"I think a lot of people weighed really heavy on the 'American' side of American Idiot and what it's like to be an American and what it means when the record came out, so a lot of people were looking towards the political, angry part of it. But I think there is a theme with the characters, it's about people becoming lost and just trying to find their way, and I think that's a theme that's been going through our songs since 1988."
-Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, explaining the intentions behind their smash album American Idiot, which in turn inspired the stage musical "American Idiot," which just opened on Broadway on Tuesday night (April 20). But while the songs on American Idiot may have been fueled by the fog of war and the chaos of the Bush administration, it's the characters that are really meaningful to Armstrong. "I think, politically, American Idiot, when we were writing it, it was trying to make sense out of a big mess. You're trying to find something to believe in, but it's difficult when you're getting bombarded with useless information," he said. "So it's just [about] trying to find your identity and your individualism in the midst of all that."
Green Day bassist Mike Dirt says that it's not only about righteous indignation and rabble-rousing. "That's the political side, but on the personal side, there's characters in American Idiot that allowed Billie and us to carry those emotions and translate them," Dirt said. "And I think that it's really great. We've had those characters, and in the play, [director] Michael Mayer has expanded on that ... made a more linear approach to it with adding extra characters and expanding the original story-line concept."
