Song Exploder - Green Day - Basket Case

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Green Day is a punk band from the East Bay in California. Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool have been playing music together since 1987. They’ve sold over 90 million records. They’ve won four Grammys, including twice for Best Rock Album. They put out their first album in 1990, and their second album, Kerplunk!, in 1991. And then, they moved to a major label and in 1994 they put out their third album, Dookie, which was huge. It helped bring punk into the mainstream. And this month is its 30th anniversary. So for this episode, I talked to Billie Joe Armstrong about the making of one of Green Day’s biggest hits of all time: “Basket Case." Coming up, you’ll also hear from Rob Cavallo, who produced the album. Plus, you’ll hear two different demo versions of “Basket Case,” the first of which is basically a totally different song. Billie Joe Amstrong traces the history of “Basket Case,” from its origins as a cassette recording in a punk basement, all the way to becoming a song that helped define an era of music. For more, visit songexploder.net/green-day.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. This episode has some explicit language, including mention of drug use. Green Day is a punk band from the East Bay in California. Billy Joe Armstrong, Mike Dernt, and Trey Cool have been playing music together since 1987. They've sold over 90 million records. They've won four Grammys, including twice for Best Rock album. They put out their first album in 1990.

and their second album, Karpunk, in 1991. And then they moved to a major label, and in 1994, they put out their third album, Duky, which was huge. It helped bring punk into the mainstream. And this month is its 30th anniversary. So for this episode, I talked to Billy Joe Armstrong about the making of one of Green Day's biggest hits of all time, Basketcase. Coming up, you'll also hear from Rob Cavallo, who produced the album.

Plus, you'll hear two different demo versions of Basketcase, the first of which is basically a totally different song. Billy Joe Armstrong traces the history of Baskett Case, from its origins as a cassette recording in a punk basement, all the way to becoming a song that helped define an era of music. My name is Billy Joe Armstrong, and I'm in the band Green Day. The other fellas that are in the band are Mike Dern, who's the bass player, and Trey Kuhl is the world's most dangerous drummer.

after Kruplunk came out, I think our confidence as a band like really got better. We went on tour. The shows were packed and clubs and basements and vets halls and wherever we could do all these shows at the time. We all practically lived together. Trey was living with this other band called East Bay Weed Company and I started kind of crashing on the couch over there.

There was a set of college kids that were on the first floor. and on the top floor. But the punks were living in the basement. When I got home from the tour, I had a little bit of money, so I spent it on a new amp and a four track. And I was like, I'll teach myself how to record demos.

I had this melody in my head for a while. And I wanted to have this sort of grand song about a love story. I think it was around 19, I thought in 1992, early 93, when the song was first written. I thought the song could have this intro that would be like a ballad that would blast into the full band coming in, making it like a rocker. I did a beatbox effect with my mouth to create the drum sound. But the true confession is I was on crystal meth when I wrote the lyrics to it.

And I thought I was writing the greatest song ever. As you know, with drugs, they wear off. And then I felt like I written the worst song ever. I thought that the lyrics were just embarrassingly bad. I had a few songs before that I'd written on drugs. But this one was the most pitiful I felt after. And so I just kind of let the song go for a while because I felt so gross about it.

But, you know, I was it, maybe it'll come back. You know, I was 19, 20, 21 years old when the song started to be written. Starting the writing of Doogie, I think we were leaning less about, like, love songs and trying to make more of a statement of like everyday life and feelings and emotions that you go through that people can identify with.

And so I think I've just got the courage to get into it again, trying to write the lyrics. And it was the best decision I'd ever made probably as a songwriter. The approach sort of changed where now the song, it was about panic attacks. I am one of those melodramatic, And I think I just went from there. Sometimes I get myself the creeps.

And just started to kind of piece it together. Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. I'll keep setting it up. I think I'm cracking up. Am I just paranoid? Have I just said? I had panic attacks. since I was about 10 or 11 years old.

But that was in the 80s and no one really knew what those things were. I guess they would call it mental health now, but back then it was just like, you're having a panic attack, wait till it's over. You know, breathe into this paper bag. So there were times that I would wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks

and I would ride my bike through the streets to kind of let it wear off. And so that was one way of dealing with it for me was, you know, writing lyrics about, You feel like you're going crazy, but you ride it out, and you're not. Grasping to control. And then me, Trey, and Mike, we started to put it together. We went to Andy Ernst Studio Art of Ears in San Francisco.

We demoed it with, like, a few other songs. But the parts that Mike wanted to play on bass, he had already written all of the drum, fills even to that point were written. You can really hear it on the demo. At the time, we were talking about doing something maybe on a major label because we just felt like, you know, there are so many other bands that were getting signed that, you know, I think for us, comparing ourselves to them, we felt like we were better. And so we went and met with Elliot Kahn and Jeff Salzman. They became our managers. and they said, we have your old records,

but it would be great for people here your demo. So they made a bunch of copies of it, and they started sending it around. The first time I ever heard Green Day, I was sitting there mixing a self-titled album called The Muffs. And, you know, when you're sitting there, and it's like two in the morning and your eyeballs are falling out, and the manager of Green Day comes in,

and he gives you a cassette tape, and he says, you got to listen to this band. It's great, right? And I'm like, dude, I'm mixing this. record, I'm dying over here. I'm trying to beat the deadline. I'm tired. My first instinct was to take the cassette and throw it in the garbage. And then this little voice inside of my head said, don't be an asshole. It could be the next big thing. I'm Rob Cavallo and I was both the A&R guy and the producer of Green Day's album, Duky. Elliot Khan and Jeff Saltzman knew him because they represented the muffs. And Rob produced

their first album that we all really loved. And so he came over to listen to us rehearse. I was listening to every Beatles record at the time. And there was a rumor out there, which is true, that I could play all the Beatles songs. And then Billy had me a guitar, and they were like, can you play this? Can you play this? Can you play that? You know, play the ticket to ride or something. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's just like this. And then I think we started jamming with him because he was a really good musician, a really good guitar player. And I signed him to, reprise Warner Brothers Records. We recorded the album at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley.

