- Full Name : Billie Joe Armstrong Billie Joe Armstrong
- Age/Birthdate: 36; born February 17, 1972
- Hometown: Rodeo, California, USA
- Eye Color: Green
- Hair Color: Natural - Reddish Brown
- Height: 5'7"
- Marital Status: Married Adrienne Nesser (July 2, 1994)
- Children: Joseph Marciano - born March 1995; Jakob Danger - born September 1998
- Family: Billie's father, Andy, died of cancer when he was 10 years old (September 1982). His mom, Ollie, raised him from then on. He has 5 older siblings (David, Allen, Marcy, Holly, and Anna).
- Wheels: Black BMW convertible
- Instruments: Guitar, harmonica, mandolin, drums, piano, and most recently, saxophone
- Record Co.: Billie and Adrienne have co-ownership of Adeline Records
- Other Bands: Billie still plays with Pinhead Gunpowder. He has also played with The Influents, Corrupted Morals, Rancid, the Lookouts, Goodbye Harry, and Blatz (not to mention the Network and Foxboro Hot Tubs).
Billie Joe Armstrong was brought into this world on February 17, 1972, the youngest of six children. His father, Andy, was a part time jazz musician and a truck driver for Safeway, while his mother was a waitress at a local resturant named Rod's Hickory Pit. Billie started singing when he was just 5 years old. He would go around to hospitals and sing to the patients to make them feel better. Then he got to record his first song, "Look for Love" at a local recording company named Fiat Records. Billie got his first electric guitar, the infamous "Blue" (a Fernandes Stratocaster), when he was 11. Billie still uses Blue to this day and has several replicas of it. At the age of 10, Billie's father died of cancer of the esophagus which spread throughout his body. His mother continued to work at Rod's Hickory Pit (a barbecue joint owned by Richard and Alice Cotton) in Vallejo, California, to support herself and her six kids. Billie Joe and Mike later worked there as busboys. Two years after the death of his father, his mother remarried a man that Billie and his siblings detested.
Billie was 10 when he met Mike Dirnt in the school cafeteria in 1982. During sleepovers at each other's houses, they played songs by old heavy metal warhorses such as Ozzy Osbourne, Def Leppard, and Van Halen.
Other influences would be the "thrash and drang" of the Bay Area's alternative music culture percolating throughout the eighties. Clubs such as Mabuhay Gardens and Berkeley's 924 Gilman Street regularly showcased local groups like the Dead Kennedys and Buck Naked. He wrote his first song, "Why Do You Want Him", a song about his mother and his step father, when he was 14. At the age of 15, Billie, Mike, and a drummer named John Kiffmeyer formed a punk band and named themselves Sweet Children. Their first gig was actually at Rod's Hickory Pit. One day before his 18th birthday, and halfway through his senior year, Billie dropped out of high school (Pinole Valley High School) to devote all his time to Sweet Children. He knew what he wanted to do - play music, and school was just getting in the way. At this point, Billie had the nickname "Two Dollar Bill", referring to the price of the joints he sold.In 1990, Kiffmeyer left the band to attend college. Billie and Mike were faced with the task of finding a new drummer. They knew the perfect fit, Tre Cool, a Gilman Street veteran, who was then playing in the Lookouts!. Later, Sweet Children was renamed Green Day. Before they knew it, they were traveling all over the country in an old bookmobile with Tre's dad at the wheel. They did all this with little money and staying at fans' houses. It was in Minneapolis in 1990 that Billie first laid eyes on his future wife, a girl named Adrienne Nesser. They dated for some time and then were married on July 2, 1994, a 5 minute ceremony. The day after their wedding, Adrienne found out she was pregnant. Their son, Joseph Marciano Armstrong, was born in March 1995. Three years later on September 12, 1998, another boy, Jakob Danger was added to the Armstrong family. Today, Billie, Adrienne, Joseph, and Jakob reside in Berkeley, California.
- Full Name: Michael Ryan Pritchard (Dirnt) Mike Dirnt
- Age/Birthdate: 36; born May 4, 1972
- Hometown: Berkeley, California, USA
- Eye Color: Green
- Hair Color: Natural - Brown
- Height: 5'10"
- Marital Status: Married Anastcia in 1996. Later remarried in 2004 but then divorced. Mike now has a long-time girlfriend, Brittney.
- Children: Estella Desiree (Stella), born April 1997, to Anastacia; Brixton Michael, born October 11, 2008 to Brittney
- Family: Mike was adopted. His adoptive parents divorced when he was 7, and both are now remarried. Mike has at least one step sister, named Myla.Wheels: BMW
- Instruments: Bass, farfisa, guitar, drums, and baseball bat
- Restaurant: Mike owns Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, in Emeryville, CA.
- Other Bands: Mike still plays with The Frustrators. He has also played with Screeching Weasel, Crummy Musicians, and Squirtgun (as well as the Network and Foxboro Hot Tubs).
