Billie Joe Armstrong's highly sought-after tone may soon be achievable thanks to a teased team-up with Marshall, which was on full display at Green Day's Super Bowl LX performance at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, just yesterday (February 8).
The band showcased their staying power with a nod toward nostalgia with Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), before launching into the anti-war anthem, Holiday. Accompanying Armstrong was a pale blue Marshall amp head and cab, which many were quick to point out were fresh additions to his gear.
The speculation was all but officially confirmed by Marshall. The brand posted a video teasing what many are assuming is a bona fide Armstrong signature amp, alongside a close-up of the potential upcoming offering with the caption, “Green Day showing the world how to keep it loud!”
A number of eagle-eyed commenters on the latter post pointed to the top left corner of the amp, which has a label boasting a word that looks a heck of a lot like “Dookie”, as the word appears on the cover of Green Day's 1994 album of the same name.
Armstrong's oft-copied Dookie guitar tone can be in large part attributed to a humble 100-watt Marshall Plexi 1959SLP nicknamed “Pete”.
“Pete”, crucially, was heavily modified, not stock. Marshall, meanwhile, has in recent times begun finally acknowledging the wide world of modded Marshalls with hot-rod builds of its own.
We'd wager that that's another point for the “new signature amp” team...
In terms of channeling that tone without a Marshall, in 2019, MXR released the Dookie Drive to mark the 25th anniversary of the record. The initial release was met with resounding success and was followed by version 2, version 3, and, yes, version 4 in 2023 – with each iteration boasting a new artwork.
We'd wager a Marshall “Dookie” mod amp would be a dime or two more than that pedal, but if it's indeed on the cards, it's a demonstration of the storied company's further embrace of tweaks to the equations it's long stuck to.
