Green Day says Saviors could join Dookie and American Idiot as one of their career-defining albums

it's easy to to sing songs a song like you know when you're you know young and saying smash the state it's like yeah I believe that kid you know do I believe the 50-year-old man that's going to say smash the [Music] state so I want to talk about a couple things I want to talk about the new record which I really loved I want to talk about the 30th anniversary of dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot which are all kind of happening at the same time so Mike that means this interview is going to air in 2024 that's an anniversary of two really important records that's a brand new record in a big stadium tour how are you feeling about the year that's coming up I it's exciting we got a huge tour coming up and I think we're with saviors I think we're about to drop honestly some of the best music we have ever written and recorded so um I'm just excited for people to hear the new record and for us to get on tour it sounds like that's what I should say but h honestly that's how I feel it's exciting it really is it does feel like a bit of a statement the record like it there there's something to it um I can't quite put my fingers on it Billy how did you want to approach this record writing the record I was coming from just all different angles like I there would be there would be a time period where I wanted to write just like straight up like punk rock songs that was like look Bono brains and then uh there was other songs where I wanted to have like almost like a Brit pop thing that was going on with something like uh good night Adeline and uh um fancy sauce and saviors and stuff like that and then um and I just kind of kept kind of going back and forth and then we had all of these songs and I was I just saying like let's just get in the studio and let's get let's get out of our the the normal places like that we record in Los Angeles and in Oakland and let's take a trip let's go to Let's uh let's go to England so we went to Rack Studios and we started recording there uh we called Rob cavalo and he jumped all over it wanted to to record with us again and produce and and so I didn't really know how it was coming together it just knew all of these different and then and then suddenly like as we were recording I think like because we we were in the room together um putting the arrangements together and vibing together and and getting our sound you can all of a sudden you felt something that was like cohesive that uh and all of a sudden we were like oh my God we're making one of the best records we've ever made it does feel like um there's a way there's a way to say this that I I don't want it to sound but it feels like a bit of a Reclamation it feels like when I listened to this record it felt like you guys saying hey we're like we're still in the running for the biggest band in the world like we're still in the running for making a really great generational record at this point do you know what I mean it's a a weird thing for you to respond to I know I know I know know it was definitely we were definitely trying to write one of the best records of our career uh you know that's for sure now you could try all you want doesn't mean mean you're going to do it but we put all the effort in there and we knew that you know that was the important thing was this record you know we even held off on a lot of touring this year and said look let's just really focus on giving these s these songs time to evolve and become the record that it is so also we kind of um is a weird way like we featured ourselves in the record musically um like my drum sound like me playing them you know his his guitar and and Mike space and the way that we work off each other and I think it's cuz we were in the room together recording the stuff you know and funny thing when we were at Rack Studios uh Muse was in one of the other rooms I was like hey come come check our out they came in and they're like like you guys play together like yeah they're like oh we haven't done that in years oh holy they're like truly impressed and that's like oh that's cool and we saw their studio and they had like all kinds of cool tricks and I mean it's rarer and rarer man like every I feel like every day I talk to more and more fanss who like they might not even record in the same city as each other anymore you know what I mean like how similar would for Trey like how similar given that you work with Robin This Record who worked on American IND worked on on dookie how similar was the way you recorded this to the way you were recording 30 years ago um pretty similar really we yeah you know it's like analog mixing board and you know microphones in a room and using all the the stuff that we're good at which is you know I guess playing our acoustic instruments and electric instruments and I don't know it just uh just seemed really natural and it it came together in really exciting way like we're just fired up it was cool yeah I I think you know when we recorded records like dookie an American Idiot we wanted to record something that reflected the way we play live and like what the what you hear like when we're playing in a club or an arena or wherever that you're going to get that when out of our albums so uh and um and I that's basically the same approach so it's been the same thing has it always been that like that did you ever not do that um I mean we've done a couple of projects where they were definitely like uh we purposely made music that wasn't supposed to be played live really but yeah I think uh it was um but yeah this is just one one you know we wanted to just make a great Rock record you know with like you know something you know we're not playing to tracks we're not playing to just straight up live um harmonies and um you know there's like this footage of me of us playing I think we're playing in spools in like 1992 and we're somewhere on a farm in in Minnesota playing in front of a bunch of like Punk kids and jumping around and it's like there's only one microphone so me and Mike were singing Harmony together in one microphone and it was like I just I was looking I was like God I I had two thoughts I was like the first thought was like how cool and endearing it is like and that that we're singing in the same mic and then the other thought was oh my God I bet Mike would had to smell my breath like the entire time yeah