Michael Ryan Pritchard, now known as Mike Dirnt, was born on May 4, 1972. Mike's mother was a heroin addict. He was given up for adoption when he was a baby to a Native American mother and a white father. When he was 7, his adoptive parents got a divorce. Mike lived with his father for a while, but confrontations sent him back to his mother. He lived there on the borderline of proverty, while his sister left home at the age of 13. "There were all sorts of things happening," says Mike. "When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my mom stayed out all night, came home the next day with a guy, and he moved in. I'd never met the guy before, and all of a sudden he's my stepdad. We didn't get along for years. Later on, when I hit high school, my mom moved away from us, and me and my stepdad got real close. He instilled a lot in me. The one thing my family did give me is blue-collar morals. But then he died when I was 17."
By that point, Mike had already moved out, leaving home when he was 15 to live out of his truck. He then rented a room in Billie's mom's house, and later he lived in a punk squat. Billie and Mike began living for their weekends at the Gilman Street Project. Mike still continued to go to school, play in Sweet Children (which later became Green Day, of course), and live on his own. He supported himself by working as a cook. Mike almost didn't graduate from high school, because his mother refused to sign one of his mandatory-attendance forms. "I took my mom aside," Mike says. "I said, 'This is how it is. You have so much shit going on in your life, so if once every semester you ask me if I've done my homework and jump all over my case, that's not right. Have I failed yet? No. And I'm going to graduate if you stay off my back. The one time in your life you chose to have morals, and it's going to fuck me up. Don't play mom once a year. It doens't fucking cut it.'" In the end, Mike did graduate from high school, and he even took more than a year's worth of courses at a community college. Then Billie and Mike moved into a squat in Oakland, California (the inspiration for "Welcome to Paradise").Mike married his long-time girlfriend Anastacia in 1996, and their daughter, Estella-Desiree, was born in April 1997. Mike loves his daughter very much, and his nickname for her is "Hero." Today, Mike and Anastacia are separated but still remain very good friends. He recently was remarried in 2004, however his wife left him because he was spending too much time in the studio recording American Idiot. Mike currently has a girlfriend named Brittney, and he resides in Oakland, California. He and Brittney welcomed the birth of their son, Brixton Michael, on October 11, 2008. Mike also owns a cafe/resturant named Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe, named after a song by the Clash. The cafe is located in Emeryville, CA.
- Full Name: Frank Edwin Wright III Tre Cool
- Age/Birthdate: 36; born December 9, 1972
- Hometown: Willits, California, USA
- Eye Color: Blue
- Hair Color: Natural - Brown
- Height: 5'6" (?)
- Marital Status: Married long-time girlfriend Lisea Lyons in March 1995. Divorced sometime after that. In May 2000, married Claudia. In 2003, he and Claudia broke up.
- Children: Ramona, born January 1995 to Lisea; Frankito ("Little Frank"), born 2001 to Claudia
- Family: Tre grew up with his father and 2 siblings. He now lives in Oakland, California with his ex-wife, Claudia, and son, Frankito.
- Wheels: SUV
- Instruments: Drums, accordion, and guitar
- Other Bands: Tre has also played with The Lookouts and Samiam and, of course, the Network and Foxboro Hot Tubs.
Frank Edwin Wright III was born December 9, 1972 in Frankfurt, Germany, making him the youngest member of Green Day. He grew up in the Mendocino mountains in California with his dad and his 2 older siblings. His dad, a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, decided to move the family there to insulate them upon his return to the United States. Tre's closest neighbor was none other than Lookout! Records owner Lawrence Livermore, who also owned the punk band the Lookouts. At age 12, Live
rmore recruited Tre to join The Lookouts, and that's when Livermore gave him the name of Tre Cool ("Tre", a common nickname for someone named with a "III" is pronounced like "tres," the French word for "very"). After Green Day's first tour around the country (following the release of 39/Smooth), John Kiffmeyer decided to leave the band. Looking no further than Gilman Street, Billie Joe and Mike recruited Tre, who was already a 5 year veteran of the Gilman Street scene.Tre Cool
Tre decided to drop out of high school his sophmore year. However, he did pass an equivalency test and earned his GED, and he even began taking classes at a nearby community college. He had to drop out of college, however, when the demands of Green Day's touring intensified. Tre's father, who owns a small trucking company, overhauled a used bookmobile and served as the driver on three separate tours. "I watched them go from a bunch of kids to a group of musicians with work eithic," says Tre's father, Frank Wright. "On their first tour or two, it was more of a party than anything else. I still scratch my head and say, 'How in the hell did they make it?' They used to practice - in my living room here - a lot of the songs they did on Dookie. You hear it coming together, and you don't expect people are going to go out and buy it. But when it does, you just say, 'Wow, that's so cool'" (Rolling Stone, January 26, 1995).
Tre's daughter Ramona was born in January of 1995; then he married his long time girlfriend Lisea Lyons in March. He and Lisea are divorced now, but Tre remarried in May of 2000, to Claudia. Claudia and Tre have a son named Frankito, which means "Little Frank". Tre and Claudia divorced in 2003, but they still live together with Frankito in Oakland, California. At one time, Tre was linked to Donna C., drummer of The Donnas; however, they are no longer together.
http://www.greendayauthority.com
