Billie Joe Armstrong
Billie Joe Armstrong
Billie Joe Armstrong is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor who is best known as the lead vocalist, primary songwriter, and guitarist of the 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth17 February 1972
CityOakland, CA
CountryUnited States of America
A guy walks up to me and asks, "What's Punk?". So I kick over a garbage can and say. "That's punk!". So he kicks over the garbage can and says, "That's Punk?", and I say, "No that's trendy!
Punk is dead to anyone who didn't get it in the first place
Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle.
A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.
The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don't think what you're doing is punk rock.
Punk will never be dead to me. It's my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me.
A man once asked me, what's punk? I kicked over a trash can and said that's punk. He kicked over a trash can and then asked me again, Is that punk? I replied no. That's just trendy.
When I signed that major-label contract when I was 20 years old. I did it because I wanted to play music for the rest of my life. That's every 20-year-old's dream - to do whatever the hell you want.
We put everything we had into this record, just like we do with every other record that we make.
Formats are constantly changing, and there are really no rules for the way you put your records out anymore.
School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect. But nobody's perfect, so why practice?
There are always young bands playing in their garages. A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.
That's where all good music comes from, I think - anything that's likely to have an impact on pop culture comes from a point where there's no expectation of it becoming anything other than personal.
We've been a band for 16 years. This is what you dream about.