Green Day rose out of the San Francisco punk rock scene of the late 1980s, but from the very beginning they had global ambitions. Despite the inevitable cries of "sell-out," the three-piece band signed to a major label in 1994 and released Dookie. Within months, every high school kid in America was blasting "Longview," "Basket Case" and "Welcome to Paradise" in their bedrooms, and the band was stealing the show at Woodstock 1994. They continued to release hit records over the next decade (including the ballad "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," but in 2004, they wowed the critics with their anti-Bush rock opera American Idiot. Just as they were about to be written off as has-beens, an entirely new generation of teenagers became obsessed with the group and the album became a landmark release. Nearly a decade later, they remain one of the biggest bands on the planet.