Green Day

Gabe an editor in my hometown, invited Green Day to my high school.

Gabe was a Zine editor and used to show me them as we walked to the bus stop.

He accompanied me on guitar as we sang, Joan Baez and I thought I was off key because
we didn't use a chord sheet and just jammed.

I didn't know how to use a monitor and couldn't hear myself.

I loved "Heaven Help Us All" and sang it often.

I danced on stage in a short skirt twice with Gabe.

First listening to Primus,Violent Femmes? at the Phoenix with Erik Tokle who drove too fast in a sportscar and there was some
front row toking involved.

I never did drugs, just hope.

Green Day gave me hope.

They sang at a twang star high school for cholos, special ed, severely disabled
children and some drama students, that afternoon. Their video shows me dancing.

I hope they release the video.

I just never saw it.

I love you, Herr Meline.

I love my MtV.

In less than a month, Green Day's 2004 punk opus American Idiot will come to life onstage as a bona fide musical at California's Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Idiot's creative team includes Michael Mayer, the Tony award-winning director of Spring Awakening (music by Duncan Sheik), and Tom Kitt, the Tony award-winning composer of this year's rock musical Next to Normal. The show's cast features several Spring Awakening alums as well as former and present cast members of Rent, Hair and the Queen-based musical We Will Rock You — along with a few performers with solo music careers.
Check out the actors' resumes and samples of their performances — and read how Mayer and Billie Joe Armstrong bonded to create this production — as Rolling Stone goes behind Green Day's ambitious stage show.