Looks like a lot of people had time to listen to Billie Joe Armstrong whine.
Saturday marks 20 years since the release of Green Day’s Dookie, not just a seminal release in pop punk history, but one of its definitive efforts. It has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
While the fact Green Day has existed more than 25 years isn’t hard to believe, the notion that Dookie, an album that relishes in youthful churlishness yet retains a knowing poignance, has seen two decades is hard to believe.
Dookie launched a sea change in mainstream acceptance of punk rock that rippled across the remainder of the 1990s, helping to fill the vacuum created by the decline of grunge after Kurt Cobain’s April 1994 death.
A glut of California punk bands came to clutter rock radio in its wake, including The Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, Blink-182 and fellow East Bay punkers Rancid.
It even opened a wide enough gulf for third-wave ska punk’s flirtation with mainstream appeal, shining a spotlight on the likes of No Doubt, Sublime, Reel Big Fish and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
It’s a big year for anniversaries for Green Day, with its rock opera American Idiot turning 10 in September, an effort that rejuvenated a then-flagging career.
The band has endured its share of ups and downs since the release of Dookie. The albums that followed, Insomniac, Nimrod. and Warning, each saw diminishing returns, making 2004′s American Idiot a dark horse success as much for its chart placing as well as the status of the band that created it.
The decade since American Idiot has been rocky, too. The shaky 21st Century Breakdown followed it in 2009 and next came a milquetoast trio of 2012 albums, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!. Those were overshadowed by Armstrong’s stint in rehab after an incident at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas when he tore into the event’s promoters before smashing his guitar and leaving the stage.
Armstrong has bounced back since, cutting a record of Everly Brothers covers with Norah Jones and, most recently, harmonizing splendidly with Miranda Lambert for a performance of the brothers’ “When Will I Be Loved” at Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony.
But it’s Dookie, the group’s first album for major label Reprise, that launched them to widespread acclaim.
It also produced a backlash, some branding them as sellouts for making punk palatable for a larger audience. As a seeming response to those cries, Armstrong and company dusted off “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” an acoustic ballad written in the band’s infancy, which rose to become one of its most famous songs.
Perhaps part of the enduring success of Dookie, more than the trend it ignited, is how it has retained its youthful exuberance despite the movement of time.
“Longview” (left), the first of five notable singles from the record, was a hit on MTV back when showing videos was a viable network strategy. The song details intense malaise, which struck a chord with a young generation raised on the likes of MTV and other cable channels.
“I’m so damn bored, I’m going blind,” Armstrong sings in the chorus.
Although not the highest charting, perhaps the most enduring single from Dookie is “Basket Case,” which opens with the line about listening to Armstrong whine.
Years later, Armstrong was diagnosed with panic disorder, making “Basket Case” a fountain of truth.
That’s perhaps the most punk thing about Dookie, no matter how much acclaim it received. It’s a genre that congeals the alienated and afflicted, the outcasts who feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Dookie spoke to those who felt they weren’t being heard and weren’t being represented.
That’s why Dookie remains timeless despite the career roller coaster its creators have rode during the past two decades.
1994 Billie Joe Armstrong photo by Luisdaniel Reyna