The Genius of Dookie
Although possibly not their proudest moment in choosing an album title, Green Day’s third album Dookie has an unforgettable cover that represents that time in their career well. The band was new and according to the lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, it was the idea of three extremely high bandmates. (Wikipedia)
Though the decision to name the album Dookie may not have been a groundbreaking choice, the album art is a different story. Green Day asked artist Richie Bucher to create the cover art for their third album. Bucher says all he was told was the name of the album and he went from there. The cover is of an explosion happening on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, which was the location where they fleshed out ideas about what would eventually become their first major debut album, Dookie. The location of the drawing is significant to the band, but Bucher was just jotting down what he thought of when he heard the word dookie. As a kid, he associated the work dookie with animal feces, so he included a dog and a monkey on the cover. There are also other famous musicians who make an appearance on the album such as Patti Smith, Angus Young of ACDC, and even references to one of Black Sabbath’s albums. Armstrong later came out and said this about the cover;
I wanted the artwork to look really different. I wanted it to represent the East Bay and where we come from, because there's a lot of artists in the East Bay scene that are just as important as the music. So we talked to Richie Bucher. He did a 7-inch cover for this band called Raooul that I really liked. He's also been playing in bands in the East Bay for years. There's pieces of us buried on the album cover. There's one guy with his camera up in the air taking a picture with a beard. He took pictures of bands every weekend at Gilman's. The robed character that looks like the Mona Lisa is the woman on the cover of the first Black Sabbath album. AC/DC guitarist Angus Young is in there somewhere too. The graffiti reading "Twisted Dog Sisters" refers to these two girls from Berkeley. I think the guy saying "The fritter, fat boy" was a reference to a local cop.[6] (Wikipedia)
Bucher explains that he didn’t have a lot of time to get his ideas on paper before he had to present them to the band. He stayed up all night working on it but still didn't feel like he would be able to convey what his plan was. Green Day loved his idea and had no trouble understanding his vision (Holmes, 2023) (see figure 1).
The album cover overall exhibits Green Day’s character and attitude of the early 90s. There is a shock factor attributed to the title, but also the more you look at the artwork, the more jarring that becomes as well.
References
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dookie_(Green_Day_album)
Holmes, J. (2023) Dookie artist Richie Bucher shares album cover origins.
https://greenday.fm/news/dookie-artist-richie-bucher-shares-album-cover-origins/
