Song of the Week Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?

[Margo 39 smooth]

I looove this song. At first i didnt know who Holden Caufield was, and then my mom kept telling me to read "Catcher in the Rye", and when i realized that thats what the song's about, i couldnt wait to read it and the song is soooo true in what they say about Holden Caufield.

[ThisIsNotNora]

It's my fucking favorite song of all time!!

II dunno why, but it is. So Awesome!!!

[ConfirmPassword]

I love this song! But I have never understood its title.... Maybe I should read that book

[AnnA™]

I'm yet to read the book, but I do love the song. Thanks for reminding me though, I'll have to get hold of it. I couldn't write my favourite lines, 'cause then I'd end up writing down the whole song. Brilliant all through.

[Whatsername1911]

Words can't describe how perfect this song is.

[Isabel]

Screeching Weasel has a song called "I Wrote Holden Caulfield".

You should look it up, it's pretty cool.

I got so excited when I heard that song for the first time

[Bastard of 1967]

One of my favorite back-catalog songs from the earliest days of Green Day. I really must re-read Catcher in the Rye; I'm sure if I did I'd pick up so many more nuances in the song.....but for a high-school dropout to have written something like this!? WOW.

The song reeks of laziness and apathy, and resistance to growth, resistance to growing up...which is in part what Catcher is all about. I love the line "there's a boy who fogs his world" -- great reference to The Great Weed <tm> in there and perhaps a precursor to (or foreshadowing of?) Longview.

[Anja]

One of my favorite back-catalog songs from the earliest days of Green Day. I really must re-read Catcher in the Rye; I'm sure if I did I'd pick up so many more nuances in the song.....but for a high-school dropout to have written something like this!? WOW.

The song reeks of laziness and apathy, and resistance to growth, resistance to growing up...which is in part what Catcher is all about. I love the line "there's a boy who fogs his world" -- great reference to The Great Weed <tm> in there and perhaps a precursor to (or foreshadowing of?) Longview.

I never knew what he meant by "fogs his world", now that I read your post I'm like "OMG Of Course!" Thanks for clearing that for me. And great smilie!

[-Billiejoezee-]

I love this song. Favorite on kerplunk.

[green day is]

I got so excited when I heard that song for the first time

Me too.

[ANJI]

One of my favourites from Kerplunk! I can listen to this song for ages and never get tired of it

[insomniaticnimrod]

I have read The Catcher and the Rye and yes, i agree that this song was wrote for Holden. It's a very good song and def something i could put on repeat and listen to a couple times in a row. I like how the whole chorus sounds.

[darenmay]

is this billie's favorite green day song?

[Juliette]

This used to be my favourite song Still love it to little bits & pieces.

[Moffie]

The first Green Day song I remember hearing. So good and still one of my favorites!

[J'net]

is this billie's favorite green day song?

He did say it was his favorite at one time. But, if he's at all like me, his favorite can change from time to time. And they do have a lot more songs now than they did when he originally said that. So who knows what it might be now?

[Adeline.Hearts.You]

Love this song! My boyfriend needed help with a project on Catcher in the Rye and he had to pick 5 songs that go with the book. We used two Green Day songs, BOBD and of couse Who Wrote Holden Caulfield. Needless to say, he got a 100%

aahahah genius!!!

I love Who Wrote Holden Caulfield? Its an amazing song and the lyrics really have a strong conncetion to me.

It one of thoese songs that green day have which for me really reflects emotions well!

[Clayish]

is this billie's favorite green day song?

Billie Joe said its his favorite off Kerplunk, I know that for sure.

Not sure about favorite Green Day song EVER.

[TheSaltOfTheEarth]

This is probably my favourite song from the pre-Dookie days. I haven't read Catcher In The Rye, but I've been planning to ever since I first listened to this song. My favourite lines are the whole chorus (especially 'he makes a plan to take a stand but always ends up sitting/Someone help him up or he is gonna end up quitting') and:

I shuffle though my mind

To see if I can find

The words I left behind

Was it just a dream

That happened long ago?

Oh well...

Nevermind.

[insomniactwin]

it says wolfgang at the back of the second video!!!!! I wonder if the name of mikeys dog has anything to do with it???? Hmmm ponder, ponder

[Xoram]

Ah! Another song that has evaded me in it's live form in the shows that I've been in, and more importantly, another one of my absolute favorite Green Day songs! (I would not mind if you keep this pattern up, J'net)

Being born in Mexico, I was (at the time of my discovery of the song), not very familiar to classic American Literature, so I did a little research on the nature of it, because, every time I stopped and looked at the title, I found it fascinating. Almost immediately after learning that "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden Caulfield's birthplace, is (or was at some point) Billie Joe's favorite book, I was determined to get my mitts on a it with the same restless and uneasy urgency as one gets tickets for AI on Broadway after learning that Billie's going to be performing, and feeling like the luckiest person after violently tearing up my package from Amazon, as if they had shipped me the last copy in print.

With the song's feeling fresh in my mind I devoured the book, and I have to admit that I found Holden's tale so enjoyable, that very early on I stopped thinking about the Green Day connection and continued reading merely because I loved Holden's personality and his peculiar view of the world.

"There's a boy who fogs his world and now he's getting lazy, there's no motivation and frustation makes him crazy" is by far my favorite line in the song. It describes Holden Caulfield perfectly, yes, but it goes beyond that. When J.D. Salinger wrote him, I'm sure he had in mind every young boy or girl who's just not fit for society the way is it now. And we've all met them, persons who just can't function in the "phony", hypocritical standards that are just common to everyone else. One of my closes friends is like that, and sometimes I've been like that, that's why this song resonated so strongly to me in the very beginning.

On a finishing note, and going back to how great chorus verse of the songs, I'm positive we've all been in one of those writing exercises where we're asked to describe a person or an event "in 5/10/20/50 words or less". If this had been just a homework assignment, I'm pretty sure every teacher in his/her right mind would have noticed the genius in Billie by only this phrase once.

Overall, I'd dare say this is probably my favorite Green Day song from their first two albums, and like J'net says, those kind of favoritisms change over time, but this is a song that will always have a special place in my heart and memory, and (hopefully) another live performance that I'll get to witness in the future.

[Bastard of 1967]

"frustation makes him crazy"

That's "Catcher" in a nutshell right there....story opens and we find Holden talking to us from a mental hospital.

[justcause]

First, that I love the Kerplunk sound - it's wild and raw and aching so deep, it's the big bang with all of the elements churning around, and yet it has its own distinctive voice, clear and true. This song wails like a baby bird on cliff-edge, not knowing where its nourishment is gonna come from, hungry and vulnerable, crying out, for crying out loud, if anyone can hear me. I love its mysteriousness - and this song don't trust anyone, but it's putting it out there anyway, into the open air. Like so many people who hear maybe Jesus of Suburbia and go 'this is me', this song at least finds something to somewhat identify with, in that lonely place. There's a boy who fogs his world - there's a man who walks this lonely road, on and on.

[abhishek]

wow just read the lyrics, makes me love kerplunk even more

[Bastard of 1967]

There's a boy who fogs his world - there's a man who walks this lonely road, on and on.

....and thus Holden foreshadows not just Longview as I'd already suggested, but also BOBD a decade later. Good catch.