From Green Day To Broadway

NPR- In 2004, Green Day, the punk-pop band fronted by Billie Joe Armstrong, released a Grammy-winning album called American Idiot. Instead of looking inward for his material — as Armstrong had done when he wrote songs about his anxiety, relationships and panic attacks on the albums Dookie and Nimrod — he decided to write about politics: specifically, the alienation and anger he felt during the presidency of George W. Bush.

"In the beginning, right after 9/11 and watching the sort of tanks going into Iraq and these embedded journalists going in live, it felt like a cross between war and reality television," Armstrong tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "So I just felt this great sort of confusion, like, someone needs to say something. ... For me, I felt this moment of rage and patriotism, I guess, if you'd want to call it that. So that wrote itself in probably 30 seconds."

The punk-rock opera, as the album was called, was recently turned into a Broadway show with virtually no dialogue — and with the actors telling the story largely through movements on stage. Armstrong says that watching his musical vision come the stage was a transformative experience.

"It goes from a three-piece band to a 20-piece vocal ensemble," he says. "When we did the album the first time around, it was me, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool doing everything. Then, this time, it was dealing with the string section and all the characters and how all the characters were coming out in the musical."