Green Day recently released its 14th studio album, ‘SAVIORS’, calling it the last part in a loose trilogy that begins with 1994’s Dookie and continues with 2004’s American Idiot.
There are several ways that we can immediately see these three albums as a trilogy, or at least as an attempt at one.
All three were produced by Rob Cavallo, and the first two were undoubtedly masterpieces. Judging by Green Day’s overwhelming promotion of the album, the band certainly hopes this one will be too.
The second way is timing. Green Day launched the promotion for ‘SAVIORS’ just as it announced a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of American Idiot and the 30th anniversary of Dookie.
Not only will the band be playing both albums in their entirety on the ‘SAVIORS’ tour, but Green Day has gone out of its way to promote new editions of Dookie and updated lyrics to “American Idiot” to tie the three together.
There’s also the fact that American Idiot came out 10 years after Dookie, and ‘SAVIORS’ came out 20 years after American Idiot.
And then there’s the third way — the conceptual way. While many have praised Dookie for its influence on the musical landscape of the ’90s, most have focused on how the album embodies the values of the alternative subculture of the early-to-mid-’90s.
Sure, the album became emblematic of that mid-‘90s slacker subculture, but to write out of that subculture would necessarily mean responding to and challenging its values. Rather than being an album that embodies all that stoner humor and malaise, Dookie pushes against it, asking at every turn, “Is this who we really want to be?”
American Idiot and ‘SAVIORS’ share an overtly political aesthetic — the politics of both would have to be examined separately — but if these three albums are tied together conceptually, even in a loose way, it’s worth closely reading into Dookie to examine its politics as we celebrate its 30th anniversary.
How does Dookie start the concept that is carried out across American Idiot and ‘SAVIORS’?
American Idiot and ‘SAVIORS’ came out in election years, the first in response to one unpopular president and the second in response to the shadow and specter of another one.
Dookie, however, was written and recorded in 1993 as the band said goodbye to its roots at the famed venue at 924 Gilman St., parting ways with the local Lookout! Records and signing with Warner Music-owned Reprise Records.
For many, Dookie was Green Day’s sell-out album. The recently revived talk about Green Day losing touch with the punk community and its music has long plagued the band that had humble beginnings playing birthday parties and backyards in the East Bay punk scene as Sweet Children.
For all those who still feel like Green Day’s best years stopped after Kerplunk in 1991, bassist Mike Dirnt would tell you, as he did in Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, “I always really thought the idea of selling out would be not following the thing that I love doing and giving up on it because somebody had imposed some sanction on it.”
In the same documentary, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys agrees that it was Green Day’s dedication to its craft that drove the band to the top of the scene and out into the world. Green Day was not going to turn down opportunities to take its music global, but what message would it lead with?
Rather than taking on the politics of the time, Green Day’s Dookie instead examines the politics of standing up for yourself when everything around you seems to be pulling you down.
Starting with the cover, the band’s title explodes out of a world being attacked by dogs, bombing the city with, well, dookie. In the middle of the city, with towers on the right and smokestacks on the left, is a crowd of colorful characters —though more seem inclined to take advantage of one another in this raid than dealing with the dookie. All the while, a God-like figure smiles down from the corner, giving His OK to everything he sees.
Out of that world depicted on the cover, Green Day starts Dookie with “Burnout,” opening with a literal declaration: “I declare I don’t care no more.”
That’s not exactly a surprise coming from the slackers passing a joint and hanging out on the street we see in the CD insert, but after all of this, there is surely more going on when making such a declaration is a matter of life or death
Scribed out in scratchy boxes with sketches of life on the outskirts, the lyrics coming from one who “drive[s] along these shit town lights” tie the idea of burning out together with the resignation of “stepp[ing] in line to walk amongst the dead” and “throw[ing] my emotions in the grave.”
Throughout Dookie, Green Day questions the declaration to stand for nothing and find exactly where the band stands in a society stuck in a cycle of senseless systems.
“Having A Blast” and “Chump” would openly object to these systems with the former “mow[ing] down any bullshit that confronts you” and the latter rejecting the “magic man, egocentric plastic man.”
Other songs would embrace it. “Longview” portrays masturbation as the preferable option to leaving the house and the orgasm as the gateway to “paradise,” but when “masturbation’s lost its fun, you’re fucking lonely.” Note that it is loneliness, not empowerment, the speaker feels upon realizing that their self-indulgent pastimes are no longer fun. Now that “paradise” can no longer be found in the act of self-pleasure, it has to be located somewhere else.
