Larry_Livermore

Green Day were one of the easiest bands I ever worked with, even when they were still teenagers. They basically took care of everything (well, not the album art; we had to do that), but they'd just come around one day, hand me a tape, and say, "Oh yeah, we made a record, here it is." That's how easy.

I've thought about starting a new label several times, but I just lie down until the feeling passes.

We (by we I mean OG East Bay types) don't call it 924 Gilman. Just plain Gilman will do. I don't know if it's funny, but Operation Ivy thought I was crazy when I offered to put out their record. Years later Tim told me, "Man, we really wanted to put out a record, but we didn't want our friend Larry to lose all his money!" Also, you should have heard me screaming at Sweet Children that they were insane for wanting to change their name to Green Day.

I did graduate from Berkeley in 1992, just as Lookout was really taking off, and before the crazy people currently in power decided that only rich people needed an education. Tuition was still low enough in those days that I could pay my own way without having to take out loans, and that's the way it should still be today (and is in most civilized countries).

When I started there, tuition was $600 a year. By the time I graduated they were raising it to $2,000, and boy was I griping! I think it's somewhere between 12 and 16 thousand now, and they have the nerve to send me begging letters every couple weeks.