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Green Day finally emerge from the shadow of Dookie ...
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Page 2
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Billie Joe plans the second coming of Jesus of Suburbia ...
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"Bullet in a Bible" not only marks the end of an astonishing chapter for Green Day, but Bayer as well. In a rare move, the director, who had helmed only a couple of clips over the past few years (Good Charlotte's "Hold On" in 2003, Papa Roach's "Time and Time Again" in 2002), was hired for all five of American Idiot's videos (the fifth being the upcoming "Jesus of Suburbia"). "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" swept the MTV Video Music Awards, and "Wake Me up When September Ends" may go down next to "Thriller" as far as epic masterpieces are concerned.
"Sam said something to me that the other directors didn't say, which was really important to us 'cause it was kind of like the way we made our record," Billie Joe recalls of their first meeting. "He said, 'I want to make the greatest video of all time.' ... I mean, a lot of our videos in the past have been animated and funny, and this was the first time where it was this more serious side of us, which we've been trying to portray for a long time, and he was the one that got it right."
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Samuel Bayer's career in many ways has mirrored Green Day's, getting off to an incredible start (he was alt-rock's go-to guy in the mid-'90s, working with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Blind Melon, Hole, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Collective Soul, the Cranberries, etc.) and then regaining that glory in 2005 (with all of American Idiot's videos). Here he talks about a few of his best:
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  Nirvana
"Smells Like Teen Spirit"
"If I'm not connected with the artist, I can't do it. I'm proud of who I've worked with, and I started my career in a strong way. I [also] started my career off doing the anti-celebrity ugly music video."
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 Blind Melon
"No Rain"
"I heard amazing stuff from people what they thought the video meant, [but truthfully] I wanted to make the most colorful video of all time, and it was a little bit like 'The Wizard of Oz,' 'cause everybody thought my work was really dark. And now the bee girl is like 35 years old, smoking cigarettes and watching that video, going, 'I remember that.' "
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 Marilyn Manson
"Disposable Teens"
"If you take a political stance, you can get really crucified for it. I always dug what Manson was about. He was subversive. He was pushing buttons on people."
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 Green Day
"American Idiot"
"It's a performance video. Nothing happens, really, but I love the way that it's open to interpretation. Why is the flag green? Does it mean money? When we drain it of color, are we saying something? What is the liquid saying? I think it's a really abstract video."
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"He also kept talking about the whole record," Dirnt adds. "He wouldn't just focus on one song ... which kind of showed us he was emotionally invested in the record."
Since the end of the mid-'90s, when he was the hottest rock director in town, Bayer had felt his passion for music fizzle. That changed the first time he heard American Idiot.
"I was pretty blown away," remembers Bayer. "It was courageous. Here's a band that's reinventing themselves not because it's the popular thing to do, but because they're artists."
Bayer also felt he instantly got the message of the album.
"This is what I wrote in some of the treatments," he explains. "There are kids that need to hear music and see images that don't celebrate a lifestyle and level of celebrity they will never reach. To me, American Idiot is written for kids in suburbia, for kids going off to the war, kids working in bad jobs. It's their anthem, the soundtrack to their lives."
As much as he understood the story of Jesus of Suburbia, Bayer chose not to tell it in his videos.
"I think videos can spoil songs and I hope these don't," he says. "None of them were literal interpretations. I wanted stuff to get [viewers] excited, but let them buy the record and figure it out for themselves."
Bayer describes his relationship with Green Day as the best he's had with a band and doesn't expect to ever have that sort of experience again, so he's shifting his focus to directing his first film and says he might not ever return to music videos.
As for Green Day, they feel similarly fulfilled by American Idiot, the accompanying videos and "Bullet in a Bible."
"We can walk away from our career, if we were ever to, knowing that it wasn't just about success and wasn't just about the bling or about fancy cars or having lots of money, but ... walk away going, 'Wow, I really said something and I really felt it,' " Armstrong explains. "I think that's why we still have so much energy for this record ... 'cause we really stand proud for the music and the things that we say."
Fortunately for fans, the band plans to return to the studio in early 2006, taking a bit of time off to "reflect on what the hell just happened," but not too much, as Billie Joe says, because for so many bands "the victory lap usually is the downward spiral.
"I think it's exciting, whatever we come up with next, 'cause we know it's gonna go into our career, it's gonna be another chapter," he continues. "We're gonna take our time and just reenergize and refocus and then come up with a new concept for what we want to do after American Idiot, 'cause there's definitely a lot more in the tank for us."
If all else fails, Green Day have tossed around the idea of continuing Jesus of Suburbia's story.
"Sometimes I could see something like that," Billie Joe says.
"We've joked around it might be kind of fun to do American Genius," Dirnt adds. "It's gonna be like 'Star Wars.' "
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Photo: MTV News/Reprise
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