we shared a toothbrush back then it's a lot of like but a lot of bands when they get to your level kind of lose that they kind of lose that energy of all of all playing together it's great that you can still have it you know what I mean I mean I think again it's about being in the room with us we have a certain thing um when we get in a room together and even we're just playing quietly and structuring a song or working on it I can hear what Trey's doing with his Kick Drum and I can hear what's going on with the snare and I can hear Billy emoting a vocal or if we're just playing a a riff not even WR thinking about structuring a song or anything we're just playing a riff there's a certain feel to it if you play it enough in a room together you're going to know what to do yeah doing it right you know and even paying attention to the lyrics too like helps like me and Mike get a Groove too like knowing like kind of where Billy's at with the song what what he's trying to say like let's be in that mood with him musically I if I mean it's we're that into it like we just we really just threw everything we had into it I mean lyrically that's really interesting because the the I found this record really interesting lyrically Billy I mean on on Strange Days Are Here to Stay there's a great line strange J are here to stay ever since Bowie died it hasn't been the same I mean Bowie died in 2016 there's a song called living in the 20s which talks about um school shootings and uh like guess sex with robots and Ai and it it just every it's it these songs felt very reflective of the very kind of dystopian world that a lot of us feel like we live in how did you approach this record lyrically how do you see your responsibility as a songwriter at a at a time like this it takes a lot of time to for one thing so it's like trying to take everything line by line instead of just like one big uh uh especially when you're writing stuff that's topical or political I I I wanteded to come from the heart just as much as like a love song you know what what do you mean um like line by line like well line by line I just want it you know you want it to be smart you know and thoughtful um so it it's like it's easy to to sing songs a song like you know when you're you know young and saying smash the state it's like yeah I believe that kid you know do I believe the 50-year-old man that's going to say smash the state you know it's like I think when you get older the world it gets a lot more complex and nuance and like what's going on and I think as time goes on you're you know your uh your views change and um so I was just writing you know I think I you know song like living in the 20s I was writing about how like like it was a lot of like things going on at that time where it was queuing on and uh the Insurrection and and all this stuff and so I was just sort of trying to write almost like a coming from a lyrical collage of what was going on and uh you know like the America dream is killing me I think is there's no such thing as like what I would consider the American dream anymore there's no you know because it means so many it's been broken down and means so many different things to different people I mean you know ask Native American people like what the American dream means to them yeah you know yeah and then there's like uh you know or uh it's like you know my parents who you know who come from very like a you know humble workingclass backgrounds my father was a truck driver and a Teamster and my mother was a waitress yeah and but they were able to afford a home for their kids yeah that was in the 70s can't do that anymore yeah you know I like what you mean by that though like in the when when you're in your 20s and you're angry at the world there's an honesty to that there's there's an honesty to I want to tear down the system I want to get rid of it when you get older in your 50s it's harder to write those kind of songs because well not that it's even harder to write those kind of songs but like you're coming to it from a place of like knowing a little bit more about how the world actually works but that doesn't mean that you still can't get angry about it yeah you you you lose your naivity because you don't have the life experience or you have you get the life experience and then you understand and you also have an like some empathy for people that some of the people that you love in your family that are completely opposite ends of political Spectrum you know the I watched the the videos of you guys in London last week was it last week you guys did that surprise kind of Pub gig yeah yeah where you played a lot of the old songs um I have a bunch of questions about it and they all kind of have to do with the impact I could tell that some of that old music had on people so as I mentioned it's the 30th anniversary of dookie which is crazy um Mike think you saw people who were who were there in their 20s and and 30s and 40s and I I'll count myself in this who that record sort of became generational to them what were your hopes for the record when you met made it and when did you start to figure out that or did you start to figure out that this record is meaning a lot to a certain generation of people first off when Duke when we recorded we wanted we just wanted to make a record that would be around for a long time that it would just last a test time we wanted to make a record that we could go look back on 20 years from then and go we're really proud of this record these are great songs and it was recorded hopefully recorded to capture us in a way that would still be listenable a long time from then and not be dated so that was a conscious effort from us it was like you knew that you didn't want to make a record that sounded like 1993 oh wow we actually talked about it a lot I mean because we we knew sonically certain records had you listen to them you go yeah that was recording to 70s yeah was recorded in the 60s we just wanted to capture maximum Green Day at the time whatever that was in the studio we were in and you we took our time and recorded other things which with the 30y year anniversary we drop some demos from then and stuff um but cuz we wanted to learn this new way of recording on nicer equipment if you will and then um but really didn't understand how much it meant to people you know because we didn't really look back for a long time um right you know fast forward 10 years later we do American Idiot