Ode to Billie Joe

A recent discovery, one I was completely unaware of until I started looking around for a few new tracks to include in what turned out to be the last episode of the World’s Worst Records Radio Show, is this little nugget from Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, Look For Love, issued in May 1977.

 

Issued on Fiat Records (named after its founders, James J. Fiatarone Sr, and his wife, Marie-Louise Fiatarone), Armstrong’s debut disc came in a plain paper sleeve accompanied by a flyer featuring a photograph of the precious toddler resplendent in a ‘look for love’ t-shirt. The flip side - and I love this conceit – featured an interview with the youngster, titled “Meet” Billie Joe, that was taped in a San Francisco recording studio immediately after the Fiatarones and Armstrong put down the A-side. Claims have been made that the tracks were recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California, the same studio where Green Day would later record Dookie in 1993, but the label on the 7” clearly stated that it was recorded in Frisco, on the other side of the Bay.

 

The Fiatarones had written Look For Love three years earlier and had already published the sheet music for the song, but it was not until they met little BJ that they knew they had found the right singer for their magnum opus. To promote the record the precocious nipper appeared on the nationally-syndicated TV show San Francisco Live. It's a shame that the couple had nothing up their sleeves for the flipside, but in “Meet” Billie Joe, we get to learn a little about what is important to the fledgling musician. Armstrong reveals that he can play piano and that he likes school, where his favourite thing is to hear stories from the bible.

 

Billie Joe Armstrong was just five years old when Look For Love was recorded. He had been taking music lessons from Jim Fiatarone, who ran the Fiat Music Company in a shopping mall in Armstrong's hometown of Pinole. Fiatarone convinced Armstrong’s mother to let her boy record Look For Love. It appears that very few copies of the one-off pressing were issued - estimates vary at anything between 50 and 800 - and it is now a super-rare collector’s item, with a copy currently on offer on Discogs for $5,000. Mentioned briefly in Billboard in November 1977, it would be Armstrong’s last solo recording until 2020. At elementary school he met Mike Dirn; the two bonded over a mutual love of music and formed the band Sweet Children at the age of 14, later changing their name to Green Day.

 

Look For Love appears to be the only disc associated with the Fiatarones, although they founded (and still run) the Academy of Language and Music Arts in Orinda, California. The child who would grow up to lead the multi-million-selling band was clearly not embarrassed by his earliest outing, as a short clip from “Meet” Billie Joe turned up on the Green Day album International Superhits!, the band's first greatest hits collection, introducing the song Maria. 

 

Armstrong clearly saw something in the Fiatarones schtick, as in 2011 he did something similar with his own 13-year-old son Jakob (aka The Boo) issuing a four-track EP featuring the teenager backed by a band that comprised of his other son, his wife, and himself (as Daddyo) on bass.

 

Anyway, here are both sides of this wonderful little disc. Enjoy!

Download Look HERE

Download Meet HERE