Road To The Grammys: The Making Of Green Day's 'Boulevard Of Broken Dreams'

There was a time, not so long ago, when Green Day weren't seen as daring punk-rock provocateurs. As recently as 2003, they were pretty much considered done, washed-up.

Then they dropped American Idiot on us.

Unless you've somehow managed to avoid turning on the radio or watching television for the past 18 months, you know what happened after that. In fact, the quintuple-platinum punk-rock opera has been such a success that despite taking home the award for Best Rock Album at last year's Grammys (see "Road To The Grammys: The Making Of Green Day's American Idiot"), it still landed a Record of the Year nomination (for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams") at this year's ceremony.

(Click here for the complete 2006 Grammy nominees list.)

And if anyone can truly appreciate the impact American Idiot had on Green Day's career, it's Rob Cavallo. After all, he's been working with them for more than a decade, producing every album since their 1994 breakout, Dookie. And while he's incredibly proud of how high they've risen, he's also not afraid to admit just how far they'd once fallen.

"The truth is, when they started making American Idiot, they were each living their own separate lives, and no one was really sure how the chemistry was going to be," Cavallo said. "They all had to deal with a lot of personal stuff before they could be great again. And when they first came to me and said, 'Let's get the band back together and make the best rock record we can,' I wasn't totally sure they could do it."

But in early 2004, after agreeing to visit the band in an Oakland, California, studio to listen to some demos, Cavallo was impressed with what he heard. So much so that for the next four and a half months, he'd travel to Oakland from L.A. every week to work on the songs that would become American Idiot.

"They had all made a commitment, and I was lucky enough to be there at the beginning of that commitment," Cavallo said. "I'd go up there on a Monday and leave on a Friday, and we'd be in the studio 12 hours a day writing and conceptualizing. They were so focused and so invigorated that honestly, my main role was to be their coach, telling them that I believed in them. They did the rest."

Perhaps no song on the album serves as a better example of that focus than "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," which Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong brought to the studio one day as a nearly completed demo. It was a bit of a departure from the more "in your face" material the band was working on at the time, Cavallo said, but he knew the second he heard it that the song was destined for big things.

"I turned to Billie Joe and told him, 'This is your Coldplay song. It's like nothing you've ever made before,' " Cavallo laughed. "I loved it from the first day I heard it. Just the nature of it and the tempo and the way he sang the opening part. When I heard Billie Joe sing, 'I walk these empty streets,' I knew it was going to be a smash." (Making an eye-catching, award-winning video didn't hurt, either; see "Green Day's 'Dreams' Slashed And Dumped In A Shower: VMAs Behind The Camera.")

Aside from the addition of some piano, the version of "Boulevard" heard today is essentially the same as what Armstrong brought to his bandmates. The only in-studio trickery comes in the tune's discordant final bars, which Cavallo said provided him with one of the few instances in the entire American Idiot process where he actually got to play the role of tyrannical producer.

"Originally, the band had wanted the outro to be something like the huge crescendo at the end of the Beatles' 'A Day in the Life,' " he recalled. "Then they thought that maybe they'd try it with calliopes and circus music and craziness like that. I told them, 'Look, you're a rock band, let's just do it with guitars.'

		Record of the Year
		Kanye West - "Gold Digger"
		Gwen Stefani - "Hollaback Girl"
		Gorillaz - "Feel Good Inc."
		Mariah Carey - "We Belong Together"

"So we had Billie plug in and just play the hardest, fastest chords he can. We just told him to push it as far as he could," Cavallo continued. "And then, when we mixed it, we just kept telling [mixer] Chris [Lord-Alge] to push it. We'd be yelling, 'Push it! Push it!' "

And when you hear all of that, you can't help but think that "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the perfect song to sum up American Idiot. It was unlike anything Green Day had ever tried before, a song informed by equal parts classic-rock excess and punk-rock scuzz — a mid-tempo number that only sounded better when it was blasted to 11. It was an unlikely and unassuming smash hit and a song that has Cavallo — and the rest of us — wondering just what Green Day will do next.

"I hear that song and I hear three guys playing their hearts out, and of course I wonder, 'Man, what can they do for an encore?' " he laughed. "To be honest, I have no idea. But I know it will be f---ing brilliant."

For more on the making of Green Day's American Idiot, check out the feature "Anatomy of a Punk Opera."

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