Every year, as September draws near its end, Greenday sees a sharp rise in sales of their 2004 single “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. This year was no different, and the band even chose to play it themselves on The Howard Stern Show, even though we’re already in mid-October.
Just before the band started a-rocking, Stern asked singer Billie Joel Armstrong about the painful background of the song. Armstrong obliged by revealing that the title of the song is actually words he had said to his mother when his father passed away. The future Greenday frontman was merely 10 years old at the time.
“I think it’s something that just stayed with me; the month of September being that anniversary that always is just, I don’t know, kind of a bummer,” recalled Armstrong. “But it’s weird. When things happen like that when you’re that young, it’s almost like life starts at year zero, or something like that.”
“I think about him every day, really,” Armstrong continued when Stern asked if he still “actively thinks” of his father. “I kinda avoided writing about him for many years, and then finally having a breakthrough like that felt good. It wasn’t like a negative emotion so much, but it was just kind of like honoring him.”
Watch Greenday play this emotionally charged song below:
