Reprise Records
Reprise Records…You're probably aware that Green Day are currently signed to that label and if you didn’t know that - you should have. Reprise is a division of the highly successful Warner Bros Studios and is the home to many bands and artists. But how much do you know about the label itself, and the connection it has with Green Day?
Reprise was brought to life in 1960 by Frank Sinatra. Why? Well, Frank wanted more of what’s called “creative control” and desired more freedom when it came to his recordings. You can’t be demanded to alter things when it’s your label you’re recording on. Three years later, the label would be sold to Warner Brothers Music and begin to expand and bring in more and more talented artists.
At the moment the label seems to be at the peak of its mountain, having released albums by several amazing bands such as Avenged Sevenfold, The Used, The Distillers, Taking Back Sunday, REM and Static X among several others. However, the most successful album released from Reprise recently would probably be Green Day’s latest release, American Idiot.
So how did Green Day come to land at Reprise? The year was 1993 and Green Day had two albums out under Lookout! Records: 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours and Kerplunk!, both of which had generated much underground success. Mainstream labels began seeing all that success out there waiting for them to snatch, and all began to try and get trio to sign under their label. The guys were a bit apprehensive and were not sure exactly what they wanted to do; they wanted to have complete control over their music and it seemed as if they couldn’t tell which of the offers would best give them this.
Around that time is when Rob Cavallo, the senior VP at Reprise, heard a demo of them in his car, and he immediately liked them. He approached them with a contract for Reprise and Green Day accepted, agreeing with the terms and being fond themselves of the work Rob had done with the Muffs albums. According to Alan Cross (who owns the radio station 102.1 the Edge), Billie, Mike and Tré all went over to Rob’s apartment and had Indian food, then sat around strumming some guitars, which finalized the process of the signing.
April 1993, Green Day left Lookout! on fairly good terms and began working on their first studio album with Reprise. You know of Dookie’s success sure enough so I won’t get into it, and obviously enough everyone was quite happy with the results. On with the next album! Cavallo ended up co-producing almost every album by Green Day after Dookie, with the exception of Warning. Will he return to co-produce the next album and will Green Day continue to remain with Reprise? There seems to be no reason to leave the label, it seems to have been a pretty good home for the guys, but you never know.