Green Day at Gilman, 1992 (Photo by Murray Bowles).
Green Day Produces Documentary About the East Bay Punk Scene
By Hayley Nielsen	No Comments
To a generation of punk kids, the East Bay Area is holy ground. During the late 80s and early 90s, Bay Area bands like Rancid, Operation Ivy, The Offspring, AFI, and Green Day were forming and breaking into the mainstream. At the epicenter of all of this was 924 Gilman: a music club in Berkeley, run by a collective of musicians and other creative-types.
For thirty years, the club — a non-profit since 2014 — has served as a safe place for people of all ages to listen to music. Gilman famously has their rules posted at the entrance of the club: no alcohol, no drugs, no violence, no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, and no transphobia. The storied institution and the scene surrounding it launched the career of one of the biggest bands in the world: Green Day. Someone should make a documentary about it, don't you think?
Enter Corbett Redford, a Bay Area native, musician — he's one-half of the folk-rock duo Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children Macnuggits — and now, filmmaker. When Green Day's front man, Billie Joe Armstrong, wanted a documentary made about East Bay punk, he knew just who to ask. Corbett was kind enough to let me interview him about his upcoming documentary Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk. Narrated by Iggy Pop, the film starts by covering 1960s Berkeley activism and explains how, out of that movement, the East Bay punk rock scene was eventually born.
Corbett is a long-time friend of the Green Day guys — he was a freshman when they were seniors at Pinole Valley High School. In September 2013, Corbett's old friend Billie Joe called him and asked him for a favor.
Jawbreaker at Gilman, 1991 (Photo by Murray Bowles).
"He [Billie Joe] said 'I'm looking for some particularly rare old footage of my band playing a backyard party in Oakland.' He knew I'd know where to get it. I wound up getting that and like 20 other videos from their early days. I brought it back to him and he was really grateful. He said 'We're trying to do a documentary about our early days. Do you know anybody that can do it?' And I said 'I can.' And he said 'You're right! You can. I'll talk to Mike Dirnt and Tre tomorrow and we'll meet up.' October 2013 we began production on Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk."
The movie took three-and-a-half years to complete and includes interviews culled from over 500 hours of footage. Turn It Around is a love letter from Corbett and Green Day to the scene that made them who they are today. Corbett serves on the fundraising board for Gilman and Green Day have always made sure to support the place that gave them their start.
Corbett explains: "Green Day are silent supporters of the club. If there's sound equipment that breaks down, suddenly there will be new equipment. They'll do a benefit for the club, or do a benefit for fire victims, or friends. They're an anomaly — they're one of the biggest rock bands in the world, but they're a part of a grassroots community." The band also provided the funding for the film.
Rancid at Gilman, 1993 (Photo by Murray Bowles).
I asked Corbett what it was about the East Bay Area that allowed the scene to flourish.
"Hippies. That's what I think. It's not a very punk thing to say. Punks butt heads with hippies. 'You didn't get the job done, you didn't finish the revolution. So now we're here to break shit.' That's the punk thing, right? I would say that professor parents at UC Berkeley and hippie parents that understood a kid's need to do something weird to their hair. I think it's kind of a nurturing environment, the East Bay. I think that one of the reasons why this youthful scene of Gilman was able to flourish was because of the supportive environment of the elders of the place. A city council that didn't shoot it down. Parents that went and advocated for it to the city council, saying: 'These kids can do this, this club can come together, you may be afraid of their costumes or their hair but they're going to build something productive and work hard.'"
The late 80s and early 90s were arguably Gilman's heyday. When asked about the current state of East Bay punk rock, Corbett seemed hopeful about the future.
"Don't try to replicate the past. [Narrator] Iggy Pop says near the end of the film: 'It's probably already happening in some town you've never heard of, where kids feel bored or dissatisfied.' It's about the people who put in the work. I'm confident in the kids at Gilman today. I think a lot of dynamics have changed. I think less people are going out to do the night culture thing. The internet is doing a lot to affect people's ability to do that stuff. It's a completely different time. Whether or not there will be a new renaissance at Gilman I couldn't say, but I wouldn't put it past the wonderful artists and volunteers that are there right now to do something completely different but just as majestic."
Check out the trailer here:
Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk will debut at SF DocFest on May 31st and will open at San Francisco's Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on June 2nd. It opens nationally in late Summer 2017.
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Tags: Documentary, east bay, movie, movies, punk