FRIENDSHIP PUNK

I’m about to interview Pinhead Gunpowder and all I can think about is Madonna. I have 15 minutes on Zoom with the punk quartet made up of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals/guitar), Aaron Cometbus (drums/lyrics), Jason White (vocals/guitar), and Bill Schneider (bass), and it’s reminding me of when I interviewed Madonna in 2015—who was my very first concert at 7 years old. Back then I got 20 in-person minutes that turned into 30, and I was so nervous I drank too much of the free greenroom white wine. Afterward her publicist took some pictures of us on the white leather couch, and then the Queen of Pop took my phone and deleted all the pictures she didn’t like, leaving me with one shot, where she looked glowy, glamorous, her platinum hair curled and coiffed. We were so close our knees were touching: me in denim overalls, Madonna in gauzy black chiffon.

I realize writing about the banal mechanics behind the interview can come off as both apologetic and as lame as the “and then we slid across the red leather banquette for lunch and [insert famous actor’s name] ordered the chicken Caesar—hold the croutons,” but look, this is the scene: There’s four fiftysomething punk dudes adorably squashed thigh-to-thigh on a small couch in a Toronto hotel room. After my first question, Armstrong launches into an answer, but someone’s accidentally pressed mute. Green Day are mid-tour—celebrating the 30 and 20-year anniversaries of Dookie and American Idiot, respectively—and on screen the 52-year-old looks pretty much the same as he did in 1994, bleached-blond, dark roots growing.