![]() “You can’t educate people if they’re that desperate.”Ī swelling, wistful tune that looks back at the trio’s teenage punk days, “when we were outlaws/when we were forever young.” “I was feeling nostalgic,” says Armstrong, “thinking about when me and Mike would break into cars and steal tapes and lighters and shit like that.” The band sees it as a sequel of sorts to their 1992 track “Christie Road,” which mined the same period of their lives. “I was like, ‘What country do I live in? How is this different from the Arab Spring?'” One line, “Teach your children well from the bottom of the well,” is a direct reference to other current events: “It’s thinking of Flint, Michigan, and trying to educate your kids while they’re drinking toxic waste,” Armstrong says. When he wrote this loping track, Armstrong was reacting to images of armored military-style vehicles in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. A lot of the old people are dying off and the values of the Fifties generation are starting to break and what happened in the Sixties and is starting to manifest more now than it ever has before.” … It’s like something is breaking in the world. ![]() “I felt like I was on the right side of history. “I was screaming, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot,’ ” he says. The idea came to him in New York two years ago when he ran into a Black Lives Matter protest before he knew it, Armstrong had gotten out of his car and was walking up Eighth Avenue with the throng. “Give me cherry bombs and gasoline!” Armstrong sings on the title track. “The scary thing was when I went into the character’s head,” says Armstrong. I’m like, ‘This feels like Green Day.’ I showed it to Mike and Tre and they were floored.” On the track, Armstrong sings from the perspective of a psychotic mass shooter (“I am a semiautomatic lonely boy/You’re dead/I’m well fed”). “It was refreshing that it came so naturally to write a song like ‘Bang Bang,'” he says, “which is one of the best punk songs I’ve ever scribbled. The fastest, most aggressive song on the album is also the first single, and the first song Armstrong wrote for the project. ![]() I never know what to do when it’s, like, you and you’re alone with yourself.” Now, you have to sort of learn how to breathe a little bit more. “I think it’s so relatable, whether it’s going to your job or going to the dentist.” Another lyric, “How did life on the wild side get so dull,” touches on Armstrong’s post-rehab struggles: “How do you deal with dealing with yourself? Before it was, I’ll have a beer. ![]() “It’s my favorite beginning of a record that we’ve ever had,” he says. Billie Joe Armstrong calls the first line – “I’m running late to somewhere now that I don’t want to be” – one of his all-time favorites. The album opener alternates between dreamy, almost Guided by Voices–like acoustic interludes and Who-style anthemic bursts – Tre Cool thinks he did his best drumming ever on it. In interviews conducted for Rolling Stone‘s recent cover story, the band breaks down each track on the record, due October 7th. Revolution Radio is Green Day‘s first album in 15 years with no extra twist – no high concept, no triple LP – but it’s full of fiery politics and big emotions.
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