On December 17, 1991, Green Day were presented with vinyl copies of their second album, Kerplunk. On this chilly winter’s evening, the band were appearing at the Joiners Arms in Southampton, an event that quickly became an impromptu album release party at which the musicians wore all of the clothes and wigs they’d accumulated during their first overseas tour, and which culminated with Billie Joe Armstrong falling off the stage. By this point Green Day had been in Europe for almost two months. The band travelled in a van that caught fire en route to snowbound gigs at which four people had paid entry. One night they slept in a storeroom alongside a human head in a jar of formaldehyde. On another, their place of rest was a venue in Copenhagen in which a coup...
