Green Day co-founder Mike Dirnt weighed in on how the enduring rockers “got people talking” ― together with Elon Musk ― once they ignited conservative outrage with their “American Idiot” lyric change on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”
The bassist spoke with Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene, who described Dirnt as “still a little stunned” on the response to the band altering the road “I’m not part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not part of a MAGA agenda” throughout their New Year’s Eve efficiency.
“The song’s twenty years old, and we’re Green Day. What did you expect? Come on,” Dirnt stated within the interview, revealed final week.
Dirnt stated the “best part” of the change to the 2004 hit ― a critique of the United States underneath then-President George W. Bush’s administration ― was that the band “provoked conversation” with its barb at former President Donald Trump.
Supporters of the present GOP presidential front-runner took to X (previously Twitter) the place they known as the band “punk rock sellouts” and “losers,” and claimed they had been supporting “the death of the American Dream.”
“First it was rhetorical, and then it got into conversation,” Dirnt stated. “Anytime you can get people talking, you’re always going to have the loudest voices [heard first], and then everyone else in the room is going to figure out what it really means.”
The lyric change additionally prompted harsh criticism from Musk, who wrote that Green Day went “from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it.”
Dirnt, in response, stated the world’s wealthiest man “actually is the machine.”
“I can’t take anything else from that,” the musician stated. “He’s not shy about saying stupid shit on the internet. Whatever.”
The band hasn’t saved their distaste for Trump underneath wraps.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong declared “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” ― a transforming of a chant featured within the MDC tune “Born to Die” ― throughout a efficiency of their tune “Bang Bang” on the American Music Awards in 2016.
Armstrong additionally in contrast Trump to Adolf Hitler that 12 months, telling Kerrang: “The worst problem I see about Trump is who his followers are. I actually feel bad for them, because they’re poor, working-class people who can’t get a leg up.”
“They’re pissed off and he’s preyed on their anger,” Armstrong went on. “He just said, ‘You have no options and I’m the only one, and I’m going to take care of it myself.’ I mean, that’s fucking Hitler, man!”
