“There are always young bands playing in their garages. A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It’s below the radar. The beauty of it is that you’re not supposed to always know. It’s subterranean.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Our passion is our strength.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument. It’s fragile. I don’t have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“No one’s really happy anyway, it’s not human.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“School is practice for the future, and practice makes perfect. But nobody’s perfect, so why practice?”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Moshing and broken glass just don’t go together.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“A punk concert isn’t fun without a pit.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I hate celebrities. I really hate them.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“There’s nothing wrong with being a loser, it just depends on how good you are at it.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I sort of enjoy the fact that I’m misunderstood most of the time. That’s fine.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Making mistakes is a lot better than not doing anything.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Minority is about being an individual. It’s like you have to sift through the darkness to find your place and be that individual you want to be your entire life.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Punk has always been about doing things your own way. What it represents for me is ultimate freedom and a sense of individuality.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“The first time that you escape from home or the small town that you live in – there’s a reason a small town is called a small town: It’s because not many people want to live there.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“If I look at my old lyrics, they seem to be full of rage, but empty. There was an emptiness in my life.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I never thought being obnoxious would get me where I am today.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“There are a lot of bands who claim to be punk and they only play the music, they have no clue what it’s all about. It’s a lifestyle. It’s not about popularity and all that crap.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Set lists are tough because you come up with this structure of how the songs are going to go from one to the next, but at the same time, you have to be spontaneous and take requests and change the set list at the drop of a hat.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“If journalists ask you again and again about the same bands, you’ll end up saying you hate them just because you’re so fed up with being asked all those stupid questions.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I’m a father. It isn’t just my life any more. I don’t want my kid finding bottles in the house or seeing his father completely smashed.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I’m very monogamous.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“In every song I write, whether it’s a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing that I find is feeling lost and trying to find your way.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“My brother David was a great athlete and I knew there was no way I could live up to that.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I think it’s your own choice if you turn from an angry young man to a bitter, old bastard.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“People are so damned afraid that one day they might wake up and discover that they’ve grown old.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“The thing is, acoustic could be like a four-letter word to a lot of kids.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I would definitely say the Oakland Raiders are the punk rock band of football.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Music – that’s been my education. There’s not a day that goes by that I take it for granted.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I don’t want to limit myself musically. It would be really limiting if we’d neglect something we really want to do, like explore other styles of music.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“What is going on in America is extreme. The youth cult, they worship youth so much it’s almost paranoid. And LA is the Mecca of it all; they’re taking it to the hilt.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don’t even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don’t like it.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“If you have children, you don’t want to have drugs and drinks in the house. It’s just not good.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I’d love to go to art school. I’d love to learn how to draw. I’d love to be fluent in Spanish. I’d like to be a brain surgeon.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Punk will never be dead to me. It’s my life. I can never just drop this lifestyle. It embodies me.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I don’t want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I don’t like LA. The majority just seem to be so artificial. Look at how they worship everything they think is fashionable. Isn’t it sick?”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“We’re not a political band. We don’t want to tell people what to do or what to think. We just want to tell them to think.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“We put everything we had into this record, just like we do with every other record that we make.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I sound like an Englishman impersonating an American impersonating an Englishman.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“Formats are constantly changing, and there are really no rules for the way you put your records out anymore.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“The thing about punk is that there are purists. Once you start going outside of that, they don’t think what you’re doing is punk rock.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It’s below the radar. The beauty of it is that you’re not supposed to always know. It’s subterranean.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“There’s an honesty in our family – my kids and I are able to talk about things without me putting the fear of God into them.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I’ve been playing rock and roll since I was 16 years old, and now I have a 16-year-old.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I love storytelling.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“And you don’t want to always write about politics just for the sake of writing about politics.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“For some young people, their first experience ever hearing punk rock music was playing the Green Bay Packers on ‘Madden’.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“The things that people do now in sports, you can’t even believe. These are complete total athletes. To see what human beings can do in the highest level is amazing.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“I’m not going to conform to some consumer need.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
“When I signed that major-label contract when I was 20 years old. I did it because I wanted to play music for the rest of my life. That’s every 20-year-old’s dream – to do whatever the hell you want.”
― Billie Joe Armstrong
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