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After finishing the aptly named Pop Disaster tour in 2002, Green Day had a series of state-of-the-band conversations in which its members resolved to stay together but change everything else. "We didn't do the therapy thing," says Armstrong, "but we talked about the fact that with people outside of the band, we interact like adults. Then we get back together, and it's like, 'Dude, you got a booger!'" Having agreed to retire every lame joke about one another, they moved on to the task of redefining their creative process. "We like each other a lot, which is a problem," says Dirnt. "Because not being afraid to fail in front of those closest to you is the most difficult thing in the world. We needed to get to where we could look stupid in front of each other--artistically speaking."
When they started work on a new album, the bandmates agreed that whatever musical direction they were headed in, they had to produce something complete. "We didn't want to be a band bitching about downloading," says Cool, "which happens when you put out one good song and a bunch of filler." Otherwise they sat around and tried to clear their heads of everything they had ever done. "Musical hot potato was the idea," says Armstrong. "If you can't come up with something, do a dirty polka song. Just keep going and don't try to impress anyone but yourself." That led to weeks of actually writing dirty polka songs as well as a wildly profane, never-to-be-released Christmas album until eventually they sweated out 20 new tracks. Then the tracks disappeared. "Albums are kept on tiny discs these days," says Armstrong. "Someone walked off with ours."
A few tantrums and chairs were thrown before Green Day decided not to try to re-create the lost record. "They were really good songs," says Dirnt, "but I don't know if they had taken us to a new place. Plus, we had a taste for ambition at that point." Soon after diving back into the writing process, Armstrong, inspired by what he calls "the absurdity" of watching embedded journalists broadcast live from the middle of a war, came up with American Idiot, the deceptively upbeat title track that proclaimed, "Don't want to be an American Idiot/ Don't want a nation under the new mania." Then Dirnt composed a strange 30-sec. cabaret ditty, which Armstrong and Cool liked so much that they wrote their own 30-sec. additions. Soon they had the beginnings of the 9-min., five-part Jesus of Suburbia, which introduced both Jesus, a character struggling against the country's "red-neck agenda," and the possibility of a full punk-rock opera. "At first, we wondered if we should even call it something like that," says Armstrong, "but, hell, why not make it as grand as possible?"