Billie Joe Armstrong on Sexuality: Masterpost
We made this masterpost of Billie’s quotes on sexuality since anons were requesting them at the time, but it wasn’t actually all accurate. This is a very personal subject and it’s important that fans respect it, so here’s a new one with checked sources and some additions.
The Advocate, 1995 (x) (x): “I think I’ve always been bisexual. I mean, it’s something that I’ve always been interested in. I think everybody kind of fantasizes about the same sex. 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. I think mostly it’s been kept in my head. I’ve never really had a relationship with another man.”
SPIN Magazine, 1997 (x): “Coming Clean is a song about being bi-curious, having doubts about my sexuality, wondering whether or not I was gay.”
Out Magazine, 2010 (x): (Fans still fill message board threads with fights about just how gay Armstrong actually is.) “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.”
After almost 16 years of monogamous marriage to the same woman, he says he’s not sure if he’d still call himself bisexual. “But I’d never say that I’m not,” he quickly adds. “I don’t really classify myself as anything.”
“My wife Googled ‘Billie Joe Armstrong bisexual.’ She’s like ‘Yeah, there are about 20 pictures of you kissing different guys.’ There’s one side of me that thinks of it like the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, where he plants one on Elmer J. Fudd. But there’s that other side of it, like, ‘wow, you’re doing that in an arena somewhere like Hartford, Connecticut.’ It resonates in different ways.”
Rolling Stone, 2016 (x): Why did you turn the gender around in that song’s third verse? The whore is a “he”.
“I wanted to challenge myself and whoever the listener might be. It’s also looking at the world and saying, ‘It’s not as black and white as you think. This isn’t your grandfather’s prostitute – or maybe it was.’ This record touches on bisexuality a lot.”
That is especially true in “Coming Clean.” It starts with the line, “Seventeen and strung out on confusion.” Were you 17 when you wrote it?
“No. It could be any number. It was a song about questioning myself. There are these other feelings you may have about the same sex, the opposite sex, especially being in Berkeley and San Francisco then. People are acting out what they’re feeling: gay, bisexual, transgender, whatever. And that opens up something in society that becomes more acceptable. Now we have gay marriage becoming recognized.”
Did you come to any conclusions, through that song, about your sexuality? Or were you just interested in the questions?
“I think it’s a process of discovery. I was willing to try anything [laughs]. But I got married to Adrienne a year after that.”
If you know of more quotes, submit them with sources!
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