Wake Me Up When September Ends: The Personal, the Conceptual, and the Political

American Idiot, the album where the aforementioned Green Day song is from, is the most well-known album by Green Day so far and the same which has taken the world by storm with its radical anti-Bush and anti-war lyrics. This album was a bold move by the band after they decided to record a new album from scratch after the master tracks for their supposed next album after Warning (Cigarettes and Valentines) have been stolen.

There must be reason though why all that had to happen. Billie Joe Armstrong (pictured left), Tre Cool, and Mike Dirnt decided eventually to start from scratch and create this epic rock opera that will change the world and will cause their rise once more after their hiatus from Warning. In this post, I will blog about the song Wake Me Up When September Ends in commemoration of two tragic events along the dates of September 10 and 11: the death of Billie Joe Armstrong's father and the 9-11 terrorist attacks (even if the song isn't really about the 9-11 attack), respectively.

The song has numerous meanings attached to it, and the most obvious one is about the death of his father. Billie Joe himself clarified that. It is very heartbreaking to have your father die when you are still a kid, let alone as an innocent ten-year-old. Some sources have said that after the funeral, Billie Joe locked himself in his room and cried out the words, "Wake me up when September ends!", thus inspiring the title of the song. He also barely came out of his room.

And I thought that when I was ten, I was already quite miserable. Fortunately, my parents are still alive and living together to this day. Sure, I may have been plagued by bullies and grave depression that almost drove me to suicidal thoughts when I was ten, but when I first heard this song on the radio, I was already sure that I will become a fan of whoever was the band who was playing that song. I didn't even have the slightest knowledge of Green Day that time because I grew up with pop music such as Britney Spears or Backstreet Boys. My parents were not really that fond of rock music. 

I remember that time when I decided to stay late in school after I got in trouble for getting into a fight with some bully so that I can get away from my parents for a longer while only to face the same inevitable fury from them but only delayed. I was looking out the glass of my car and watching the raindrops slide on the window while I was listening to the song. For some reason, even if it was a sad song, it gave me solace even if I understood none of it as a ten-year-old. The melody just soothed my soul even for just a while. By the time I'm writing this, I'm already getting somewhat teary-eyed and emotional. The memories of those horrible times are haunting me again. But come to think of it, last year, Billie Joe performed the song during a cancer awareness program. It must be so haunting for him to relive those memories of the funeral, but he must be a really strong man emotionally to be able to do that. Sometimes, when he performs this song in concerts, he actually cries. That makes him even stronger because it takes a real man to cry in public, smear his eyeliner, and not be ashamed of it at all.

About five or six years later, I have already matured and rediscovered Green Day once more. I then got to know them in a more in-depth manner after seeing 21 Guns on TV. I loved the song and thought it was reminiscent of Wake Me Up When September Ends. Perhaps it was that I thought Billie Joe was quite attractive. I have to admit to having these fangirl moments because I'm sure that all of us have had these moments, whether it's a tween ogling over Justin Bieber's feminine, angelic (depending on how you hear it) voice and signature haircut or some dude checking out Hayley Williams's petite frame and flaming red hair. It's not that I even knew that he was already in his late 30's that time, married (to Adrienne Nesser), with kids about my age (and I'm slightly older than Joey, the firstborn). In case you did not check out my previous post about DBS (due to viower excretion advisory perhaps), I did mention that all three of my major rock star crushes (Billie Joe Armstrong, Gerard Way, Brian Haner Jr) are married (and in their 30's).

I then dug deeper and listened to the entire discography. It was like a walk through Billie Joe's life and also those of Tre Cool (drummer) and Mike Dirnt (bassist). I realized from all that that despite the many trials that one will inevitably undergo in life, there's always a way out with enough will to find it. There's always a way to overcome all that. Billie's way is through music, and it all started with him writing his first song, Why Do You Want Him (found in the 1990 album 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours), when he was only 14 years old. It was also about another trial that came with his life, which was his stepfather than neither he nor his siblings like. He also overcame drug addiction just for his wife and kids. 

