Biographic - Sunday January 22, 2017 Comic Strip Licensing and Permissions

Transcript

Billie Joe Armstrong was born in Oakland, California, on February 17, 1972, the youngest of six kids. He was only 5 years old when he recorded the single "Look For Love" for a local label. He got his first guitar when he was 11, a blue Fender replica that he still plays to this day. In his early teens, he formed a punk trio called Sweet Children, with his best friend Mike Dirnt on bass. By 1990, Tre Cool occupied the drum stool, and the group had taken the name Green Day. Constant touring, with the guys crammed into a converted bookmobile and Tre's Dad on driving duty, helped Green Day graduate from cult status and small Indie Label releases to a major record deal the "Dookie" album was released in 1994, catapulting the band into the mainstream, selling 10 million copies in the U.S. alone and earning them a Grammy award. The subsequent albums "Insomniac" "Nimrod" and "Warning" consolodated that success and spawned the chart-topping singles "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" and "Minority." But just as it seemed that Green Days' star might be on the wane, the trip roared back with 2004's critically acclaimed "American Idiot", a worldwide smash that contained a string of chart-topping hits. Lengthy tours and sundry side projects- including an "American Idiot" stage musical- meant that the band didn't release another studio album until "21st Century Breakdown" In 2009, the album hit the top spot in more than dozen countries in 2012, they released the albums "Uno!" "Dos!" "Tre" in quick succession inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 2015m they topped the U.S. album charts in 2016 with "Revolution Radio" Green Day has sold 85 million records worldwide and won five Grammys. Early 2017 sees the band embark on another world tour.

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