“Welcome to Paradise,” the very next song after this realization, is the first instance we hear the speaker take a stand for something, and that something is personal freedom. This is freedom not just from their parents, as seen in the transition from “whining” to “laughing” to his mother as time passes after leaving home. It’s also the freedom to make a new start in a “wasteland” filled with “cracked streets and broken homes.”
The album’s latter half is filled with portraits of the characters who populate this “wasteland,” and each time you see the speaker championing those who break out of the systems they are trapped in and sorrow for those who give into those systems.
In “She,” we hear the speaker praise the song’s unnamed heroine for “figur[ing] out that all her doubts were someone else’s point of view” and “smash[ing] the silence with the brick of self-control.” Set against the silent self-indulgence of “Longview,” here speaking out with “self-control” is the key to breaking free from being “locked up in a world that’s been planned out for you” and “feeling like a social tool without a use.”
We see this dynamic again in “Coming Clean,” only this time, “[finding] out what it takes to be a man” means “coming clean for the first time,” confessing one’s secrets and desires to Mom and Dad and finding one’s own path.
On the contrary, there is a profound sadness to “Pulling Teeth” as we hear from a man stuck in an abusive relationship with a woman, convinced that she really does love and care for him deep down. Recognizing, “Oh God, she’s killin’ me,” the speaker aligns this cycle of abuse with the same death that awaits the speaker of “Burnout” should they step in line.
“Emenius Sleepus” presents us with a speaker meeting with an old friend who is sad to see what has become of him, asking, “What have you done with all your time? And what went wrong?” Questioning what his friend has done with all their time calls to mind the wasted time we see in “Longview,” especially when the speaker tells us, “It wasn’t long ago that I was just like you.” While it is unclear what went wrong, it is clear that the speaker is seeing that the way he used to be was wrong — idle, self-indulgent, a burnout.
Rather than being an album that embodies all that stoner humor and malaise, Dookie pushes against it, asking at every turn, “Is this who we really want to be?”
On its surface, “Sassafras Roots” seems like a cute little romance about “smoking cigarettes, wasting your time,” but take another look at how the speaker describes himself: “I’m just a parasite wasting your time, applying myself to wasting your time.” And it is this parasitic complacency that is ultimately rejected by the speaker of “In The End”: “Someone to look good with and light your cigarette, is this what you really want?”
That same parasitic complacency can also be seen in “When I Come Around” as the smug “loser” and “user” speaker chides the person he is addressing for worrying about his whereabouts. In a moment of clarity, the speaker advises the addressee to get out of the cycle that brings them so much sadness: “Go do what you like. Make sure you do it wise,” adding that if the relationship causes this much “self-doubt” it “means nothing was ever there” and “it’s just not right” no matter how much you force it, no matter how many times they show up when the speaker “come[s] around.”
“In The End” appears to show us that moment of realization: “I figured out what you’re all about, and I don’t think I like what I see. So, I hope I won’t be there in the end if you come around.” Being trapped in a cycle — a job just to have a job, a toxic relationship, addiction — it all leads to a loss of self.
The speaker of “Basket Case” is brought to the brink of insanity by the loss of self. Going to see a shrink and then a whore, this “melodramatic fool” seeks but never finds the answers to his existential angst in sex or psychiatric institutions because he is too paranoid or stoned to do anything but whine about his problems to anyone who has the time to listen.
By contrast, the speaker of “F.O.D.,” who is “stuck down in rut of dis-logic and smut” and done with all the two-faced people, ultimately finds peace in “blast[ing] it all to hell.” The reason given: “You’re just a fuck. I can’t explain it ’cause I think you suck.”
It would be easy to write this off as mere adolescent defiance, but as the album’s heaviest and most powerful chorus, it gets to the core of what Dookie has been exploring through 15 songs. You may not be able to even say what it is that’s bringing you down, but whining about “nothing and everything all at once” does nothing. If you think it sucks, you need to tell it to “fuck off and die.” Death is, as we know from the album’s first song, reserved for those who burn out and step in line.
Dookie is just the beginning of this story. After focusing on Dookie’s lyrics rather than its creators or their intentions, it is worth noting here that its creators were only 22 when the album came out and were breaking out of a scene that had become all too content to congratulate itself for becoming so insular.
At the time, standing up and standing out was enough. It would take Green Day another 10 years to figure out what it stood for in American Idiot and another 30 years to figure out what standing for it looked and felt like in ‘SAVIORS’.
As a nod to Dookie‘s secret song, we’ll close with a non sequitur: “All By Myself,” is the perfect way to end this album. After such a serious look at where they stand in relation to the complacency that surrounds them, these East Bay punks just couldn’t help but sneak in one last masturbation joke. There are, after all, two definitions of paradise presented in this album.
Jerritt Clark/Amazon Music