Furthermore, he has also saved and changed so many other lives, not only his own or mine. I'm sure that before I ever became a fan, there were already millions before me whose lives were saved by the band. For me, Wake Me Up When September Ends is what started it all. This was also the start of my appreciation of rock music even in faint drops. Later did I realize that it's innate in me to incline myself to rock music. Avenged Sevenfold, All Time Low, Black Veil Brides, My Chemical Romance, and most of the other bands I listen to now eventually came into the tapestry of my life. Green Day, so far, is the epitome of what it is to find another door once one has been slammed into your face. So far, I have not gotten in trouble in school anymore and I'm doing quite well.

American Idiot, aside from being an anti-war propaganda album, is also a coming-of-age story about Jesus of Suburbia, a rebellious, world-weary teen who leaves his town in pursuit of a better life. He is some sort of a desensitized anti-hero. In his adventures, he becomes a punk-rock freedom fighter (as St. Jimmy, his alter-ego) along with an unnamed girl called Whatsername. The album follows the rage and love motif, as said in a line of the song Jesus of Suburbia, where Jimmy falls into a self-destructive phase by being a drug dealer and at the same time stands up for his beliefs as JOS, where he really wants to be. St. Jimmy eventually commits suicide, but it is actually a side of him that dies. It is an open-ended story without a clear resolution as it is up to the listener to realize what it is as it ends with him losing connections with Whatsername and eventually ends up as a jaded adult.

Okay, back to the song Wake Me Up When September Ends. The music video of the song is interconnected with all the other music videos Green Day has released in relation to this album. In the musical adaptation, in addition to the characters Jesus of Suburbia (St Jimmy, Johnny in the musical) and Whatsername, there are also Will and Tunny, his friends in the town. Tunny is probably the one depicted in the music video. Tunny enlists in the army, just like in the musical, and leaves his lover and everything else behind. This leaves his lover in a spiraling depression, but she lets him go despite that if he is to serve his country. She says something along the lines of being always there for him as she sits in solitude on bleachers facing a grassland, the same one where they would usually meet. This is still connected with the anti-war motif of the album and depicts the heartbreak that is felt by the people who are left behind by war casualties.

An initial belief about the meaning of this song upon its release is that it's about the events during the 9-11 attack, still following the album's anti-war theme. I still believe this though, in a sense even if the song isn'texactly about this incident. I simply decided to post my tribute to all the 9-11 victims in the same blog post as the song interpretation as they also interconnect in a sense. 

The line 'Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars' could be related to the debris that fell from a high altitude which Billie Joe could have figuratively written as the stars. Or it can probably be the airplanes colliding with the building, which somewhat reminds me of the B.o.B.-Hayley Williams song Airplanes, although that is a newer song. 

So many people can relate to this song because of the casualties of this incident and caused terror in the skies during that day that has changed so many lives, including those of My Chemical Romance. In fact, it was this event that propelled their music career and inspired the song Skylines and Turnstiles. This is another great example of seeing opportunities through disasters and tragedies. When I was seven, I thought that this was a movie. I only realized the truth when I saw this in the news. I remembered this event but was unaware of the immense heartbreak that millions have felt from this horrifying tragedy. My innocence still shielded me from such painful truths.

Despite the fact that Wake Me Up When September Ends was written a few years after the incident, it somewhat makes sense even at that time considering the deep scars left behind from the attack whenever it is remembered just a day after Billie Joe commemorates his father's death although from a separate incident about two decades ago from that. The song is also an example of the human resilience despite tragedies like this that leave hearts bereft of loved ones. It has made me realize that, being more than just a song about a son mourning about his father's death, it has also saved many more lives in a way. It is also a poetic song that captures several different compelling messages perfectly in a soothing euphony with powerful guitar riffs, from the personal (about his father), to the conceptual (The two faces of Johnny as Jesus of Suburbia and St. Jimmy, the sides of rage and love), and the political (how the song seamlessly integrates itself into the whole anti-war scheme of the album).

Andy Armstrong (September 10, 1982)

All the 9-11 casualties (September 11, 2001)