How Green Day’s ‘lost’ album put them on the path to greatness again

The story of Cigarettes And Valentines goes like this: Green Day, along with their long-time producer Rob Cavallo, recorded a full-length that was intended for release as the successor to Warning, and which was intended to meet its waiting public in 2003. However, a problem was soon to arise. With the songs fully tracked, the master tapes on which they lay were then ‘stolen’ from Jingletown Studios, the band’s own facility in Oakland. This story has become subject to much speculation.

For a time, Green Day stuck to the script. Speaking in 2009, Billie Joe Armstrong confirmed that the story as it was presented was true, and that the lost material was “good stuff”. But a later interview with Tré Cool elicited a different response. Asked to confirm the veracity of the band’s party line on the fate of Cigarettes And Valentines, the drummer’s reply constituted just three syllables: “Next question.” Further to this, a conversation with Rob Cavallo on the same topic was met with the words, “Erm, we’re probably going to have to go off-the-record here…”

It is probable that Green Day did record an album on to which they bestowed the title Cigarettes And Valentines, and that it was decided that the material was simply not up to snuff. But the same can also be said of a number of the tracks on Warning.

In the four years that elapsed between the release of Warning and the unveiling of its successor, American Idiot, Green Day issued only two box-fresh songs, Maria and Poprocks & Coke, found on the compilation album International Superhits!, released in 2001, both of which are indicative of the state of the band’s creative appetites at this time, not to mention, surely, of the quality of the material set for inclusion on Cigarettes And Valentines. Of the two, Maria is the best. Featuring a strutting punk rock soundtrack, the song tells the tale of a redoubtable dissident who is ‘the first voice of the last ones in the line’, a person determined to ‘drag the lake to keep the vendetta alive’ (it is probable that the person about whom Billie Joe is singing is in fact his wife, Adrienne). Less impressive is Poprocks & Coke, an irritatingly jaunty workout with little substance. Despite the difference in the quality of this pair of compositions, neither stands equal to the peaks of Dookie, Insomniac, Nimrod, or with the finest moments from Warning.

From this vantage point, the likelihood of Green Day re-emerging just two years later with an album so ubiquitous that it conquered the world seemed slim. Even so, the narrative that emerged in the wake of American Idiot’s all-conquering success of an album that rescued the career of a group whose very future was in doubt is widely off-target. In 2002 the appeal of Green Day was still sufficient to see them play a two-night stand at London’s 12,000-seat Wembley Arena.

In time, Green Day would find some perspective on the material recorded for Cigarettes And Valentines. Seven years after its intended release, during a performance in Colorado, the band played the title-track live for the first time, at which point a paying audience learned that, as with Maria, the song was pretty good, but hardly great. On the deluxe edition of American Idiot, two more songs – Too Much Too Soon and Shoplifter – emerged (both of which had been re-recorded) that were written for inclusion on the album that never was. Of these, the latter, a close relation to The Clash’s classic Bankrobber, is a near peach.

As for the album on which these songs were slated to emerge, it is possible, even, that the plug was pulled by the band’s record label, Warner Bros. Rob Cavallo recalls that, following the release of Dookie, a change occurred within the organisation’s top-brass. As well as being Green Day’s producer, Rob was also one of Warners’ senior vice president of A&R, and he recalls an incident at which he was told by a superior that any album submitted that was deemed to be below code would not be released. In 2002 there were even rumours that Green Day might be dropped by the company with which they had signed in 1993. This, though, is far from true. In fact, Warners were beginning to plot a course back to prominence for the band with whom they’d first struck platinum eight years earlier. In 2003, Rob was told by the company’s president to dedicate an entire year solely to helping the trio record their next record.

That same year, the producer paid Billie Joe Armstrong a visit at his home overlooking the Oakland Bay, only to find the then 31-year-old songwriter wondering aloud whether or not his race was, in fact, run. He lived in a big house, he said, and had made a lot of money, ‘What right do I have as a punk rocker to sing about what’s going on?’ The producer’s response was straight and true. “Your fans want to know how you feel,” was his answer, “so you’ve got to write about whatever it is you’re feeling. As long as it’s real and true, I think people are gonna respect it, and I think they’re gonna like it.”

As it turned out, Rob Cavallo would be proved right beyond his grandest dreams.

Read this next:

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• “This band exists in a state of chaos”: The story of Green Day’s ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré! album trilogy
• “We simply thought, ‘Let’s just f*cking be Green Day’”: The story of Revolution Radio