On This Day in 2015: Green Day enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Okay, this might not have happened all that long ago, but it was a momentous-enough occasion that it seemed worthy of note: a year ago today, Green Day was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

When the grand induction took place, it was Fall Out Boy who was responsible for paying homage at the podium, which was no surprise anyone who’d heard Pete Wentz, the band’s frontman, praise Green Day in the past, to the point of telling Time in 2013, “If I hadn’t ever had a chance to hear an album like Dookie, I don’t know where I would have ended up.”

In his speech, Wentz didn’t hesitate to gush about what Green Day meant to him, but he also focused on why they mattered to music. “Everything you guys do is punk rock in the sense that you’ve never gone the easy route, the obvious route, the safe route,” said Wentz. “You’ve never repeated yourselves, you’ve never done anything to please the suits.”

He went on to praise the band’s concerts, declaring, “Green Day is honestly one of the best live bands on the planet right now. If you’ve ever opened for them, they put on a show that’s so epic and engaging, that the audience absolutely forgot about you halfway through their first legendary singalong chorus and an assault of confetti cannons. If you’ve ever played after them…sorry.”

As for the band themselves, you can read their speeches in their entirety – Rolling Stone posted them after the ceremony – but frontman Billie Joe Armstrong summed it up best after the fact, when he posted on Instagram, “This is more than an award. It's the privilege to play music, write songs and follow this psychotic passion called rock n roll."

Let’s hope the guys in Green Day continue to exercise that privilege for the long haul.