Billie Joe Armstrong On The Sound Of Green Day's Dookie: "It Was Just Trying To Go From Loud To Louder"

In a new video testing out his awesome new signature MXR Dookie Drive pedal, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has explained the sound of the band's 1994 breakthrough third album Dookie – and how you can create the same style.

"I think that the guitar sounds on Dookie and [1995 follow-up] Insomniac are very heavy," he says. "We grew up listening to The Ramones, and Bob Mould's sound from Hüsker Dü, and Sex Pistols. It's just been something that's stuck with me, always chasing good tone and trying to get the ultimate rock sound.

"If there's one thing that you listen to on the Dookie record, I would say it was the 'Dookie sound' that would be in the verses, but then when we wanted more power, we turned it up," Billie Joe continues. "You can really hear it in a song like She, where the verse goes and then when it kicks into the chorus that big heavy guitar with more distortion kinda comes right up the middle. It was just trying to go from loud to louder."

Check out what he means in the video below as he tests out the MXR Dookie Drive pedal (interestingly by performing the riffs from 1990's Disappearing Boy and 1991's One Of My Lies).

In the video's description, Jim Dunlop USA explain how the pedal was created: "To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Dookie, we’re releasing the MXR Dookie Drive. It captures the sound of both of Billie Joe’s amps in a single pedal so that you can dial in your own variations of that famous Dookie sound. We borrowed the amps themselves so that the MXR team could carefully analyze all the sonic qualities that make them sound so darn good.

"After much analysis and A/B testing, our engineers rebuilt the amps from scratch in pedal circuit form and fit them into a single housing. The High Gain and Clean Gain sections each have their own controls, while the Blend control allows you to mix them together just like Green Day did in the studio. If you want some extra scoop in the midrange of the overall output signal, just hit the Scoop switch.

"The Dookie Drive isn’t just for Green Day fans – this totally unique pedal provides a full harmonic range of overdriven tones for a playing experience that is full of depth and dimension."

Check out the full product right here, and remind yourself of Dookie's glorious tone with one of Green Day's finest songs, She:

Read this next:

• Dookie vs. American Idiot: Which is the best Green Day album?
• Green Day’s 15 best videos, ranked in order of greatness
• 20 things you probably didn't know about Billie Joe Armstrong