I was SO overwhelmingly proud last year when I heard that Green Day had gotten into the Hall of Fame. I’ve loved them since I was 8 or 9, which must be going on nearly 13 years now and so seeing this is like seeing old friends. Without sounding like a soppy punk rock sob story, I loved them in school when everyone made fun of me for liking them but I stuck with them, even now after all this time.
I have very fond memories of being absolutely besotted with them. Like when I was in the car with my Teaching Assistant once coming back from a field trip and she asked what my favourite type of music was, which I immediately blurted out ‘Green Day! I love them!’. She then told me that her son loved them too, and she had a CD in my car. The CD that my parents had said I couldn't have due to the language in it. To be fair, I was only 8. My TA then said to me, ‘I’ll put it on for a bit, but you mustn't tell anyone!’. To which I promised and then grinned from ear to ear.
Another memory was when I was sat at the dinner table at my friends house. The friend who introduced the band to me. Again, I must have only been nine or ten and I had the lyrics to ‘Longview’ stuck in my head. I began to quietly sing the lyrics to the oh-so-catchy chorus, ‘Bite my lip and close my eyes take me away to paradise...’ To which my friend, who was a few years older than me and knew exactly what those words meant, promptly kicked me under the table and I very quickly shut my mouth.
My auntie, who was my hero, bought me my 1st Green Day album, poster and T-Shirt all in one Christmas. American Idiot had just come out and I fell in love straight away. I remember begging her to persuade Mum and Dad to let me have this album. I needed this album. And, when it came to that Christmas morning, I unwrapped that paper to a brand new CD and it was as if it was glowing in my hands. I will always and forever love you for that Auntie Christine, I miss you.
From that young age to my late teenage years I had a wonderful, but busy, collection of 40-50 posters on my wall. At least 3/4′s of them were of Green Day. For nearly nine years of my life I used to walk into my room, with a poster of the trio on my door, to Tre, Billie and Mike’s faces every day. They were there always. Even when I decided to grow up a bit and have a less messy looking room, I kept every poster for when I have my own house and I can frame them. There’s still a few little pictures at the top of my door at my parents house where I’d used up all their printing ink just so I could have every picture of them in my room.
Three years ago I got to see them at Reading Festival 2013. My favourite album that they've written (so far) is Dookie. I cherished that CD, I still have it in mint condition in my desk. When Billie Joe announced that they were going to play Dookie from start to finish to mark the anniversary, all my birthday’s and Christmas’s came at once. How many people can say that they heard their all time favourite childhood heroes play their favourite childhood album from start to finish live? I’d say not many. It was 10 years after I had fallen in love, and it was 10 years too long to wait to hear them play live. Ironically, I was walking through the festival before the band had played and I bumped into someone I recognised. It was one of the people I used to go to school with, someone who I poignantly remember specifically making fun of me because of my music taste.
Green Day were my life for many years. And they will forever be in my life as an influence, something to turn to and as old friends.
Thank you Billie, Tre, Mike and Jason, for everything.
Anna, a member of the Idiot Nation.
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