Green Day Authority

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“I think it's the energy... and we all still have hair.”

“We weren't allowed to play 924 Gilman Street for a while because we signed with a major label with Dookie. They only support young bands, which is cool, you have to accept that. Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys once had both of his legs broken there because he was supposedly a sellout...”

“My dad was a jazz drummer. He would go to bars, play, smoke pot with his friends, what people in jazz do. I never really knew him too well. And my mom was into country music; she always listened to Hank Williams. I don't think they disliked rock - they were really into music in general. I have a lot of older siblings; I've got a brother who's old enough to be my father. And he's listened to a lot of stuff from Guess Who to the Who. And my mom was kind of an Elvis freak, so the first album I ever bought was Elvis Presley's The Sun Sessions.”

"I think we pushed ourselves as hard as we possibly could. It was probably the most difficult record to make... the longest process we've ever undertaken, definitely. Each song has its own character and identity, so we wanted to be able to bring that out as much as possible.”

“Of course when you try to push your own boundaries or you change a little bit there's a sense of vulnerability. But we didn't want to stay the same and go the same route this time. You know, no matter what, there is always a repercussion with everything you do. If we put a record out that sounded like Dookie critics would say that we're a one-trick pony and thanks for another mediocre punk rock record. But now that we've changed, people think we're soft and going away from our punk rock roots. Basically you can't please everybody all the time. You know, I am really happy with it and that is all that matters.”

"I have this great sense of relief right now. I have so much fun listening to Nimrod. I think it's a great record. It's one of the best records that's been put out in the last ten years, that's my personal feeling. I've never really said stuff like that before, but I know it. I know it's great, and that's really the only thing that matters."

“If there's one band I hate, it's fucking Slipknot with their ridiculous masks. My God, I can hardly contain myself... a nine-person pile of shit.”

“We're generally very impatient people and had to hold back a lot so we didn't throw out any quick shots straight after American Idiot – ten songs in three weeks. But we wanted to know how much we were capable of musically. Waiting for a song to develop is the hardest thing of all.”

“In the best way, it's humbling to be surrounded by people who know you so well. You have to get used to the fact that you definitely won't be treated like a rock star at home – it's a bit of a blow to your ego at first, but then it's very liberating.”

"I sacrificed every other aspect of my life for Nimrod. I put everything I had into it - we all did. We didn't think about anything else."

“We’ve been creative partners since pretty much the first day we ever spoke to each other. Our first conversation – I don’t know why we had this conversation, I don’t know why it happened this way, but the first thing we talked about was… songwriting. And we were 10. Mike told me he wrote a song, and then I told him I wrote something and I play guitar and then y’know… he came over to my house and we would just make these bad comedy tapes on little cassettes while mom was working the grave yard shift.”

"You can scare yourself with ambition – having the audacity to want to be as good as John Lennon or Paul McCartney or Joe Strummer. There has been so much great shit before me I feel like a student. Who the fuck do I think I am? But you have to battle past that. It's the people who are overconfident who are the ones putting out the biggest piles of shit. If you're at that place where you're working hard but don't feel like you know what you're doing anymore, then you're on to something."

“If there's one thing I can't understand, it's this habit of constantly taking videos and photos with cell phones everywhere. You're on stage and you only see phones. I always say, ‘Go on, take a few pictures and then put the damn thing away and let's finally dance and have fun.’ I mean – that's what we're here for!”