Punk legends Green Day's globe-conquering third record Dookie turns 30 this week.



Home to megahit singles Longview, Basket Case and When I Come Around, Dookie broke out in a way that few punk record ever have, amassing over 27 million sales globally.  The enormous success of the record catapulted Green Day from underground venues to arenas and eventually stadiums, becoming a crucial part of the mainstream punk explosion of 1994.  To celebrate the enduring legacy of this GRAMMY® Award-winning, culture-shifting record, we've been down a bit of a Dookie rabbit hole and collected five fun facts about Dookie. 

Five Fun Facts About Dookie

1. The album was nearly called Liquid Dookie

The band originally wanted to call the record Liquid Dookie in tribute to frequent bouts of diarrhea that the band would experience on the road due to consuming questionable food. This fun fact was covered in-depth by Billie Joe Armstong in a VH1 interview stating "It's a really disgusting story, but I'll tell it. We were on tour, and you eat bad food all the time. You just end up getting the shits basically. So we started calling it liquid Dookie. Like, "How did it go in the bathroom?" "Oh, liquid, man, liquid." Later on we were like, "Wouldn't it be fun if we named our record that?" I always thought it was like a real childhood saying, reminiscent of being little kids or something."

2. The artwork is full of clever musical references

The iconic album artwork by Richie Bucher was inspired by the original title though. As explained by Far Out, Boucher's cartoon-like illustration portrays bombs dropping on people and structures. Inspired by his childhood recollections and the proposed title, he created a version of Telegraph Avenue in Green Day's regular haunt, Berkely, California, that features dogs and monkeys excitedly throwing shit at a crowd below. The artwork also features many of the band's personal friends, as well as a dog piloting a plane that drops literal bombs with the word 'Dookie' on them.  



Boucher recently posted his concept sketch for the cover on social media. 

Commenting again to VH1, Billie Joe gave detailed information on all of this reflecting that  "I wanted the artwork to look really different. I wanted it to represent the East Bay and where we come from, because there are a lot of artists in the East Bay scene that are just as important as the music. So we talked to Richie Bucher”. “There are pieces of us buried on the album cover." "There’s one guy with his camera up in the air taking a picture with a beard. He took pictures of bands every weekend at Gilman’s. The robed character that looks like the Mona Lisa is the woman on the cover of the first Black Sabbath album. AC/DC guitarist Angus Young is in there somewhere too. The graffiti reading ‘Twisted Dog Sisters’ refers to these two girls from Berkeley. I think the guy saying “The fritter, fat boy” was a reference to a local cop.”

3. Longview is in part inspired by Armstrong's confessed chronic masturbation 



 According to Armstrong himself, Longview's colourful references to self-loving were rather factual.  Responding to a question about his masturbatory habits from VH1, Armstrong admits to being rather handsy with himself. "Chronic! I was just in a creative rut. I was in between houses sleeping on people's couches. It's a song about trying not to feel pathetic and lonely. I didn't think that masturbation was seen from the point of view that I was looking at it. In songs like "Turning Japanese" it always seemed more about people pulling a pud or something. I was coming from a lonely guy's perspective: No girlfriend, no life, a complete loser."

4. The Basket Case video was filmed in black and white, inside an actual asylum

The video clip for Basket Case was filmed in an actual mental institution called Agnews Developmental Center in Santa Clara County, California, at the request of the band members. The mental institution had been abandoned, but most of the structure remained in a broken-down state.   The band members found old patient files, deep scratches in the walls and dental moulds scattered around. Directed by Mark Kohr, the video frequently references the films One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Brazil. 

As for the meaning of the song, well Armstrong was very open about it being inspired by his panic attacks. “Basket Case is about anxiety attacks and feeling like you’re about to go crazy. "At times, I probably was. I’ve suffered from panic disorders my entire life. I thought I was just losing my mind. The only way I could know what the hell was going on was to write a song about it. It was only years later that I figured out I had a panic disorder.”



Bonus fun fact: The saturated, surreal colour treatment is the result of the clip being filmed in black and white, with the colour added in post-production. 

5. Mike Dirnt wrote the bassline for Longview while tripping on acid

Mike Dirnt wrote the bassline for Longview while tripping on acid. In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Dirnt confirmed as such, quite openly stating "When Billie gave me a shuffle beat for Longview I was flying on acid so hard," he said. "I was lying up against the wall with my bass lying on my lap. It just came to me. I said, ‘Bill, check this out. Isn’t this the wackiest thing you’ve ever heard?’ "Later, it took me a long time to be able to play it, but it made sense when I was on drugs." People have been trying to get their heads and their fingers around it ever since." 

The Dookie 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition is available for now via Warner Music Australia.

Green Day also recently unleashed their 14th studio album, Saviors. Saviors, is the latest powerful collaboration between Green Day and Grammy-winning producer Rob Cavallo, whose notable previous work with Green Day includes two of the band’s most iconic albums,  Dookie and 2004’s American Idiot.

Saviors is available in a variety of formats in our Maniacs store. 

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