Sprawled in the back seat, drummer Tre Cool is grinning and mellow, having had a few hits off his small bronze pipe back at the rehearsal hall. You don't see a lot of those three-quarter size guitars. Green Day may have been out of the limelight for the past years, but the march of time has not diminished their capacity for adolescent wackiness. They haven't matured all that much, but their music has. Their new album, Warning , takes in a wider range of sounds and styles than any of their previous discs.
Acoustic guitars are prominent on many songs.
Various songs contain echoes of the Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Who and other timeless rock icons. More in an early Bruce Springsteen or Pete Townshend type of way. While Dirnt and Cool cruise L.A., Armstrong is holed up in a nearby recording studio with a roomful of guitars and some overdubs to complete. Dressed in dowdy blue work clothes and heavy boots, he looks more like someone who's there to clean the studio than a rock star client who's spending a hundred bucks an hour. The guitarist moves with quiet, deliberate intensity from the control room to the lounge.