Good Sunday morning, guitarbites readers.  I finally slept in to seven this morning and woke up with the inspiration to collage together a blog on Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s famous frontman and guitar player.

 

Guitarbites doesn’t just blog and post about dead classic blues masters, but today’s contemporaries as well.  For awhile now, I’ve been hooked by Green Day’s melodic tunes like When September Ends, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Basket Case, Good Riddance (the Time of Your Life), and their latest, now on radio’s top ten, 21 Guns.

 

Billie Joe always excelled beyond his siblings with his prodigious musical ability. From a young age, he was cheering people up at local hospitals with his beautiful singing. He attended singing lessons and was always destined for greatness. The first clear sign of this was when at the age of only five; he recorded his very first song at a local recording studio in Berkeley. The song was called "Looking For Love" and found him an interview with a local radio station, a clip of which can be found as the introduction of one of Green Day's songs-Maria.

 

Billie Joe formed a very strong relationship with his father, who, at the age of ten, gave him his very first electric guitar, which he still uses. Billie Joe treasured this guitar, a Fender Stratocaster; although little did he know, it was the beginning of a lifetime career in music.

 

Unfortunately only a year later, Billie Joe lost his father to throat cancer, leaving him lonely and broken hearted. His mother soon found herself a new husband whom none of the six children liked and caused Billie Joe to write his first song "Why Do You Love Him" which appears on Green Day's debut album, 1039 "Smoothed Out Slappy Hours". He released a lot of his anger out on his guitar playing the hardcore punk rock songs he still sings today; unfortunately, he also released a lot of his anger with physical violence, both at school and at home, with his stepfather.

 

At the same time, Mike Dirnt (Green Day basist, born Mike Pritchard) was also having trouble at home and when they both met in the school cafeteria when they were twelve they immediately hit it off. Mike moved out of his own home due to disagreements with his adoptive parents and moved into a separated apartment in Billie Joe's house. This allowed the two to bond further, Billie Joe persuaded Mike to buy an electric guitar as well so that the two could practice together in the garage of his home. They were often laughed at at school for their dress sense and taste in music, but the two stayed true to their music and punk life-style and did not lose hope at any stage of their journey to get their message out there. The two young musicians where born to be rebellious and at no point did they even consider changing this.

 

Billie Joe was known at school as "Two Dollar Bill" as he used to sell joints for two dollars. This is also where the name Green Day comes from. The band was originally named "Sweet Children", but they soon realized this was not a strong enough name for their band and swiftly changed it to Green Day, which is slang for a day of sitting around smoking pot.

 

Soon after the two formed the band, they realized that two guitarists wasn't going to work. Mike switched to bass and they recruited a drummer. They found John Kiffmeyer or "Al" who was a fair bit older than Billie Joe and Mike, but the three formed their very own unique band and started to play for bigger audiences. They tried to play as many clubs and venues as possible, however big or small, they even frequently played at Rod's Hickory Pitt where the two also worked alongside Billie's mum to earn their keep. After a while, they attempted to get a record deal with local studio-Lookout Records. Eventually, they got their debut record in 1986 - 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. However, after a few years, Al left the band to return to college leaving the two without a drummer.

 

Another local band "The Lookouts", founders of "Lookout Records" who knew Billie and Mike very well, insisted that they had their drummer, as they had recently split up. The new drummer, Tre Cool, (born Frank Edwin Wright III) fit into the band very comfortably, being closer to the age of the other two, they formed a very strong relationship, which is still strong today (2005).

 

In 1991, Billie Joe met Adrienne Nesser, a fellow punk rock enthusiast and the two fell in love and married in 1994 in a 5 minute service, only to find the very next day that Adrienne was pregnant with their first child, Joseph Marciano, who was born in 1995, followed 3 years later by another son - Jakob Danger. This comes from Billie Joe's favourite television character - "Austin Powers", which, like Austin, allows his son to say and mean that Danger is his middle name.

 

After the addition of Tre Cool to the band, Green Day went on to produce many more records, especially impressive being "American Idiot", the latest album (other than Bullet in a Bible-highly recommended) selling hundreds of millions of copies worldwide placing them as one of the best bands in the world at the moment. After 17 years (2005) of entertaining the world with their rebellious and often hilarious songs, the band are still going strong and still writing more and more songs to entertain and amuse us after already more than 10 albums worth of hardcore punk rock.

 

Armstrong's first guitar was a Cherry Red Hohner acoustic, which his father bought for him. He then received his first electric guitar, a Fernandes Stratocaster copy that he named "Blue", when he was ten. His mother got "Blue" from George Cole who taught Armstrong electric guitar for ten years. Armstrong says in a 1995 MTV interview, "Basically, it wasn't like guitar lessons because I never really learned how to read music. So he just taught me how to put my hands on the thing". George Cole bought the guitar new from David Margen of the band Santana. Cole gave Armstrong a Bill Lawrence Humbucking pickup and told him to install the pickup in the bridge position. After the pickup was destroyed at Woodstock '94, Armstrong then switched to the Duncan JB model. "Armstrong fetishized his teacher's guitar, partly because the blue instrument had a sound quality and Van Halen - worthy fluidity he couldn't get from his little red Hohner. He prized it mostly, however, because of his relationship with Cole, another father figure after the death of Andy."  He toured with this guitar from the band's early days and still uses it to this day.  Blue" also appears in several of their music videos starting with "Longview", "Basket Case", "Brain Stew/Jaded", and appearing most recently in "Minority".

 

Today Armstrong mainly uses Gibson and Fender guitars. Twenty of his Gibson guitars are Les Paul Junior models from the mid- to late-1950s. His Fender collection includes: Stratocaster, Jazzmaster,Telecaster, a Gretsch hollowbody and his copies of "Blue". He states that his favorite guitar is a 1956 Gibson Les Paul Junior he calls "Floyd". He bought this guitar in 2000 just before recording their album Warning.

 

Armstrong also has his own line of Les Paul Junior guitars from Gibson. He also often uses his signature line in more of his recent tours.

 

 

Thanks to:  http://www.biggeststars.com/b/billie-joe-armstrong-biography.html , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Joe_Armstrong

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