Billie Joe Armstrong – What I've learned

Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer and guitarist of Green Day; 51; Oakland, California

- By Brian O'Keefe

__ I LOVE BLACK. I love leather jackets, and I like having my old favorite T-shirts. I end up buying the same outfit over and over.

__ I WAS NEVER Mr. Hardcore. When we first started playing together, there was a big trend of who can play the fastest. And it was like, “Well, I don’t want to do that.” That’s not really musical for me. It became almost a bit macho, which is something we were definitely trying to get away from.

__ WE DIDN’T WANT to be a bunch of tough guys. We would rather have bigger hearts than bigger muscles.

__ MY DAD DROVE a truck. He was a truck driver for Safeway, and my mother was a waitress. My dad was also a jazz drummer.

__ I’M ONE OF SIX KIDS. I’m the youngest. It was loud. Everybody was funny. Everything seemed pretty much like a normalbig family, whatever that means. But then that dynamic really switched when my father passed away when I was ten.

__ IT WAS DARK. Everyone was sort of forced into dealing with that pain. It was that ghost that was always there. It still is.

__ THIS WOMAN NAMED Mrs. Fiatarone taught me how to sing when I was really young, four or five. I was almost like this child lounge act. I’d sing show tunes. I would sing at veterans’ hospitals. Children’s hospitals.