Green Day were asked about their pre-American Idiot ‘stolen’ album, Cigarettes And Valentines

It’s been over 20 years since Green Day’s lost seventh album Cigarettes And Valentines was mysteriously stolen, and in a new interview the band have reflected on the positives and negatives of that peculiar – but ultimately beneficial – situation.

Speaking with Kevan Kenney for an Audacy Check-In last week, the trio – Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool – explained that it was a “bummer” at the time to have their master tapes apparently nicked, but equally it became a “blessing” because they scrapped their previous work and then went on to write one of the greatest rock albums ever in American Idiot.

“They were just gone,” said Tré of the Cigarettes And Valentines recordings, “so somebody probably stole them – maybe didn’t know what was on them.”

“I’ve never heard that ever happening to anybody,” continued Billie Joe. “It was a bummer, for sure. We put a lot of work into it, but at the same time, it was a blessing. We were like, ‘Let’s just start from scratch. Let’s try this over again.’ Maybe it’s just a sign that we made a crappy record and we should make a better one.”

When asked about anything from Cigarettes… making its way on to American Idiot, Billie Joe also shared that, “There was a lot of stuff that were full songs… from the original version of Homecoming, that was on American Idiot. We ended up using a lot of those parts, and of connected it together, which makes this sort of crazy suite, as they call it, of a song.”

Little else from that album has officially seen the light of day, though, bar the title-track which was released on their 2011 live album Awesome as Fuck.

Watch the Audacy interview below:

Green Day’s 14th album Saviors was released last Friday. The band tour the UK in June – get your tickets now.

Read this: “It created a new future for us”: The story of Green Day’s American Idiot