Green Day have taken a trip down memory lane to revisit the legendary Berkeley punk club where they started out, a venue Billie Joe Armstrong fondly recalls as "Mecca" for the Californian punk community.
The trio returned to 924 Gilman, the non-profit, all-ages, proudly-independent and collectively-managed club where Operation Ivy and Rancid also cut their teeth, in the company of CBS News presenter Anthony Mason, for a segment taped for network TV show CBS Mornings. The three musicians - Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool - were ever-present patrons of the club long before they became Green Day, as is demonstrated by the fact that you can still see the name of Armstrong and Dirnt's pre-Green Day band, Sweet Children, spray-painted on one of the venue's rafters. Formed when the pair were just 15 years old, Sweet Children first played Gilman Street in November 1988, and recorded a demo cassette at the club that same year.
"All it took was one step in[side] the door to go, This is AWESOME!" recalls Mike Dirnt, later telling Mason that, when Green Day first played at the club, they might as well have been playing Shea Stadium, such was their excitement.
"We played here once a month," says Armstrong, "and the other weekends, we were just here all the time."
"I was on that stage a lot more as a fan than I was in our band," Dirnt adds. "The kids who were here were latch-key kids, so we learned [about] community, family, values, but also work."
They may have been Gilman Street family, but, after signing to a major label, Green Day were no longer permitted to play the fiercely DIY club, the trio bowing out with a 'farewell' performance on September 6, 1993. It would be 21 years before they played the club again.
Watch the group's nostalgic visit back to their roots below:
Last week, Green Day scored a fifth UK number one album with new album 'Saviors'.
The band previously landed number one albums in the UK with American Idiot (2004), 21st Century Breakdown (2009), Revolution Radio (2016) and 2020's Father Of All Motherfuckers.
The group now join Foo Fighters and Prince as artists with five UK chart-topping albums to their name.
