Gavin Edwards: "I sit down with Tre at a table in the commissary of the BBC TV studios, just outside London. Green Day are here to perform 'Hitchin' a Ride' on Top of the Pops. Tre has astroturf-tinted hair and a voice that squeaks like he's just sucked down a six-pack of helium. He begins shaking salt and pepper on my tape recorder, then bites it. 'Needs bread,' he judges. From there, things only get stranger, as Tre discusses how to kill somebody with nail clippers, the punk-rock nature of blue jays, and how he'd like to name a dog Jehova Pimento. After half an hour of free association, he lands on the topic of his childhood. 'I hated school,' he says. 'But now when I look back at school... I still hate it." He leans in toward my tape recorder--not to take a second bite, but to ensure that not a word is missed. 'I have a message for all the kids out there: I didn't complete high school, and I'm very rich and very successful.'

Tre's sense of anarchic mischief keeps the band laughing, even after all these years, and often inspires Billie Joe to try to top him. When the band take the BBC stage in front of about a hundred British teenagers, Billie Joe hunches over the mike and drawls, 'Y'all like country music? We're here to play some country music." They thrash through an up-tempo, fluent version of 'On the Road Again,' demonstrating that they can play genres other than pop-punk. Then they kick into 'Hitchin' a Ride,' and for three minutes there is no more glorious or intense sound in the world.

The lyrics are about Billie Joe trying to stay sober, and his periodic failures; he belts them out with passion, celebrating his own shortcomings. 'Don't be afraid to zoom in on those eyes of his,' says the director in the BBC control room--and in fact, Billie Joe's eyeballs do dart around madly, making him look like a man who's thinking one step ahead, or maybe just trying to make a break for the door.

The band waited seven hours to play one song, but afterward they're in a good mood. As we leave the studio, heading back to a No Doubt concert in town, on a night that feels full of possibilities, I ask them what Green Day will never do. Billie Joe demurs; Mike mutters something about not using computers. Tre ponders before replying. 'We'll never sell out,' he says. 'We'll never sign to a major label, and we'll never get played on MTV.'