Smells Like Green Spirit
GREEN DAY have had a meteoric rise over the last 18 years, from poky Dublin dives to colossal international stadia. But despite their maturing worldview and increasing political articulacy, they’re still as exciting a kick-ass punk rock group as ever.
Stuart Clark, 18 Nov 2009
“It was in this tiny room above a bar, which even by the standards of the places we’d been playing in the States was a bit of a dive. Anyway, we were about to go on when somebody, the promoter I guess, told us: ‘No one’s allowed to pogo or jump around ‘cause if they do the floor’s going to collapse.’ It’s the first and last time I’ve told a crowd to ‘go fuckin’ crazy… but can you do it standing still please!’”
A newly peroxided Billie Joe Armstrong is recalling Green Day’s December 18 1991 visit to The White Horse Inn, the Dublin 2 boozer whose upstairs Attic venue was indeed in danger of becoming its downstairs Attic venue.
As mythologised at this stage as U2 in The Dandelion Market and Sonic Youth and Nirvana in the Top Hat — unlike the majority of the Irish population I was at neither — the gig was put on by the Hope Collective who, with only 40 people paying in, lost fifty quid on the deal.
“I didn’t even think there were that many there!” laughs the affable singer who in a few hours' time will be entertaining a rather more sizeable audience in the Dublin 02. “It was a huge deal for us because with the exception of Canada, it was the first time we’d toured outside of the States and played something mad like 64 dates in three months — most of them in places I can’t for the life of me remember now! What I do remember is a lot of sleeping in vans and on floors, and clearing everything that could be eaten or drunk out of the dressing room at the end of the night. Without all that free shit we’d have starved!”
European promoters being veritable Father Christmases back then compared to their American counterparts.
“The first time we found a crate of beer backstage, we thought, ‘Who’s that for?’ and ‘If they’re not here maybe we can steal some!’ We were never given free beer ‘til we came to Europe, which made us love the place even more!”
Interesting Green Day factoid #1: The band’s first Irish foray also included a Belfast gig in Richardson’s where they pulled a hundred people and Billie Joe, as was his wont in those days, ended up stark bollock naked on stage.
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