Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day Working on New Music While on Self-Quarantine

2020-04-15

Green Day – Story by Charles Ken, photo by Pamela Littky

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day is using his downtime during the coronavirus crisis to start working on new tunes

With tours canceled for the foreseeable future, what’s a gigging musician to do? Billie Joe Armstrong is using the unexpected downtime to write music.

“I’ve been writing a lot of music, and I had all these melodies in my head, so I wrote, like, six songs since all of this has been going on,” Armstrong says in a new interview with Kerrang! magazine.

“I don’t know when I can get together with [bassist] Mike [Dirnt] and [drummer] Tré [Cool],” he added. “I told them to make sure that they’re quarantined for now, and then I hope down the road we can get back in the studio.”

On top of writing new music, Armstrong has started releasing weekly cover versions of popular songs, dubbed as his “No Fun Mondays” series. This week brought a cover of “Manic Monday” by The Bangles, with Armstrong teaming up remotely with Bangles vocalist and guitarist Susanna Hoffs. Watch the video footage below.

He also performed on the Fox TV special Living Room Concert for America, which raised $10 million for coronavirus (COVID-19), and will appear at the multi-network One World program on April 18.

Green Day released their latest album, “Father of All…,” in February. Green Day also just released a new EP, never-before-released mixes from the ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré! sessions.

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Charles Ken

Meet the expert - Charles Ken is a graduate of Michigan State University where he studied writing and history. He's a longtime music buff and covers classic rock for Audio Ink Radio. Contact him at ken@audioinkradio.com.