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American Idiot profile: John Gallagher, Jr.

posted by Chad Jones on Mon, Oct 12, 2009
in Backstage buzz

With American Idiot thrilling audiences and breaking box-office records, we though it was time to meet some members of the extraordinary cast.

When Passing Strange The Movie came out a couple weeks ago, we chatted with Rebecca Naomi Jones.

Now we sit down with the show's leading man....

John Gallagher, Jr. should be feeling the pressure. After a Tony Award-winning run as the troubled teen Moritz in the Broadway hit Spring Awakening, he’s starring as Johnny, a role tailored to his abundant talents, in the world premiere of Green Day’s American Idiot.

It’s an enormous show garnering an enormous amount of attention. But John admits he is “less worried and less stressed with this show than any other show I’ve worked on.”

There are likely a couple reasons for this. First, he is re-teamed with his Spring Awakening director, Michael Mayer (another Tony Award winner), and the two of them, according to John, “understand each other and trust each other in a remarkable way.”

Another reason might be that John has been a Green Day fan for a long time.

“I was in the fourth grade when Dookie came out,” he remembers. “We didn’t have cable TV in my house growing up, so whenever I was at my cousin’s I would watch as much MTV as I could. I remember watching the music video for Basket Case and being a little scared of Green Day. I was kind of a timid and shy kid, but I loved the band.”

Over a sushi break in Berkeley, John talked about his admiration for Green Day and his life as a musician and an actor.

Q: What appealed to you about Green Day?

A: I watched them grow exponentially with each record, and I didn’t see that happening with a lot of other rock bands. They pushed themselves further and further. They managed to stick to their convictions but still redefine themselves. That’s so admirable about them. The only poster for a band I ever bought and hung up in my room was for American Idiot.

Q: How has being in this show affected your feelings about Green Day?

A: I feel like I have a deeper relationship with the band, especially with the songs from American Idiot because that album has meant so much to me. There are moments in rehearsal when I’m standing there and it hits me. What twist of fate made me so lucky that I get to play guitar and sing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”? I can’t help every now and then drifting off on a reverie about that. My sister gave me the album American Idiot for Christmas in 2004. I had been through a bad break-up, and I came home to Delaware as a very unemployed New York actor. I was kind of depressed, a little bit lost, and I drove around Wilmington – a small suburban town – blasting the album. I took deep solace in that music. It gave me the feeling of being understood, like the songs must have been written for me. And now, with the show, the songs grow deeper in meaning for me every day. I feel so lucky to have this foundation, this love for the music. It’s a relationship – like spending time with an old friend. To say that being in this show is like a dream come true is putting it mildly.

Q: In the show you play Johnny, who leaves suburbia for the big city. What’s it like bringing this character to life?

A: I’ve never done a show that demanded so much, that calls for you to give 200% at all times. But this process has been very natural. It’s hard not to lose yourself in this music. It’s so emotional, raw, honest, and thrilling on so many levels. The material makes you want to get up there and give it your all.

Q: You come to this material not only as an actor but also as a musician. What’s your history as a band member?

A: I was in my first band at 15. We were an acoustic folk group called Not Now Murray (the name was taken from a Kids in the Hall sketch). Then three of us from that band joined up with some friends in a group called Urban Wombats, and we were a kind of power folk sextet with some good harmonies. One summer I performed with a Wilmington punk band called Annie’s Autograph and did two or three shows with them. We would rarely finish a set – the cops would get called for noise complaints. I was not a rebellious kid – kind of straight edged – but I really liked that. In New York, I performed for four or five years with Old Springs Pike, which won a Broadway Battle of the Bands contest where one of the competitors was the Tom Kitt Band (Tom Kitt, a Tony Award-winner for Next to Normal, is the orchestrator, arranger, and musical supervisor for American Idiot).

Q: Are you currently in a band?

A: No. I left Old Springs Pike almost 2 years ago. It was difficult to harmoniously blend my work as an actor with my work as a member of a collaborative four piece band. The other members are still going strong as a trio called The Spring Standards. I always dreamed about being able to perform as both a musician and an actor but it's a balance that can be sometimes hard to strike. With American Idiot, it doesn’t get much better for this type of aspiration.

Q: What’s on your playlist these days?

A: Honestly, I’m not at all tired of Green Day. I put American Idiot on when I’m falling asleep and run through the choreography in my head. When I’m heading home on BART, I can listen to a lot of music on my iPod, but sometimes it has to be 21st Century Breakdown. I do listen to other things as well. One of my favorite bands is the Avett Brothers. They’re bluegrass and folk with a punk rock makeover. They have amazing harmonies – like the Everly Brothers meets Doc Watson meets Nirvana. Their live shows are some of the most thrilling I’ve seen. I also just went to Café du Nord to hear a friend’s band, Elizabeth and the Catapult. They were great.

VIDEO: Here's John Gallagher, Jr. performing "The Buried Boy" during a set at the Mercury Lounge in January, 2008.

Above photo: John Gallagher, Jr. as Johnny in Green Day's American Idiot. Photo by kevinberne.com