Having tasted greatness on 'American Idiot,' Billie Joe Armstrong has even loftier goals for the Green Day's latest album, '21st Century Breakdown,' which has just hit stores. "For me, people should look at it as a great era for Green Day and it's a record that people look back on and say, 'That was one of the best rock records of all time,'" he tells Spinner. "That's what you hope for, that's what you reach for, and that's why we did it, to make one of the best albums ever made."

In early live shows around the Bay Area where the band played the album in its entirety, Armstrong saw fans respond with fervor, no small feat for an audience that had yet to hear the material. What does that mean to him? "It makes me realize how passionate our fans are about music, they're just as passionate about music as we are," Armstrong says.

To him, that kind of response recalls some of the great albums he hopes '21st Century Breakdown' will one day stand aside. "That's what it's supposed to be all about, where it becomes about a big fat giant community and it's about the band and where a band is identified by their fans in a positive way," he says. "I remember that when 'Joshua Tree' came out there was already that sort of identification, or when 'Nevermind' came out it was almost like a movement."