."
And now, one of the band's bestselling albums, "American Idiot," has been turned into a Broadway show of the same name, with Green Day's music performed on stage by a dynamic young cast.
So where do this rank among the million cool things they’ve done?
"Top," said Billie Joe Armstrong. "It's the absolute biggest thing that's ever happened to us.
"To have flesh and blood people performing our songs back at us and take it to a whole 'nother level, it's un-describable," said Mike Dirnt.
"It's not exactly 'My Fair Lady" . . . but Green Day isn't exactly your typical punk rock band.
Green Day's path to stardom began as a grade school friendship between Armstrong and Dirnt, two working class kids from refinery towns near Oakland, Calif.
They say the bonded over music.
"I think we ended up playing our first show together and we played I think it was the seventh grade at, like, the - like, the middle school dance or something like that," Armstrong said. "And it ended up being really fun."
The gigs got bigger, and by the early '90s the band was touring nonstop, with drummer Tre Cool's father driving the bus.
"What was it like having your chaperone dad with you on tour?" Smith asked.
"It was fine until he started like crossing the line of - of like being a father and being a bus driver. Like he would complain about dirty socks and stuff," Cool said. "It's like, 'Dude, we're a punk band. We are dirty socks.'"
By 1994 they had a new label and a new album - "Dookie" - a major milestone in a journey that would take them out of dirty socks and into the rock music stratosphere.
"'Dookie' came out and it was, like, the most dramatic thing that ever happened to us at the time, you know?" Armstrong said.
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