Green Day’s Mike Dirnt Tells Adam Clayton How it Feels Playing ‘Dookie’ Again

“A lot of those songs are still relatable to this day. Some of them even more so,” Mike said.

by:
Jackie Kolgraf
July 29, 2024

On a new episode of “Adam Clayton’s Playlist” on U2 X-Radio, Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt talked about how it feels to perform the band’s “Dookie” album again, 30 years after its release.

“It’s actually really fun,” Mike told Adam, bassist-to-bassist, “and for as simple a record as it is to play, my hands are telling me it’s quite muscular. There’s a lot to it, and it also just doesn’t stop. It’s bam, bam, bam, bam. It’s 28 minutes of nonstop power-pop or power-pop-punk. But a lot of those songs are still relatable to this day. Some of them even more so.”

Green Day is currently on The Saviors Tour, where they perform both the “Dookie” (1994) and “American Idiot” (2004) albums in their entirety at every stop.

“For us in U2, when we started to go back and look at those early songs, I was kind of amazed at how great they were,” Adam replied. “I kind of just remembered them as kind of struggling embryonic songwriting, and I didn’t think too much of them. But you go back and you go, ‘How did we do that? How did we think about that?'”

“It’s honesty. Honesty is timeless,” Mike said.

During each episode of “Adam Clayton’s Playlist” on U2 X-Radio, Adam hand-curates a playlist from a different genre of music. Find and stream all available episodes on the SiriusXM app now.


Share: