Billie Joe Armstrong
Full Name: Billie Joe ArmstrongAge: 33
Birthday: February 13, 1972
Eye Color: green
Hair Color: dyed black, but naturally redish brown
Heritage: ------
Hometown: Rodeo, California, USA
Role: vocalist and main lyricist of Green Day
Additional Info
Billie Joe is the youngest of six children, and also the wildest. His father Andy was a part-time jazz musician as well as a truck driver for Safeway. Meanwhile, Billie Joe's mother Ollie was a waitress at a local restaurant known as Rod's Hickory Pit. At the age of five, Billie started singing, and he would go around to hospitals and sing to the patients there to help make them feel better. He then got to record his first song, "Look for Love," at a local recording company called Fiat Records.Billie Joe got his first electric guitar, the infamous 'Blue,' a Fernandes Stratocaster when he was eleven. To this day he still uses it, and also has several replicas of it. When Billie Joe was just ten years old, his father died of cancer to the esophagus which had spread throughout his body. However, Ollie continued to work at Rod's Hickory Pit in order to support her six kids. Two years after Andy's death, Billie's mother remarried to a man whom Billie and his five siblings detested.
At the age of ten, Billie Joe had also met Mike Dirnt in their school cafeteria in 1982. While sleepovers at each other's houses, the two boys would play songs by old heavy metal warhorses such as Ozzy Osbourne, Def Leppard, and Van Halen.
Billie Joe wrote his first song, titled "Why Do You Want Him," a song about his mother and his step father, when he was fourteen. When he was fifteen, Billie formed a punk band with Mike and a drummer named John. They named themselves Sweet Children, and their first gig was actually at Rod's Hickory Pit. Half way through his senior year, and one day before his 18th birthday, Billie Joe dropped out of high school, Pinole Valley High School, to devote all of his time to the band. At that point, he knew what he wanted to do, and that was play music. Also at that point in time, Billie Joe had the nickname 'Two Dollar Bill,' which referred to the price of the joints he sold. (Yes, our beloved Billie Joe smoked weed.)
By 1990, John left the band to attend college. Billie Joe and Mike were faced with the task of finding themselves a new drummer. They found their perfect fit, Tré Cool, who was a Gilman Street veteran, and who also was playing in the Lookouts. After attaining Tré as their new drummer, Sweet Children then changed their name to Green Day.
Not long after, Billie Joe and his band were traveling all over the United States in an old bookmobile--with Tré's dad at the wheel. The band did this with very little money, and staying at fans' houses as well. In Minneapolis, still in 1990, Billie Joe first laid eyes on his future wife, a girl named Adrienne Nesser. After dating for a while, they got married on July 2, 1994..at a five minute ceremony. The day after their wedding, she found out she was pregnant. Their first son, Joseph Marcicano Armstrong was born in March of 1995. Three years later on September 12, 1998, another boy, Jakob Danger was added to the Armstrong family. Today, Billie Joe, Adrienne, Joseph, and Jakob reside in Berkeley, California.
Fun Facts
♠ Billie Joe and his wife Adrienne spent their honeymoon in the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, CA.♠ Billie Joe walks 6 miles a day.
♠ During a Warped Tour, Billie Joe broke into an Unwritten Law tour bus, then crashed a motorcycle he stole from them.
♠ Billie Joe played football for John Swett High School; his number was #8.
♠ When talking about future plans, Billie talked about planning on being a soccer coach.
♠ Billie named his cat Basil Expedition from Austin Powers.
♠ Billie wrote "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" in his son Jakob's room.
♠ When Billie was 15, he wasn't allowed into an Operation Ivy concert. One of the band members heard him say he wasn't allowed in, and they all came out to personally escort him into the show.
♠ Billie Joe never owned an acoustic guitar until after Green Day's first tour. He had three electrics when he was growing up before the band started making money.
♠ Billie Joe and Matthew Fox (Lost) are really close friends and once were on an episode of Haunted together.
♠ On 'The Making of American Idiot', they spelt Billie Joe's name wrong; they spelt it 'Billy'.
♠ Billie Joe is friends with Bam Margera.
♠ In second grade, two girls beat up Billie so that he would date them.
♠ For the video Jaded, which is about being stoned and how you feel when you're stoned, Billie decided to get high while shooting the video, just to get the feel for the song.
♠ Billie HATES Slipknot. He said that the masks "Are so fucking retarded." Once, a fan threw some screwed up mask on the stage and when Billie picked it up, he looked in disgust and said, "We're not fucking Slipknot you asshole!"
♠ He does NOT like Eminem.
♠ Billie Joe is TERRIFIED of guns because, early in 2001, he was mugged at gunpoint.
♠ Billie Joe guest starred on the Hawrd Stern Radio Show on December 9, 2000.
Quotes
♠ (about how he puts his eyeliner on) "I put the eyeliner stick under a match for a few seconds, then I draw it all over and squeeze my eyes together. The aim is to make it look like I put it on during an earthquake."♠ "I think I can do The Who."
♠ "We put the fun back in dysfunctional."
♠ "You say it to my face, you might be pickin' yourself off the ground."
♠ "All saints are gonna be there? Tré, you might get laid!"
♠ "[Our 'Waiting' video] was totally a failure. [MTV] doesn't show any videos anymore. If we had a booty video--if we had, like, McG, with girls shaking their ass in the video-- It would probably get played. Actually...I'm just really bitter right now."
♠ "It's fun until someone gets hurt...then it's hilarious."
♠ "Punk rock is dead...and I fucking killed it."
♠ "You think your life is tough? Try being a parent!"
♠ "I'm not gonna say anything inspirational; I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot."
♠ "School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect; so why practice?"
"I sound like an Englishman impersonating an American impersonating an Englishman."
♠ "B-I-L-L-I-E-J-O-E. My real name is Billie Joe. And it's southern. My mom's from Oklahoma and that's how I got the name."
♠ "A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say, 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's punk?', and I say, 'No! That's trendy!'"
♠ "My mom was from Oklahoma, hence the name BIllie Joe...It's not William Joseph; it's just Billie Joe."
♠ "They sound like they're choking on a hair ball." [about Slipknot]
♠ "I hate celebrities. I really hate them."
♠ "Never run in the rain with your socks on."
"I'm still wearing the same pants I had in eleventh grade."
♠ "Attack your instruments. Don't let them attack you."
♠ [at a foreign concert] "What? You can heckle me if you want; it's okay, I won't understand!"
♠ "History will tell if we were really a good band or just a one day fly."
♠ [When asked in 1992 where they would be in three years.] "I'm going to point a gun at Tré. Tré is going to point a gun at Mikey. Mike is going to point a gun at me.
Mike: We're going to count to three and pull the trigger.