I’m a fan of Billie Joe Armstrong and the band Green Day. I wasn’t too pleased when American Idiot became a Broadway musical (seems like a sell out, from what Green Day used to represent), and I wasn’t surprised when Armstrong was checked into rehab.
But I’m thrilled when I spot a headline like, “Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Will Rewrite Shakespeare”!
More specifically, Spin Magazine reports, it looks like he’ll be helping with the soundtrack to These Paper Bullets, a rock-n-roll take on Much Ado About Nothing.
Music and Shakespeare always go together, and when modern popular recording artists get in on the Shakespeare act, nothing but good can come of it. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd did a rendition of Sonnet 18 that was my ring tone for a long time, and set the stage for my children to always hear, and repeat, Shakespeare set to music. Rufus Wainwright soon followed. I know that Bare Naked Ladies actually have an album called As You Like It, having done soundtrack work for productions in their native Canada.
What do you think, readers? Fans of Green Day out there? Do you imagine this new effort sounding like that, or do we think that Armstrong’s got the range to bring something entirely different (and equally awesome) to the table?
Ahem . . .
Don't want to be a Shakespearean idiot.
Don't want to spend more time with Kenneth Branagh.
And I can hear the speech of St. Crispin's
The subliminal theme of bands of brothers.
Welcome to a new kind of drama,
All across the Shakespeare canon,
His tragedies are A-O-K.
Macbeth makes a speech of tomorrow.
An invisible dagger he follows.
And that's enough for Duncan.
kj