and then we realize this this is a whole different generation of people get or kids and people in general of all ages getting into us um but it starts to show itself when people go yeah I bought you were my first record and you can look at them and go all right okay cool well you were eight because you're 18 or you can almost guess their age and then 10 years later you're going oh well you must have been 18 when you got American Idiot because now you're 28 or yeah and I don't know I think saviors could be that next you know era of Green Day I really do I mean that's kind what I meant by a statement like this Feel This Record feels like you guys establishing yourself as a band still that can still make your favorite your your your favorite record it's funny to look at the Articles around like I read these articles from 94 last night right when dookie came out I read this article in nme like the British Music Magazine and it said something like uh it said something like well that Dookie is out and people seem to really like it they're being called the next Nirvana um the uh what they're being called the next Nirvana they're packing crowds they're about to play Woodstock 2 this summer and time will tell whether that will be the thing that kind of makes their career Trey I thought that was a really interesting thing to read before that show did you feel what like what are your memories of the of the moments of that show and did it feel like that that was accurate like that was sort of a moment of an inflection point for you guys I mean I like what Mike said too like we kind of had our ears pinned back and we were in a new town every day and we kept like just playing and playing and playing and we didn't really reflect back on things we did um like we kind of like oh when are we going to go back in the studio and make Insomniac like we let's make another record yeah you know let's make donkey yeah so it's um but yeah that I you I also uh kind of stayed away from Reading um articles about us because it's you know if it's good it'll get to your head if it's bad it'll piss you off so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so I kind of kind of shut that part of my brain off and then other parts of my brain started shutting off also two the years yeah yeah that'll happen too um Bill you were laughing when I said that that this article said that if they play Woodstock to was really gonna happen for him oh I just get a smile on my face every time I think about we played Woodstock it was just I don't know I think about how it just turned into the big mud fight and uh for some reason like we were what a a lot of bands I think would have thought as a bad situation we turned into a triumphant situation you know it was just so and I love that we have a whole track called that that is on the the the live record for Woodstock and called show yeah and it's just like it's just our our basically the sound of instruments falling apart because of mud you know know so but uh no it was just that that was uh I knew after that that something because at the time it was like that's where it was like pay-per-view you could so people could watch it at at home yeah I remember that yeah and so like and so many people watch it I remember it was a bit upsetting to my mother a little bit because I pulled my pants down and uh and you know dur during the show and um but you had a feeling that like um like we were life was going to change after that show I think it did you had this feeling that life was going to change I think so I think we felt it yeah it was uh well we sort of knew right after because we jumped right back on to the um the laaloa tour right you guys already kids were just rushing security and we were opening the tour and you had thousands of kids rushing security and packing packing the place and every day they're sort of yelling at us about it we're like can't help it man it's just it is what it is but um you could tell things were different and you get your teeth knocked out didn't you yeah a little bit it's okay ruggedly handsome anyway yeah I think so that was my next question um I watched the People Sing Basket Case back to you at that show in London I saw each of them individually have this moment where they could like sort of relate to the lyrics themselves these kind of kids in their 20s and 30s but that's was a long time ago for you Billy can you still relate to that guy who wrote those songs about yeah absolutely I think a song like Basket Case was like about having like a lot of anxiety and panic attacks and um sort of feeling like you're you're losing your mind and I mean that's that sounds like a the the Disney ride from hell that it's an all ages thing you know so it's uh um yeah I I mean I definitely I think it's like like you sing it every night and I I think some people might think it might get like uh just um like oversaturated or dull down in your own uh but I mean it's I like you know every time we play it live I'm I'm I think I think think to myself thank God for this song yeah yeah I mean that I think that song at at that time that when that song came out you know kids singing along to that song whether you whether it's nowadays or then you got think nobody was talking about mental health back then yeah and so that song was something relatable for a kid that you know might have been feeling the same way so when American Idiot came around was it a conscious effort on your guys part too I know we were talking about like trying to make a record that other people are you know still kind of auditioning for being the biggest band in the entire world like when I was reading about American Idiot last night it was really interesting that you had put out this like Greatest Hits record and you started to feel maybe a little bit old and and um you you started building in like band talking time into into rehearsal time where was the band 20 years ago when you guys were making American Idiot when like when we really started to think about like making something we wanted to make like a Monumental record in our career that like that was really ambitious and that was like this is going to be you know like you you get stars in your eyes and you you know every band wants to have like their Sergeant Pepper type of moment or whatever and and um and I think we were in the studio where we had access to the studio every every day in Oakland and so we just at that point we we we did start