Billie Joe Armstrong Biography

Billie Joe Armstrong (born February 17, 1972) is an American rock musician and occasional actor, best known as the lead vocalist, main songwriter, and guitarist for the American punk rock band Green Day, which he co-founded with Mike Dirnt. He is also a guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock band Pinhead Gunpowder and provides lead vocals for Green Day's side projects Foxboro Hot Tubs and The Network.

Raised in Rodeo, California, Armstrong developed an interest in music at a young age, and recorded his first song at the age of five. He met Mike Dirnt while attending elementary school, and the two instantly bonded over their mutual interest in music, forming the band Sweet Children when the two were 15 years old. The band changed its name to Green Day, and would later achieve massive commercial success. Armstrong has also pursued musical projects outside of Green Day's work, including numerous collaborations with other musicians.

He also co-owns the record label Adeline Records, with his wife Adrienne and skateboarder Jim Thiebaud, with the collaboration of Green Day's guitarist Jason White and more recently Green Day's manager Pat Magnarella.

Early life

Billie Joe Armstrong was born in Oakland, California, and was raised in Rodeo, California, as the youngest of six children to Andrew "Andy" Armstrong and Ollie Jackson. His father worked as a jazz musician and truck driver for Safeway Inc. to support his family. He died of esophageal cancer on September 10, 1982. The song "Wake Me Up When September Ends" is a memorial to his father. He has five older siblings: David, Alan, Marci, Hollie, and Anna. His mother worked at Rod's Hickory Pit restaurant in El Cerrito.

Armstrong's interest in music started at a young age. He attended Hillcrest Elementary School in Rodeo, where a teacher encouraged him to record a song titled "Look for Love" at the age of five on the Bay Area label Fiat Records. After his father died, his mother married a man whom her children disliked, which resulted in Armstrong's further retreat into music.

At the age of 10, Armstrong met Mike Dirnt in the school cafeteria and they immediately bonded over their love of music. He became interested in punk rock after being introduced to punk rock by his brothers. Armstrong has also cited Minneapolis-based bands The Replacements and Hüsker Dü as major musical influences. Armstrong and Mike Dirnt's first live performance was at Rod's Hickory Pit in 1987; their first performance under the name Green Day was in Davis, a college town approximately an hour's drive northeast of the San Francisco Bay area.

Along with Hillcrest Elementary, Armstrong attended Carquinez Middle School and John Swett High School,both in Crockett, and later transferred to Pinole Valley High School in Pinole. On his 18th birthday (February 17, 1990), he dropped out to pursue his musical career.

Career

In 1987, aged 15, Armstrong formed a band called Sweet Children with his childhood friend Mike Dirnt. In the beginning, Dirnt and Armstrong both played guitar, with John Kiffmeyer, also known as Al Sobrante, on drums, and Sean Hughes on bass. After a few performances, Hughes left the band in 1988; Dirnt then began playing bass and they became a three-piece band. They changed their name to Green Day in April 1989, choosing the name because of their fondness for marijuana. That same year, they released their debut EP 1,000 Hours through Lookout! Records. They recorded their debut studio album 39/Smooth and the extended play Slappy in 1990, which were later combined with 1,000 Hours into the compilation 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours in 1991. Tré Cool eventually became Green Day's drummer in late 1990 when Sobrante left Green Day in order to go to college. California punk band Rancid's lead singer Tim Armstrong asked Armstrong to join his band, but he refused owing to the progress with Green Day. Cool made his debut on Green Day's second album, Kerplunk. With their next album, Dookie (1994), the band broke through into the mainstream, and have remained one of the most popular rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s with over 60 million records sold worldwide.

Apart from working with Green Day and side-band Pinhead Gunpowder, Armstrong has collaborated with many artists over the years. He has co-written for The Go-Go's ("Unforgiven") and former Avengers singer Penelope Houston ("The Angel and The Jerk" and "New Day"), co-written a song with Rancid ("Radio"), and sung backing vocals with Melissa Auf der Maur on Ryan Adams' "Do Miss America" (where they acted as the backing band for Iggy Pop on his Skull Ring album ("Private Hell" and "Supermarket"). Armstrong has produced an album for The Riverdales. He has also been confirmed to be part of a side project called The Network, which released an album called Money Money 2020. Money Money 2020 was released on Adeline Records, a record label co-owned by Armstrong. Armstrong also provided lead guitar and backing vocals on 3 songs for The Lookouts' final extended play IV (1989).

