Green Day frontman Billy Joe Armstrong says ‘we got punched in the face really hard’ by Donald Trump’s victory

WHEN Green Day’s global arena tour arrives in the UK on Sunday, the punk-pop icons will attack the stage with their usual energy.

Whether it’s headlining a festival or playing a stadium they know what the audience wants.

And by the end of this year hundreds of thousands of fans will have witnessed their incendiary live show.

“However large the shows have got, I’ve never had a problem with it,” says frontman Billie Joe Armstrong.

“From the very start all we wanted to do was play fun gigs and play records. And it’s been pretty much the same ever since.

“Being in a band is like being in a gang. Not like we are some tough guys, but we found something in each other and it is music. And that’s why we are still here playing our best.”

Bassist Mike Dirnt adds, holding his hand up high: “I think we are up here. I feel as into playing live and as energised as ever.

“The shows really prove that. The shows in the States (last year) were up there with the best shows we’ve ever played. And the rest of the tour will be the same.”

Green Day are one of the biggest touring bands in the world, headlining arenas, festivals and stadiums around the globe, but their success has come through years of hard work.

I had been trying to get sober for years

Dirnt says: “When we started 30 years ago, being so young meant going on tour felt like a fairytale dream for us. We thought it was so cool.”

At this point, Armstrong starts to try to remember some of the towns they first played in the UK.

He says: “Sometimes it feels like ages ago and some stuff I have no recollection of.”

“I remember Wigan though,” he says of an early gig at The Den in the northern town in 1991.

“We never played in major cities, we always played the smaller towns. In America we played the small towns outside of college towns.

“We didn’t get a gig in NYC for the first three years we were on tour.

“We always played places like Connecticut and New Jersey. We played every Wigan in America.”

The trio of Armstrong, Dirnt and turquoise-haired drummer Tré Cool are at the end of a day of promotion when we meet in their London hotel.

It’s a band interview but, as usual, Armstrong does most of the talking.

Now sober after a 30-day stint in rehab in October, he looks healthy and speaks honestly about the band’s comeback.

As well as playing their best live shows, they are also getting their best reviews for 12th studio album Revolution Radio, which picked up four and five-star ratings on its release last year.

It’s a brilliant return for the trio who were forced to cancel shows in 2012 when Armstrong was treated for alcoholism.

He had a very public meltdown on stage in Las Vegas in September that year when the group performed at the iHeartRadio Music Festival.

Today he admits he’s still never been able to watch the footage, saying: “I lived it, I don’t need to see it.

“It was a nervous breakdown. I didn’t really know it was happening and I wasn’t really being honest with myself that it was happening. I had been trying to get sober for years.

“So going to rehab was difficult but I needed to get better.

“Without turning it into a sob story or anything like that, I just did it and I had to suck it up. And now we are all up and that is pretty much what happened.

“But it did, and I am glad it did. We needed to take some time and just heal a little bit and get refreshed.

“But now I feel great. I think the record really reflects that.”

After adversity you come out stronger

Dirnt — who helped his wife Brittney through treatment for breast cancer in 2014 — adds: “When it became time for Billie to get better and step away from the music for a while we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

“But seeing his progress and then when he started writing songs again, it was almost like a rebirth.

“There’s a song on Revolution Radio called Still Breathing, which is about going through tough times. When you go through adversity, you come out stronger at the other side.”

Armstrong says: “It was a time we needed to rally round and make sure everybody’s health was good. Brittney is a part of our family. You just have to let people get better.”

Does the band think 2012’s album trilogy ¡Uno! ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! might have been too ambitious?

Armstrong says: “No, I dig those records. I don’t think it was a record that was meant for the masses. I think there was somewhere in the back of our minds that we knew that all along.

“It was just us having a throw down as much as we can. It’s not my favourite Green Day stuff and I like Revolution Radio even more.

“If you are looking for something that is relatable you will find it in Revolution Radio for sure.

“Troubled Times and Still Breathing have taken on different meanings since Trump got elected.

“Revolution Radio fits the times that we live in right now. We have to go, ‘OK, we are still alive. We just got punched in the face really hard, now it is time to pick ourselves back up and figure out what direction we are going to head in.’”

The band were in Europe when the American presidential election results came in and Armstrong admits that Trump being elected came as a shock.

He says: “I’d been watching the results and when I went to bed everything seemed fine. Then I woke up at 5am and I decided to look at my phone.

“My family and friends had texted me, saying, ‘How and why is this happening?’.

“The last time I felt like this it was probably 9/11. We are broken. We are not the United States of America right now.

“I think we can blame everything on bigotry and racism but at some point we have to figure out how to unify people and find a common ground. I have no idea how, but people have to make it through their anger.

“The way that Trump ran his campaign was he started a movement and it became a cancer and it is still growing. It’s bigotry, misogyny and transphobia, homophobia — he’s marginalised everyone that doesn’t fit into the white male privileged utopia that he wants and that he’s promised.”

If I’m going to die it may as well be at a gig

Other topics on Revolution Radio include gun violence and the Paris terror atrocities of November 2015.

Armstrong says: “Bang Bang was one of the first songs I wrote about mass shootings in America and what it has done to our culture.

“It’s about the narcissism and insanity and the same thing happening over and over again.

“Then Troubled Times is about Paris and what happened there. It was so bad as it affected people and music.

“It hits closer to home. A lot of people who come to gigs are escaping a place where they don’t fit in.

Green Day to receive The MTV Global Icon Award at the 2016 MTV EMAs

“That is when I started going to gigs. They felt like places where I could be safe. I’d go to gigs and see all my favourite bands and I’d congregate and meet new people, and I think that is why it affected me so much.

“We also had a friend working with Eagles Of Death Metal and so we were really concerned and thankfully he was all right.

“People love Eagles Of Death Metal. I think it’s heartbreaking and hard to fathom that something like that would happen.

"The last thing on your mind is that people would get hurt at a gig.”

Dirnt says: “What gets to me is that it was a non-political atmosphere. Eagles Of Death Metal are a fun band. It was a place of unity.”

Armstrong continues: “You’ve got to just keep moving forward. Obviously there are new security concerns but if I am going to die somewhere I might as well die at a gig. I just wanna play — and I’m going to keep playing.”

Like their 2004 punk rock opera album American Idiot, which was inspired by American political events such as the presidency of George W Bush and the Iraq war, Revolution Radio shows Green Day at their most energised and political.

Sales and streams of their classic song American Idiot have risen following Trump’s election win and Cool says of the new album: “People have compared the record to American Idiot, and there is something about American Idiot and having a new-found relevance following Trump.”

Armstrong says: “I am really proud that people can find something to relate to in music with everything that’s going on now.

“These songs come and go and they mean something different to different generations and they resurge and it totally relates to this situation or to this generation.

“I think Still Breathing (off Revolution Radio) falls into the same category of truly timeless songs too.

“And that’s what we are bringing to our live shows. It’s not manufactured energy. I feel a lot of bands today rest on their laurels, but not us. We feel really good and we jumped back in.”

As well as their UK dates next week, Green Day headline BST Hyde Park on July 1.

Armstrong says: “We love the big shows as we’ve played Reading and Leeds many times and had so much fun.

“I think Hyde Park will be the same. We’re playing with Rancid, it’s a great line-up. It shows we’ve come back stronger than ever. As friends we are closer than ever.

“No matter what has happened, we are still here, and we support each other. If one of us needs to talk, then we are here for them.

“And we never worry about the music as that will always be there.”

• Green Day’s UK Tour begins on Sunday in Leeds at the First Direct Arena.