The Green Day story is very blunt: three school friends grow up together in a cluster of small blue-collar Californian towns, form a band and sell over 50 million albums. Except it wasn't that simple. Self-confessed latch-key kids, theirs was far from an easy ride.

Inspired by both the energy of British punk bands like the Sex Pistols and Buzzcocks and cult American bands such as Dead Kennedys and Husker Du, Green Day formed in 1989. The band gigged relentlessly across the US, quickly selling out every underground club that booked them, and their 1994 major label debut Dookie was a 10-million-selling worldwide hit album that seized the zeitgeist while rock music was still reeling from the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. They toured the world, headlined all the big festivals, won countless awards and released multi-million selling albums.

In 2004 Green Day reached a career pinnacle with the concept album American Idiot, a sophisticated commentary on modern life-not least dissatisfaction with their president and America's continued cultural and economic imperialism. The No. 1 success of the Grammy-winning album extended Green Day's fan base even further-from pre-teen kids to previously skeptical critics.

This book is the world's first full biography on Green Day. An authority on punk and hardcore, author Ben Myers charts the band members' difficult childhoods, the context of the band within the US and world punk scene and their glittering rise to success. Myers has also interviewed the band for various magazines at different stages of their career.