Definitely the fanciest recording studio I'd ever been in. Seeing all that technical gear was like, wow. The managers came to me and they said, you know, the band doesn't really know what it's like to do what you're about to do. But having seen them play in their rehearsal, I knew how great they were. And I said to them something like, you know, just play it like you're on stage. You know, we told him we don't want to sort of make a record where it's overproduced.

But we want this to sound bigger. You know, we want the drums to be large, the guitars to be large, and you can hear everything more so than you could hear on our last records. When I heard the drums for the first time, we had different room mics around in the rooms, like they all captured a different sound, some sounded more distant, some sounded closer up. Some we purposely made them more nasty sounding. It makes the drum set just all of a sudden

feel like it's got extra fangs and just, ah, it comes at you, you know. You know, Mike's bass lines felt so musical, whereas almost like he was playing the lead as a bass player. But he would play so. so hard just to make every note shine through. And I remember Rob going, God, he's got these like gorilla hands. Then Billy also, who plays like a madman so hard,

the way he's chugging on that guitar, I mean, it just defined a whole style for like a whole generation of music right there. Trey would sort of try to match the rhythm of my vocal with his kick drum. Sometimes I give myself a creepie. And then Mike would lock in with Trey, and then he would play these bass lines that would also do the same thing. It was actually one of the reasons why I signed him.

Each guy has a personality on their own instrument. I went to a shrink to analyze my dreams. She says it's lack of sex that's springing me down. I think that basket case, the title, just came immediately. I've always been self-deprecating. Maybe it's like a defense mechanism. You know, it's like that thing, take yourself down before someone takes you down. So calling myself a basket case, it was empowering to be able to show people all the zits and imperfections that you have.

I went to a whore. He shed my life's on board. So quit my wedding because it sprang in her town. I changed that lyric from I went to a whore. She said my life's abhor. That's what you hear on the demo. I think at some point during rehearsals, I just gender switched the whole thing.

And I think I just wanted to get people to think in terms of what they think shrinks and whores are. It got me thinking differently about how to approach gender and their roles. And so, yeah, I think that's a big moment on that song was the decision to switch that from what you hear on the demo. It all keeps setting up.

I think I'm cracking up. Am I just paranoid? A yeah, yeah. I didn't really know what to say in the part that says, yeah, yeah. It always was sort of a mystery to people who are like, what are you saying right there? What are you saying right there?

I'm like, I'm literally saying nothing. It's just something that kind of rhymed with they're on their own. What I felt back then was that we had a good song, but I felt uncertainties. Is this song going to make the record? Is it going to be, you know, everything else felt really good and fluid? But that song was like one of the more odd songs, like I never thought that was going to end up being a favorite song at all. Jeffrey Weiss was our product manager from Warner Brothers Records.

After he heard the first few songs, he took me into the hallway and he says, I can't believe it. This album's going to be fucking huge. I mean, dude, I am not kidding you. You have no idea what you just did. This fucking album is ginormous. It's going to outsell everything. Around late spring of 1994 when it came out, it was just going crazy on alternative radio.

and we were just sort of blown away by it. But we weren't playing it live. I felt like it was too hard to play live, and we had our set list, and we were just going to stick to it. And then I think we were on Lola Palooza. Then the management called us, and they were like,

you have to play the song live. You have to play the song. And we were like, okay. I think we just started feeding off the energy of the crowd because people just have this kind of connection to it as this kind of an anthem, which I didn't know I was writing. It's so gratifying when you can write something

that you feel so vulnerable and deeply about and people can connect with. It's like you shared something about yourself that was a private moment, and then it helps you know that there's other people that have the same feelings and emotions and are willing to celebrate our, dysfunction. Coming up, you'll hear how all these ideas and elements came together in the final song.

I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kaysh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing

in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website.

Rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexplor.net slash live. Thanks. And now here's Basketcase by Green Day in its entirety. to the bone no doubt about it Sometimes I give myself the creeps Sometimes my mind place streaks on me It all keeps setting up I think I'm cracking out Just paranoid

Why I just stop To a shrink He says it's lack of sex That's bringing me down I went to a horn Learned my life's a boy To quit my wife and listen break Sometimes I give myself the

On me Learned Yeah, you know So I better hope Keepsettie Learn more visit Visit songexploader.net You'll find links to buy or stream

Basketcase And you can watch the music video If you like this episode You might also like the episode With Cheap Trick from 2021 It's about the song Surrender which Green Day covers sometimes. You'll find that and all the other episodes of the show

at SongExploder.net. This episode was produced by Craig Ely, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX and network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about all of our shows

at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on social media at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexplloter.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.