Green Day’s Mike Dirnt Says One Of His Very First Conversations With Billie Joe Armstrong Was About Songwriting

According to Consequence.net, Green Day have been around since the late ’80s but the friendship between the founding members Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt goes back even further. In fact, the two musicians began talking about songwriting upon meeting each other at 10 years olds. Heavy Consequence recently caught up with Dirnt to discuss his new signature Epiphone Grabber G-3 bass and he shared a cool story about first meeting Armstrong as grade-school kids.

“We were 10 years old, first time I met [Billie],” recalled Dirnt. “Within a few minutes, one of the first conversations we ever had was about songwriting. We were just pointed into something that we thought was cool, ’cause at the time we were each struggling to mitigate our own home lives and things like that. We became fast friends, and playing guitar back in the day was such a cool thing. Then it was like, ‘How do you get a gig?’ That was the biggest struggle was just how to get a gig that wasn’t us playing at like our friend’s older brother’s keg party.”

Green Day would eventually become mainstays at the now-legendary venue 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California but it took a while for them to grace the stage. “We were quote-unquote ‘too poppy’ to play Gilman Street for a long time. I mean, what do you want us to write about? All we knew [then] was, ‘I wanna meet a girl and I have a guitar. I’m frigging 13, 14… leave me alone!” said Dirnt.

Photo Credit: Owen Ela