Billie Joe Armstrong

Billie Joe Armstrong recorded his first song, "Look for Love," at the age of five, for a small label in the San Francisco Bay Area. His father, Andy, a truck driver who played jazz drums, encouraged his love of music. When Billie Joe was ten, his father died of esophageal cancer. Years later he wrote "Wake Me Up When September Ends" about that loss, and it became one of Green Day's most beloved songs.

He was born on February 17, 1972, in Oakland, California, at 4:02 in the morning, a time on his birth certificate. His Sun and Mercury are both in late Aquarius, nearly touching, in the second house of personal values and self-worth. Aquarius is the sign of the rebel and the outsider, the one who questions authority and stands apart from the crowd. An Aquarius Sun with Mercury describes a mind that thinks against the grain, and Armstrong's lyrics have always been the voice of the alienated kid who refuses to fit in.

His Moon and Venus are both in Aries in the third house of everyday speech and early schooling. Aries is impulsive, fast and loud, and in the third it describes emotions expressed directly and quickly. Few genres suit that description better than punk rock, with its short, fast, shouted songs.

Capricorn is his rising sign, with Jupiter in Capricorn in the twelfth house. Capricorn adds discipline and ambition beneath the rebellious surface. Armstrong met the bassist Mike Dirnt when they were about ten, dropped out of high school to focus on music, and worked relentlessly at it, playing the East Bay punk scene at the Gilman Street club as the band later known as Green Day.

Mars in Taurus sits in his fourth house, which concerns home, family and the father, and Saturn lies at the very end of Taurus in his fifth house. Mars in the fourth is associated with conflict or upheaval in the home, and his father's death and the turbulence afterward shaped him deeply.

In 1994 Green Day released Dookie, which sold more than ten million copies in the United States and brought punk to the mainstream. "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" became an unlikely graduation anthem. In 2004 the band released American Idiot, a political rock opera about life in post-9/11 America, which won a Grammy and became a Broadway musical in 2010, with Armstrong himself occasionally appearing in the role of St. Jimmy.

Uranus and Pluto, both retrograde in Libra, fall in his ninth house of beliefs and wider worldviews, describing a radical, questioning stance toward politics and authority. In 2012, after an onstage outburst at a festival in Las Vegas, he entered rehab for substance abuse and has spoken about his recovery since.

He married Adrienne Nesser in 1994, and Green Day entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. The Aquarius Sun was born to question everything, and Armstrong made a career of it.

Help for addiction is available in the United States through the SAMHSA National Helpline, 1-800-662-4357, which is free, confidential and staffed every day of the year.