Lose Your Mind to Love
This episode did not appear in the Modern Torah podcast, but I wrote it and wanted to share it with you anyways.
—Nate
Six years ago, my wife and I celebrated our auf ruf on Sukkot, and since then this holiday of joy has been connected to love for me. This year, the week leading up to Sukkot included a different kind of love, with the release of the 30th anniversary box set for one of my favorite albums of all time–Green Day’s breakthrough third album, Dookie.
I still remember the first time I heard this album. I used to listen to it while I mowed the lawn, holding the cd player so it wouldn’t skip. To say I love this album is probably an understatement. As part of the new box set, the band released the original 4-track demo tapes for the album. Now, I own a fair amount of demo albums–by Bob Dylan, Jim James, the White Stripes just to name a few, but this was the first time I was legitimately excited to listen to the demos for any album. Because I’ve listened to Dookie plenty enough to hear the difference between the studio album that I know by heart and the raw drum breaks from Tré, funky bass lines courtesy of Mike, and well enunciated, gorgeous vocals streaming out of Billy Joe that can be heard these demos.
What I wasn’t prepared for, was that one of my favorite songs on the album, “Basket Case,” once completely different lyrics. If you’re not familiar, “Basket Case,” is the song that starts, “do you have the time / to listen to me whine / about nothing and everything all at once? I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone no doubt about it.” It’s a song about an anxiety driven loner seeking love and losing himself along the way. Billy Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s lead singer who wrote the song, told Rolling Stone in 2017 “it’s an anthem for the weirdos and freaks. The song is about losing your mind, and I think the majority of people have had that experience in some way, shape or form in their life.” But that’s not the song on the demo tapes. “Basket Case” was originally a love ballad.
In the demo, “Basket Case” has the same drum beat and the same sweet bass lines, but the guitar is softer and the lyrics contain a surprisingly sweet story about a guy and his new girlfriend falling in love, told from the perspective of a friend.
I really don't know where this story began
My friend Houston had got himself a girl
Swank is her name, she's got the best of him
And he's got the best of her in the palm of their hands
And they could care less what's coming up
Sometimes the future doesn't have much luck
This wigged-out thing called love
It may get kinda rough
And they don't really mind
They're on their own
They said this has been motionless orbit flight
Around each other intoxicating their minds
Dancing in the street under suburban lights
They stumbled to the concrete without a hurt
And they could care less what's coming up
Sometimes the future doesn't have much luck
This wigged-out thing called love
It may get kinda rough
And they don't really mind
They're on their own
Love’s losing control
So you better hold on
As they walk together in time
Leaving all us drunks behind
This wigged-out thing called love
It may get kinda rough
But they don't really mind
They're on their own, own
I don’t know the story of why it didn’t make it to the album in the same form. The studio version was a huge hit, topping the Alternative charts for five weeks and scoring a Grammy nomination. It helped propel Green Day to the front of the punk scene, and it’s still Green Day’s number one streamed song on Spotify, with over 900 million total streams and over 600,000 every day. Obviously, I’m not alone in loving this song, and I love it more than ever now, especially given the time of year that this demo was released. It’s still a song about losing your mind, just in a different way. And listening to this love ballad, struggling to not hear a neurotic loner whining different lyrics, I can’t help but think of the lines we’ll read from Kohelet soon. No, not the one Dave Matthews quotes in “Tripping Billies.” Or the one Pete Seeger quoted in “Turn, Turn, Turn.”
Kohelet 9:9 “Enjoy happiness with a person you lo Nve all the fleeting days of life that have been granted to you under the sun—all your fleeting days. For that alone is what you can get out of life and out of the means you acquire under the sun.”
May we all lose our minds to love this Sukkot. Shabbat shalom and Chag Sukkot Sameach.
