Green Day, the Californian pop punk trio who formed in 1987 and who have been a stadium-sized phenomenon for most of this century, found serious success circa 1994 with Generation X anthems like ‘Basket Case’ and ‘Longview’ before stepping up a notch with the scathing political commentary of American Idiot a decade later. It’s no surprise, then, that when we speak to bassist Mike Dirnt about the state of the USA, he sounds profoundly exhausted.
“It’s just sad,” he says. “It’s sad that there’s this playbook that the whole world is now running off of, whether you’re on one shitty team or the other shitty team. You know what I mean? If you really don’t like someone, you should figure out a way to win without trying to be like them too. I feel like most people are just walking down the middle of the freeway, trying not to get hit by the right or the left, and it’s disgusting. At some point, we’ve got to connect our intelligence to our heart and move forward with that, rather than everybody just raiding the larder and fucking shitting on everything… It sucks to walk around with this doom cloud of embarrassment around you all the time.”
Fortunately, there are happier things going on for Dirnt, notably a new signature Grabber G-3 bass from Epiphone, the subsidiary of Gibson. Non-bass nerds can skip this part, but for anyone who enjoys thunderous low notes, this bit is for you…
“I played maybe 700 shows with my original Grabber,” he recalls, “but when it was finally broken enough where I had to have a replacement, all I could find was vintage ones that were like $2500. It was my own fault. Had I known how expensive they would be years later, I would have just gone out and bought a bunch early on. So Billy [Joe Armstrong, Green Day singer/guitarist] bought me a Fender Precision, which is sort of the Ford F-150 of basses. You know what you’re getting. It’s consistent across all the strings, but it wasn’t a unique sound. It was a universal sound.”
Armed with his new Grabber and punchier bass sound, Dirnt is ecstatic. “It just makes me rethink my whole career and think, fuck, if I had this bass back then, what would the albums have sounded like? Part of me wants to go back and just re-record the records and make new mixes for fun.”
In the wider Green Day camp, the trio recently lent their names to the film New Years Rev, a fictionalised account of their early years. “We’ve always wanted to do something like this,” reflects Dirnt. “It was really fun to be able to open up our catalogue to the director, Lee Kirk. We didn’t suggest anything that he should put in the movie, so it was interesting to see him leaning into Insomniac and Nimrod as well as some of our demo stuff. It was a trip to hear his take on what the soundtrack should be. It’s got heart, man. It’ll make you laugh out loud. It’s got a ‘Fuck yeah!’ moment in it that is crazy, it’s so triumphant. It’s a fun movie, you know? We weren’t out to fucking win an Academy Award. They made a really great movie, and I’m happy to be a part of it.”
As a segue into the 13 formative albums that follow, I ask Dirnt if he looks back fondly on Green Day’s early years. “I do,” he replies. Last night I showed my wife some footage of the first time we played on late-night TV, which was Conan O’Brien in 1994. I remember sitting in my hotel room and watching it at the time, and I remember smashing the lamp because I was so bummed about it. I thought we played too fast. I said to Billy right before we went out, ‘Just control the tempo’. And he went super fast. We were blazing! It was also the first time hearing my voice on TV, and I thought, oh, this sounds like shit. But when I watched it with my wife last night, I realised that we are fucking ripping it. We sound great!”
Information about the forthcoming Green Day film New Year’s Rev can be found here, and you can find out more about Mike Dirnt’s new signature Ephiphone Grabber G-3 here.
To begin reading Dirnt’s Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Selection’ below
