Green Day got banned from their home punk club for signing a major-label deal
On September 3, 1993, Green Day played Berkeley's 924 Gilman Street under the fake name Blair Hess, and then the club banned them for good. Their offence was signing with Reprise Records. A year later their major-label debut, Dookie, began its run to more than 20 million US copies shipped.
Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt were both 15 when they started a band in 1987, rehearsing in a classmate's garage in Rodeo, California, under the name Desecrated Youth. Within months they had become Sweet Children, and on October 17, 1987, they played their first show at Rod's Hickory Pit in Vallejo. When the bassist left, Dirnt moved from guitar to bass, and drummer John Kiffmeyer joined in 1988.
Larry Livermore of Lookout! Records caught an early gig and signed them. Just before their debut EP, 1,000 Hours, came out in April 1989, they dropped Sweet Children to avoid being mixed up with a local act called Sweet Baby, choosing instead a piece of Bay Area slang for a day spent doing nothing but smoking marijuana. Armstrong later called it about the worst band name imaginable. Their first album, 39/Smooth, followed in 1990, and when Kiffmeyer left for Humboldt State University, Tré Cool took over on drums.
The second album, Kerplunk, sold 50,000 copies in the US on an independent label, which set off a bidding war. The band chose Reprise largely because producer Rob Cavallo, whose work with the Muffs they admired, was the one industry figure they felt they could talk to. Armstrong said later there was no route back to the punk scene either way, so he simply pushed forward.
Their 2004 rock opera American Idiot sold six million copies in the US and reached Broadway in 2010, where the stage version won two of its three Tony nominations. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame membership followed in 2015, the first year they qualified. By 2024 they had sold roughly 75 million records worldwide and won five Grammy Awards from 20 nominations, including Record of the Year for Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Source: Green Day
