These are a couple of video interviews form 1994. They’ve been around, so you may have seen them. Both are from MTV’s “120 Minutes” show. The first one is from March of 1994, only a month after Dookie was released, and months before it had exploded as a major hit album. Billie Joe was still living at the house where the “Longview” video was filmed. They talk about the house, the current tour, and about the famous time when they played in a house with no roof and no electricity, which was the night they were asked to record with Lookout Records. Billie Joe, on the difference between their old and new fans: “There’s a lot more meatheads that show up now.”

The second one is from June of 1994, and the guys already look like their more familiar, to us, goofy selves. I had to include a screencap, below, of Billie Joe picking his nose for the camera. The man is a poet and a musical genius, but these are the things that crack me up… Download a better quality version of the video here (from GDC).

It’s too big to post on YouTube, but if you haven’t seen it, or haven’t watched it lately, “Ultimate Albums: Dookie”, which aired on VH1, is pretty great. The fast cuts and neat-o editing (yeah, I’m using a term from my youth, shut up!) are a bit annoying, but there’s commentary from all sorts of people, including Rob Cavallo, Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, Bob Mould of Husker Du, Elvis Costello, Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion and Epitaph Records, and many others. And there are comments from the members of Green Day, of course, and they’re being pretty serious here. Here’s a download link from GDC, where all of these videos originally came from.

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