In a House With Unlocked Doors… by Sharon Mitchell

We are glad to present our new weekly column “In a House With Unlocked Doors…” by Sharon Mitchell. Some of you might already know Sharon because of her vast Green Day collection and devotion to the band, which is exactly why we invited her to have a column here at Green Day Inc.!

Every Thursday we will post a new chapter of “In a House With Unlocked Doors…” where Sharon will share with all of us her Green Day adventures and many items from her vast collection. Be sure to leave your comments below.

In a House With Unlocked Doors – Part One

By Sharon Mitchell

I first got into Green Day back in 1994 – on 17th February, to be exact. I know that, because after hearing Basket Case on the radio, I wrote the track and band name in a diary. That’s Billie’s birthday, by the way. Weird.

My love grew with every new song I heard, and by 2001 I had just about all of their back catalogue on cd (the very start of what has become a huge collection!), but I didn’t get the chance to see them live until January 2005, at Brixton in London ( I got ticket numbers 3,4 & 5). I had put American Idiot into my car’s cd player on the day it came out, and it was still there in June 2005, when I was one of the 130,000 fans that caught their momentous Milton Keynes shows, but the love became devotion in November of that year.

When I was a teenager (a long time ago – I am 53), Top of the Pops was essential viewing – the only music programme on the television worth watching. If you wanted to be in the audience, you had to apply in writing and after a few months, you would get a ‘sorry, you weren’t successful’ letter back. So when I had a message from Warners Music on Monday 30th October, telling me that Green Day were going to be performing Jesus of Suburbia live from the studio on the following Sunday, I was very optimistic indeed to apply for tickets from their website. But the Green Day magic worked, and on Friday, two tickets arrived.

Sunday was wet and cold, but nothing could upset us – me, my husband and the forty or so GD fans in the queue outside BBC studios in Shepherds Bush, mixed with the regular assortment of music fans. We were finally let in, and one of us asked when Green Day would be performing – only to be told that our tickets for the 12.00 filming would not get us in to the private, invited audience only show at 7.00 that evening. We were also told that if any of the guests didn’t show up, those in the front of the line would most likely get in. We all rushed for the door and started queuing again in the rain, leaving the BBC with a very small audience for the rest of the programme! At about three, the band came out onto the tiny outdoor stage, just visible through the BBC’s gates, and warmed up with Minority and JOS, waving to us out on the pavement through the fence – and then, when they went in, another miracle happened. A woman from Warners came out and told us that the boys had instructed her to let all of us in. Every last one of us.

We stood on the barrier. We got showered with confetti, we got roasted by the flamethrowers, soaked and chilled by the rain, but Billie noticed me, and Mike gave me a double thumbs-up and wink and if you pause the BBC video, for the tiniest amount of time, we were visible in the crowd of around 200 and that made it all worth it. There was a strict no photos rule, but I bought two disposable cameras from the local supermarket and managed to snap some grainy images to remember the day. Billie checked out every face in the front row between songs, doing a double-take when he spotted me. He looked shocked – I was more than twice the age of the rest of the fans and had purple hair. I pointed to my arm, to the place where Billie has his “ALL AGES” tattoo and he nodded, laughed and smiled at me. During one of the later songs, Mike had a rest of a couple of bars, and he looked straight at me – that’s when I got the full Dirnt charm offensive and I fell head over heels in love with these lovely men.
They played eleven songs – Minority, JOS, Letterbomb, Are We The Waiting/St Jimmy, Give Me Novacaine, She’s a Rebel, Wake Me Up When September Ends, Longview, Welcome to Paradise and finished with I Fought the Law. And I noticed that they played with as much enthusiasm as they had at Milton Keynes. THAT’s why they are the best live band on the planet. They always give the max to anything they do
It was amazing. We met so many people that day that have become good friends – people like the legendary Green Day Tone and his brother Carl, Rie, the Japanese girl, and the cute couple under the umbrella, Nick and Jojo, all of whom were filmed for Bullet in a Bible. Those last two got married a couple of years ago, by the way, and we went to the wedding. The ceremony featured three Green Day songs – Poprocks, Only Of You, and Church on Sunday. Perfect.

And the magic was about to strike again. On the train on the way home, we spoke to another fan who had been at the show. I joined an UK Green Day forum and we started meeting at various locations across the UK, – although now, that has become across the globe. I’ve met close to 300 fans from every continent – literally, and many of those have stayed at my house (which, incidentally, is called Longview for the obvious reason.).

I thought that Green Day experiences could never get any better than that day, but I was so wrong. Magic follows this band, and I have had my fair share of it, and now I want to share it with the rest of the world.