Hoping to clear his head and develop new ideas for songs, Armstrong traveled to New York City alone for a few weeks, renting a small apartment in the East Village of Manhattan. He spent much of this time taking long walks and participating in jam sessions in the basement of Hi-Fi, a bar in Manhattan. However, the friends he made during this time drank too much for his liking, which was the catalyst for Armstrong's return to the Bay Area. After returning home, Armstrong was arrested on DUI charges on January 5, 2003, and released on $1,200 bail.

In 2004, Green Day debuted American Idiot, their first rock opera. The album has sold more than 15,000,000 copies worldwide, fueled by the hit singles American Idiot, Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Wake me up When September Ends. In 2009 Green Day published 21st Century Breakdown, the band's second rock opera with a great commercial success too.

In 2009, their hit album American Idiot became a musical on Broadway.

In 2010, Armstrong joined the cast of American Idiot, which won two Tonys, for one week in the role of St. Jimmy. He replaced the original Broadway cast member Tony Vincent from September 28 to October 3. Armstrong returned to the role of St. Jimmy for 50 performances beginning January 1, 2011.

In November 2010, the punk rock band that Armstrong's son Joey is drummer in, Emily's Army, released their first album titled Don't Be a Dick through Adeline Records and Armstrong's musical production.

On July 26, 2012, it was announced that Armstrong would join Season 3 of NBC's The Voice as an assistant mentor for Christina Aguilera's team.

Armstrong is scheduled to write songs for These Paper Bullets, an adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing with rock-and-roll music. The Yale Repertory Theater will premiere the show in March 2014.

Armstrong also collaborated with the Comedy hip hop group Lonely Island in their song I Run NY from The Wack Album released on June 7, 2013. He will star alongside Leighton Meester in Frank Whaley's film Like Sunday, Like Rain, which began filming in September 2013.

Instruments

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 that he named "Blue" when he was eleven. His mother got "Blue" from George Cole who taught Armstrong electric guitar for 10 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." 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 used a 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 a number of its music videos such as "Longview", "Basket Case", "Brain Stew/Jaded", "Hitchin' a Ride", and 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 two of his own Les Paul Junior signature models from Gibson. The first has been in production since 2006 and is modeled closely after "Floyd", Armstrong's original 1956 Les Paul Junior. The second began production in 2012 and is a TV Yellow double-cutaway Junior. Both models include a Gibson "H-90" pickup, exclusive to Armstrong's models. Gibson has also released an extremely limited run of acoustic signature guitars.

He plays several other instruments as well. He recorded harmonica and mandolin parts in the past (Nimrod and Warning), piano parts on 21st Century Breakdown (2009), American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording (2011) and ¡Tré! (2012), and plays drums live from time to time.

Personal life

In 1990, Armstrong met Adrienne Nesser at one of Green Day's early performances in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They married on July 2, 1994; the day after their wedding, Adrienne discovered she was pregnant. Their first child, Joseph Marciano Armstrong, who was born on February 28, 1995, plays drums in a Berkeley-based band named Emily's Army. Their second child, Jakob Danger Armstrong, was born on September 12, 1998. Armstrong is the co-owner of Adeline Records, along with his wife.

Armstrong has identified himself as bisexual, saying in a 1995 interview with The Advocate, "I think I've always been bisexual. I mean, it's something that I've always been interested in. I think people are born bisexual, and it's just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of 'Oh, I can't.' They say it's taboo. It's ingrained in our heads that it's bad, when it's not bad at all. It's a very beautiful thing." In a later interview for Out magazine's April 2010 issue, Armstrong stated: "There were a lot of people who didn't accept it, who were homophobic." Armstrong continued, saying, "The fact that it's an issue is kind of phobic within itself. At some point, you gotta think, this should be something that's just accepted." Armstrong added: "I don't really classify myself as anything. And when it comes to sex, there are parts of me that are very shy and conservative. I want to respect my wife."

Armstrong was arrested in January 2003 for drinking and driving after being pulled over for speeding. He received a breathalyzer reading of 0.17%, more than twice the state's legal limit of 0.08%.

In April 2007, Armstrong and his wife Adrienne sent photos of their spring break working with Habitat for Humanity and a diary to GreenDay.net.

Armstrong supported Barack Obama during the 2008 and 2012 presidential election.

