I love it when bands that Green Day considers influences give Green Day their due. And is it wrong to chuckle a little when they also express disdain for Green Day’s mall-punk followers into mainstream band success?
Billie Joe often mentions Husker Du as an important influence on his own development as a musician, and even as a person. He mentioned them again in the recent Rolling Stone interview. (The quote is in the sidebar.) And in a new interview, Bob Mould of Husker Du acknowledges his band’s influence on a lot of contemporary bands, and gives a tip of the hat to Green Day.
Of the bands who show their debt to Husker Du in their “sound print,” like Nirvana, Green Day, and Foo Fighters, he says: “I typically like it when I hear it because I can sort of tell where it came from and it’s nice.” And while he respects Green Day — he calls them amazing! — he’s less happy with other popular pop-punk bands that followed:
“There was a couple of years where there was sort of mall punk stuff, where I was like wow, you’re really missing the point here. Green Day is an amazing band, but it’s sort of like the bands after them that wore the eyeliner and played fast and shopped at Hot Topic, that was more important than trying to sort of raise a social consciousness or trying to create something new.”
In another new interview, Joe King of The Queers, another punk band that has been around the block a few times, since the late 80s, and was Green Day’s label-mate on Lookout, has similar things to say: Green Day good, mall punk not so good. This is how he puts it:
“AP [Alternative Press] is such bullshit. There are no negative reviews and there are no truthful reviews. Every band is the best band in the world. Just like Sum41 or Good Charlotte. They’re phony — plastic. For kids that want to make it in the industry, punk rock is a career move. It’s weird and fake. Back in the day, bands like Rancid, Green Day and the [Mighty Mighty] Bosstones didn’t start a band to make money; they did it because they had to.”
And Jake Burns of Stiff Little Fingers, a band who’s been around longer than either Husker Du or The Queers — since 1977 — and has influenced probably every melodic punk band out there, directly or indirectly, had this to say:
On the legions of latter-day imitators, like Bad Religion, Rancid, U2 and Green Day: “It’s pleasing on one level, and frightening on another when fans come along and say, ‘I’ve followed you for 30 years, and this is my 17-year-old son. He loves you as well.’” Back in the day, people would compare SLF to bands like Iggy and the Stooges. “So then we’d check out what Iggy did.” Now, he says, “Green Day and the like namecheck us.” He adds, jokingly, but maybe not entirely: “It would have been nice if U2 and Green Day could have recorded one of our songs. Sure would have helped my retirement fund.”
And for anyone who hasn’t heard them, here’s some songs by Husker Du, The Queers, and Stiff Little Fingers (Edit: fixed it so it works in Firefox too): Husker Du - Divide and Conquer
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