Did this random guy really write Green Day’s “Basket Case”?
Probably not but let's go waaayyy too deep on his claim.
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If there’s one thing Instagram loves to show me, it’s videos of standup comedians doing crowdwork. Most of them are awful and barely fall within the boundaries of “comedy.” Just some comedian in Minneapolis listening to a post-shift nurse drunkenly slur and ramble while trying to parse something resembling a joke out of it. This is not a dig at the comedians, necessarily. The internet has reduced us all to the lowest form of our craft.
Anyway! A video came across my feed this week where comedian Geoffrey Asmus asks a guy in his audience, who says his name is Tom, what he does for work. Tom is a retired musician, he says, and had done well as a songwriter. When asked what songs he’d written, the man claims to have written Green Day’s “Basket Case” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”
OK wait what? I’m something of a Green Day superfan and I’d never heard of the band employing a songwriter at that point in their career. Was this just drunken comedy club bullshit? An attempt to get 15 minutes of fame on Asmus’ Instagram account or impress the hot lady next to him? Or is it possible that this random guy really did write two of the biggest hits of the 90s? When Asmus calls Tom’s bluff and begins looking the song up on Wikipedia, Tom quickly covers his tracks by defending, “I had to sign a shadow writer’s contract.”
My immediate reaction is that this is nonsense, of course, but could it possibly be true? I’m not the world’s leading expert in Green Day or anything, but I have written a book about them and I have way too much time on my hands. So alright, “Tom.” The comedy club drunks around you may have lapped up your story, but I’m not so sure I believe you. Let’s venture down your little conspiracy hole, shall we?
Let’s start by going back to late 1992/early 1993. That’s when Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has said the Dookie demos (which were recently released) were recorded, while they were still an independent band on local label Lookout Records. These demo versions of songs like “She” and “Longview” are what got the attention of A&R reps at several big record labels, including producer Rob Cavallo, who signed them in the summer of 1993 to Warner Brothers, which released Dookie in February of 1994.
I sincerely doubt that Green Day had hired any co-writers to help them before they had the backing of a major label. I don’t know where an independent band of 21-year-olds who lived in a basement apartment in Berkeley would’ve gotten the money to employ such a person. The way Cavallo tells it, the band was not even much of a priority for the label even after they were signed, and was offered a contract for around $200,000, which was a pretty meager sum compared to their labelmates.
The only possible leeway I am willing to throw Tom here is that the earliest four-track demo version of “Basket Case” had lyrics that were completely different from what the song would become. On his episode of Song Exploder, Armstrong claimed he wrote the original, less snappy lyrics while high on crystal meth, and once the drugs wore off, he sobered up and realized they sucked. “I kind of let the song go because I felt so gross about it,” he said. “[But] I was like, maybe it’ll come back.” So if a songwriter were to step in—which, again, I’m more than a little skeptical about—it likely would’ve been in this interim period, to help rewrite the lyrics which accompany Armstrong’s melody.
But after boasting that he wrote “Basket Case,” Tom flies even closer to the sun by adding “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” to the list of songs he purports to have authored. Sure, why not. I mean, once you’ve claimed to have written one Grammy-nominated song, why stop there? How about “Smells Like Teen Spirit” too? Throw “Jeremy” on there while you’re at it. As a nice little added detail, Tom goes even further to say he played “Good Riddance” at his high school graduation in 1984, 13 years before the song was released by Green Day. His four college buddies in attendance back him up on this, as college buddies are honor-bound to do.
You may be thinking okay well “Good Riddance” came out in 1997, several years into Green Day’s major-label tenure, so they might’ve had the resources to employ songwriters at that point. Ah, but you are wrong! You fool. You absolute rube. If you were a real Green Day fan, you’d know that “Good Riddance” was written during the Dookie sessions, but the band decided to hold onto it for a few years. Did you also not know that the band used to be called Sweet Children, you poser??
But okay. Let’s give Tom the benefit of the doubt here and go along with his narrative that he got hooked up with a broke independent punk band sometime around 1993, helped one of the most talented songwriters of a generation write two megahits, and kept quiet about it for 30 years until a nightclub comedian simply asked him what he did for a living, at which point he spilled the beans to a roomful of strangers. Alright, Tom. That seems legit. Your story checks out!
Hmmm but there’s just… [Columbo turning back for one more thing that’s bugging him voice] one more thing that’s bugging me. While Tom’s face is never shown, Asmus asks incredulously, “You’re already retired?” Already. This implies that the guy looks young enough that it’s surprising to hear he’s retired. So how old is this guy? If Tom graduated high school in 1984, as he says, he was likely born around 1966, making him approximately 58 years old today. I realize we live in a nightmare stage of capitalism where no one can ever retire and we must all get “post-career employment” jobs as greeters at Walmart, but would it really be that surprising to hear a 58-year-old man say he’s retired? Or is he perhaps much younger than he leads on?
IT ACTUALLY DOESN’T ALL KEEP ADDING UP, TOM!!
This is where the entire story starts to fall apart for me and I’m inclined to call bullshit on the whole thing. Of course, everyone roasting Tom in the comments of the video came to this conclusion long before I did. “I wrote the Gettysburg address,” says one. “I worked on Symphony No.5 with 'Toven on a crazy weekend you don't see me bragging about it,” says another.
So, whether or not you choose to believe that some random nightclub attendee wrote two iconic Green Day songs (oh, and a Matchbox 20 song which he did not explain further) that’s your choice. But whatever your thoughts here, there’s one thing that is irrefutable: Stavros Halkias would’ve torn this guy’s story apart within a minute. This is no disrespect to Asmus, who I like, but he lets his audience members off way too easy here. Had Tom dared to run this little alterna-rock fairy tale past Stavvy, who recently got a musician to admit he has a trust fund with only three questions, he would’ve folded faster than Superman on laundry day.
Also, if anyone has more information about “Tom” or if you are a member of the popular rock band Green Day, feel free to hit my inbox.
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Geoffrey Asmus is a national treasure and possibly the best most intelligent comic doing crowd work out there. And as a lifelong huge GD fan, fuck I kinda believe Tom. It was when his buddies backed him up about playing Good Riddance at their '84 graduation that made me a believer. Someone do their sleuthing and find out where Tom graduated from, start interviewing classmates, and obtain video of this graduation!
Sweet Children remains etched into the rafters at Gilman!