Billie Joe Armstrong

1. Billie Joe Armstrong

Audakh Raid. 11th grade.

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Billie Joe Armstrong (born February 17, 1972) is an American rock
musician and occasional actor, best known as the lead vocalist, main
songwriter and lead guitarist for the American punk rock band Green Day.
He is also a guitarist and vocalist for the punk rock band Pinhead
Gunpowder and provides lead vocals for Green Day's side project
Foxboro Hot Tubs.
Raised in Rodeo, California, Armstrong developed an interest in music at
a young age, and recorded his first song at the age of five. He met Mike
Dirnt while attending elementary school, and the two instantly bonded
over their mutual interest in music, forming the band Sweet Children when
the two were fifteen years old. The band changed its name to Green Day,
and would later achieve massive commercial success. Armstrong has
also pursued musical projects outside of Green Day's work, including
numerous collaborations with other musicians as well as serving as the
primary vocalist for the bands Pinhead Gunpowder and Foxboro Hot Tubs

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Billie Joe Armstrong was born in Piedmont, California, a small
town surrounded by the city of Oakland, and was raised in
Rodeo,California, as the youngest of six children to Andrew "Andy"
Armstrong and Ollie Jackson. His father worked as a jazz
musician and truck driver for Safeway Inc. to support his family.
He died of esophageal cancer on September 10, 1982. The song
"Wake Me Up When September Ends" is a memorial to his father.
He has five older siblings: David, Alan, Marci, Hollie, and Anna.
His mother worked at Rod's Hickory Pit restaurant in El Cerrito.
Armstrong and Mike Dirnt's first live performance was at Rod's
Hickory Pit in 1987; their first performance under the name Green
Day was in Davis, a college town approximately an hour's drive
northeast of San Francisco Bay.

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In 1987, Armstrong formed a band called Sweet Children with childhood friend
Mike Dirnt at the age of 15. In the beginning, Dirnt and Armstrong both played
guitar, with John Kiffmeyer, also known as Al Sobrante, on drums, and Sean
Hughes on bass. After a few performances, Hughes left the band in 1988; Dirnt
then began playing bass and they became a three-piece band. They changed their
name to Green Day in April 1989, allegedly choosing the name because of their
fondness for marijuana. That same year, they released their debut EP 1,000 Hours
through Lookout! Records. They recorded their debut studio album 39/Smooth and
the extended play Slappy in 1990, which were later combined with 1,000 Hours
into the compilation 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours in 1991. Tré Cool
eventually became Green Day's drummer in late 1990 when Sobrante left Green
Day in order to go to college. California punk band Rancid's lead singer Tim
Armstrong asked Armstrong to join his band, but he refused due to the progress
with Green Day. Cool made his debut on Green Day's second album, Kerplunk.
With their next album, Dookie (1994), the band broke through into the mainstream,
and have remained one of the most popular rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s
with over 60 million records sold worldwide. In 2009, their hit American Idiot
became a musical on Broadway.

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8. Instruments

Armstrong's first guitar was a Cherry Red Hohner acoustic, which his father bought
for him. He then received his first electric guitar, a Fernandes Stratocaster that he
named "Blue" when he was eleven. His mother got "Blue" from George Cole who
taught Armstrong electric guitar for 10 years. Armstrong says in a 1995 MTV
interview, "Basically, it wasn't like guitar lessons because I never really learned how
to read music. So he just taught me how to put my hands on the thing." Cole
bought the guitar new from David Margen of the band Santana. Cole gave
Armstrong a Bill Lawrence Humbucking pickup and told him to install the pickup in
the bridge position. After the pickup was destroyed at Woodstock ‘94, Armstrong
then used a Duncan JB model. "Armstrong fetishized his teacher's guitar, partly
because the blue instrument had a sound quality and Van Halen–worthy fluidity he
couldn't get from his little red Hohner. He prized it mostly, however, because of his
relationship with Cole, another father figure after the death of Andy." He toured with
this guitar from the band's early days and still uses it to this day. "Blue" also
appears in a number of its music videos such as "Longview", "Basket Case", "Brain
Stew/Jaded", "Hitchin' a Ride", and most recently in "Minority".

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Today, Armstrong mainly uses Gibson and Fender guitars. Twenty
of his Gibson guitars are Les Paul Junior models from the mid- to
late-1950s. His Fender collection includes: Stratocaster,
Jazzmaster, Telecaster, a Gretsch hollowbody and his copies of
"Blue". He states that his favorite guitar is a 1956 Gibson Les Paul
Junior he calls "Floyd". He bought this guitar in 2000 just before
recording their album Warning.
Armstrong also has his own line of Les Paul Junior guitars from
Gibson, modeled closely after “Floyd”, Armstrong's original 1956
Les Paul Junior.
He plays several other instruments as well. He recorded
harmonica and mandolin parts in the past, piano parts on 21st
Century Breakdown, and plays drums live from time to time.

11. Personal life

In 1990, Armstrong met Adrienne Nesser at one of Green Day's early performances in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. They married on July 2, 1994, and the day after their wedding,
Adrienne discovered she was pregnant. Their first child, Joseph Marciano Armstrong, who was
born on February 28, 1995, plays drums in a Berkeley-based band named Emily's Army. Their
second child, Jakob Danger Armstrong, was born on September 12, 1998.Billie Joe is the coowner of Adeline Records, along with his wife.
Armstrong has identified himself as bisexual, saying in a 1995 interview with The Advocate, "I
think I've always been bisexual. I mean, it's something that I've always been interested in. 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." In a later interview for Out magazine's April 2010
issue, Armstrong stated: "There were a lot of people who didn't accept it, who were
homophobic." Armstrong continued, saying, "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." Armstrong
added: "I don't really classify myself as anything. And when it comes to sex, there are parts of
me that are very shy and conservative. I want to respect my wife."
Armstrong was arrested in January 2003 for drinking and driving after being pulled over for
speeding. He received a breathalyzer reading of 0.17%, more than twice the nation-wide legal
limit of 0.08%.

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In April 2007, Armstrong and his wife Adrienne sent photos of their spring
break working with Habitat for Humanity and a diary to GreenDay.net.
Armstrong supported Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential
election.
On September 1, 2011, Armstrong was kicked off a Southwest Airlines
flight for "saggy pants". Armstrong tweeted "Just got kicked off a
Southwest flight because my pants sagged too low!" According to an
eyewitness on the flight, who also happens to be a television news
producer, a flight attendant asked Armstrong to pull his pants up.
Armstrong said, "Don't you have better things to do than worry about
that?" The flight attendant's response was, "Pull your pants up or you're
getting off the plane." Southwest airlines saw his tweet, rebooked
Armstrong on another flight and released this statement, "We reached out
to apologize. We followed up ... and understand from the customer the
situation was resolved to his satisfaction."