Green Day's story starts back in 1972, the year that all three members were born. Billie Joe Armstrong came into the world as the youngest of six kids born to a working-class family in Rodeo, California, an industrial town fifteen miles north of Berkeley. Billie's Dad was a truck driver and sometimes jazz musician who died when Billie Joe was just ten. Billie's Mom was a waitress and a diehard country music fan. At age eleven, Billie Joe got his first guitar, a blue Stratocaster that he plays to this day. It was around that same time that he met Michael Pritchard. Pritchard, who would later assume the name Mike Dirnt, was born the son of a heroin-addicted mother and was put up for adoption. His adoptive parents divorced when he was seven, at which point he began dividing his time between their separate households. At the age of fifteen, he rented a room on the side of Billie Joe's house.
Billie Joe Armstrong, musician, primarily of Green...
English: Billie Joe in 1994 Español: Billie Joe e...
Billie Joe Armstrong, musician, primarily of Green...Meanwhile, Frank Edwin Wright III was growing up in a town called Willits, which is located north of the San Francisco Bay area in an isolated part of the Mendocino mountains. The Wrights' nearest neighbor, Lawrence Livermore, lived about a mile away. At age twelve, Frank joined Livermore's band, the Lookouts, adopting the performing name of Tre Cool. The group recorded an album, which was released on a label Livermore formed called, the ever popular Lookout Records. The record attracted some fans in the Bay area, so before long, the pubescent Tre Cool found himself playing gigs at 924 Gilman Street, a punk club located in an industrial section of Berkeley. Gilman Street, the home of the East Bay punk-rock underground, was an all-ages club run by a volunteer staff; all bookings were handled by a committee and show...