talk like like let's talk about what we want to do let's see what we we do want to do and the two songs that really came out of that was the song American Idiot and homecoming uh which homecoming was like in its original version was like it was it felt like this sort of mini Opera and so we didn't know exactly where we what we wanted to do but we knew that we were on to something and I remember sending those two songs to Rob cavalo and Rob was like this is it this is and because he's so ambitious and he gets really like you know that childlike wonder about like like we're gonna make something that is like you know an album of the ages and it's like uh you know it's really exciting and you're like like so we just started thinking about conceptually where who this American Idiot is and it all of a sudden it became about these characters like St Jimmy and what's her name and and then it got into the God Jesus of Suburbia and it was like and that was really we were like oh my God we're making that kind of record that we've always wanted to make um and um so it was like I don't know like like like just one of those moments where we're like we get to make this concept record did it feel like it worked like did it feel like wow we kind of started a second life for the band yeah it was I mean we were like hanging out like every day and um some days we'd come in and like like Billy and Rob would be in there like just like doing and like and then okay what's going on there I don't know like the windows are steaming up man this is cool come check this out like oh yeah well it it also started branching over into other things I remember like there were certain things that like Mike would show up and like be like he would show up in like these different like fashion like the clothes the way that thing started to change and it was like okay this is everything started to come started to incorporate into what we were doing and it was like then you know that's like with the black shirt and the red tie and things like that it was just like there's a sort of a Swagger that happened when you we were created like our gang felt like it was firing on all cylinders in the studio but there's a side of it too that like you know we didn't know whether it was going to sink or swim we just wanted to make this this record that we thought would be our Monumental record right yeah we finished the record and we had to have a moment where we just sat with each other uh we literally finished the record we met at the studio again I remember went up to this little Crow's Nest area in the studio climbed up in this little area and sat down and just a look I don't give a what anyone in the world thinks about this record I we love this record let's just bottle that feeling and we said to ourselves don't read any press I don't care what the world thinks of which by the way was the stupidest thing we could have done cuz the one time in our life probably should have read yeah did get really really really good yeah it was just bottling that feeling of be proud of what you've done you know who cares what other people think about it because don't let them in this world that we' created what we were proud of and protect each other yeah protect your child yeah that album it kind of It kind of I mean it really did work out I mean I remember as an outsider like who was really into Nimrod and really into dookie just watching this band that I love like take off and start start playing Arenas I think what I find interesting about this whole thing is that like I think I think the way that you guys get talked about is wrong sometimes because I think people talk about you as like people sometimes frame you as a as a punk band and they say oh what happens when a punk band gets really really big and starts doing Arenas I don't actually think that's the right way of thinking about your band I think what's really interesting about you guys is that any band that gets the arena level of like American Idiot would be okay stopping like a lot of bands at that point would be like you know what we did it let's go play great it's for the rest of our lives we all know bands who've done it we don't have to say them right now but you're sitting here right now talking to me about savior saying we want this to be the biggest record of our career can someone tell me where that comes from like what's what's going on with this band we still care about the kinds of songs that we write and and how much effort that we put into it and uh make you know and trying new things at the same time is like coming together and and just writing just like a badass songs um and I think that you know that's uh you can get older you can get old just don't stop caring you know that's where I I come from when it comes to making music um and those are my favorite artists are the ones that still care about what they're putting out and it's like and not going through the through the motions so for us that's kind of what green days is about that's a beautiful thing rapid fire uh favorite song on dookie oh jeez um rapid fire favorite song I meant to give more time for it time um wow It it's like kind of like a 127 minute song the entire album uh I you know the one with the drum soln burn out burn out yeah favorite song an American Idiot oh got to go with uh Jesus Suburbia yeah I just for funest song to play I would say for me favorite song on the new record most meaningful song on the new record um I gotta say father to a son probably and not just for for a lot of different reasons you know it's like uh you know it's a song that is dedicated to my my sons uh which and which was uh pretty emotional to go there and I want to also add that my son just married a girl a couple of years ago from Toronto Camp hello you're kind of Canadian yeah I'm kind of Canadian that's why you're doing the great why it's all working now B I can't I can't begin to tell you how incredibly nervous we all were to meet you because you're a lot of our favorite bands and your records have made meant a lot to us and thanks a lot for making the time bu it's really lovely to meet you awesome thanks man talking to [Music] you

Channel: Q with Tom Power

Views: 150,444

Keywords: q on cbc, tom power, tom power q, q radio, cbc radio q, cbc radio, cbc radio show, green day, green day saviours, green day new album, american idiot, dookie

Id: 9Etk28f88eo

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024