On September 1, 2011, Armstrong was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight for wearing his pants too low. Armstrong tweeted "Just got kicked off a Southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!" According to an eyewitness on the flight, who also happens to be a television news producer, a flight attendant asked Armstrong to pull his pants up. Armstrong said, "Don't you have better things to do than worry about that?" The flight attendant's response was, "Pull your pants up or you're getting off the plane." Southwest Airlines saw his tweet, rebooked Armstrong on another flight and released this statement, "We reached out to apologize. We followed up ... and understand from the customer the situation was resolved to his satisfaction."

On September 2, 2012, Armstrong was rushed to the hospital before the band was scheduled to perform at the I-Day Festival in Bologna, Italy. Armstrong was released from the hospital on September 4, reportedly suffering from gastric problems.

On September 21, 2012, during a Green Day performance at Las Vegas' iHeartRadio Music Festival, Armstrong became agitated onstage and stopped the band's set midway through their performance of the 1994 hit song "Basket Case". In an expletive-filled rant, Armstrong criticized the event's promoters for allegedly cutting short the band's performance before smashing his guitar and storming off stage. The band later issued a statement apologizing for the incident and clarifying that their set had not actually been cut short. The incident occurred just four days prior to the release of Green Day's ninth studio album, ¡Uno!

On September 23, 2012, two days following the incident at the iHeartRadio Music Festival, Green Day announced that Armstrong was seeking treatment for an unspecified substance abuse problem. As a result, scheduled appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live and The Ellen DeGeneres Show were canceled. According to Claudia Suarez Wright, Tre Cool's ex-wife and the mother of Armstrong's godson, Armstrong had been drinking heavily in Las Vegas prior to the iHeartMusic Festival, following approximately one year of sobriety. Green Day subsequently canceled all remaining concert dates for 2012 and early 2013 as Armstrong continued dealing with his personal problems. In late December, the band announced they would return to touring at the end of March. Armstrong later admitted that the substances he had been abusing were alcohol and prescription pills for anxiety and insomnia.

Awards

Discography

Green Day

• 39/Smooth (1990) " lead vocals, guitar
• Kerplunk! (1992) " lead vocals, guitar, drums on "Dominated Love Slave"
• Dookie (1994) " lead vocals, guitar, percussion on "All by Myself" (hidden track)
• Insomniac (1995) " lead vocals, guitar
• Nimrod (1997) " lead vocals, guitar, harmonica
• Warning (2000) " lead vocals, mandolin, guitar, harmonica
• American Idiot (2004) " lead vocals, guitar
• 21st Century Breakdown (2009) " lead vocals, guitar, piano
• American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording (2010) " vocals, guitar, piano
• ¡Uno!(2012) - lead vocals, guitar
• ¡Dos! (2012) - lead vocals, guitar
• ¡Tré! (2012) - lead vocals, guitar, piano

Pinhead Gunpowder

Vocals and guitar on all

• Jump Salty (1994)
• Carry the Banner (1995)
• Goodbye Ellston Avenue (1997)
• Shoot the Moon (EP) (1999)
• Compulsive Disclosure (2003)
• West Side Highway (EP) (2008)

The Network

• Money Money 2020 (2003) " guitar, vocals

Foxboro Hot Tubs

• Stop Drop and Roll!!! (2008) " lead vocals

Other media appearances

• King of the Hill (TV series, 1997) " Face
• Haunted (TV series, 2002) " Irv Kratser (cameo)
• Riding in Vans with Boys (film, 2003) " himself
• Live Freaky! Die Freaky! (film, 2006) " "Charles Hanson"
• Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (video game, 2006) " himself
• The Simpsons Movie (film, 2007) " himself
• Heart Like a Hand Grenade (film, 2008) " himself
• Green Day: Rock Band (video game, 2010) " himself (Singing voice, archive footage, & Virtual likeness/avatar)
• American Idiot (musical, 2010, 2011) " St. Jimmy
• One Nine Nine Four (film, 2012) - himself
• Nurse Jackie (TV Series, 2012) - Jackie's Pickup
• The Voice (TV Series, 2012) - himself (Mentor for Christina Aguilera)
• This Is 40 (film, 2012) - himself
• Cuatro (film, 2013) - himself
• Broadway Idiot (film, 2013) - himself
• Family Guy (TV Series, 2013)
• Anchorman: The Legend Continues (film, 2013)
• American Idiot (film, unknown date) - St. Jimmy
• Like Sunday, Like Rain (film, 2014)

Year	Award	Presented By
2008	50 Sexiest People in Rock (#1) (Readers Choice)	Kerrang!
2010	Top Frontmen of All Time (#25) (Readers Choice)	Gibson
2011	Best Punk Rock Singers (#1)	IMDb