Sipping soda with the bratty, poppy punkers as they prepare for their Broadway debut. It’s like “Tommy falling down the stairs and running into Hedwig!”
It’s been sixteen years since Green Day emerged from Oakland, California, with catchy top-40 punk songs about girlfriends, masturbation, and stoner slackerdom. But though the three still-boyish men are still dressed in Chucks, leather jackets, and skinny jeans and still sport tinted hair, they have matured a bit, drummer Tre Cool says to me while plopped on a couch at 119 Bar, on East 15th Street. Back then, “probably 30 percent of the day was, like, trying to get a burrito; another 30 percent was trying to find a place to play; and then the rest of it was playing.”
“So what percentage are we allocating toward trying to find weed and beer?” asks bassist Mike Dirnt, barely containing the giggles and quickly spawning a three-man guffaw.
“And we were definitely horny young men, too, so you have to account for that,” adds singer Billie Joe Armstrong, looking a bit like a punk-rock baby bird as he sips a Coke with lemon through a straw. Actually, come to think of it, “not much has changed, really.”
[Read full interview at New York Magazine]
