"Jesus of Suburbia" is a song by American punk rock band Green Day. It was released as the fifth and final single from the group's seventh studio album, American Idiot, and the second song on the album. It is Green Day's second longest song (with the band's longest song being "Homecoming") and the group's longest song to be released as a single. The studio version of the song, a five movement piece, runs just over 9 minutes and was considered to be unfriendly for radio, so it was cut down to 6½ minutes for the radio edit. The long version was still played on many album rock and alternative rock radio stations. At most live shows on the first leg of the group's 21st Century Breakdown World Tour, the band would pick a member from the audience to play guitar for the song. The single has sold 205,000 copies as of July 2010.

"After you write a song like that, it was like, 'I can't turn back now.' You can't all of a sudden say, 'I want to write a normal record."

American Idiot is a concept album that describes the story of a central character named Jesus of Suburbia, an anti-hero created by Billie Joe Armstrong. It is written from the perspective of a lower-middle-class suburban American teen, raised on a diet of "soda pop and Ritalin." Jesus hates his town and those close to him, so he leaves for The City.

"Jesus of Suburbia" was the second multi-part song the group formed. Armstrong said it took "a long time" to write the song. Dirnt said that it came about from natural rehearsing between the trio. The song was an extension of Armstrong's desire to write the "Bohemian Rhapsody" of the future.

As the song changes into different sections, Armstrong’s guitars were recorded differently. The musicians would "split the signal from the guitar and send it into an amp while simultaneously going direct with it," to achieve a sound reminiscent of "Revolution" by the Beatles or the style of David Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson. In addition, an overdrive pedal was employed to accentuate gain from the instrument, producing a "punchy" sound to each chord. For the first two sections of the song, Cool emulated Ginger Baker and Charlie Watts, two English drummers from the 1960s. For the final three, he drums in his style: "I'm tipping my hat to all these great drummers that I love, and then I kick the door down and do it … my style." In addition to Watts, Cool pulled inspiration from Keith Moon and Alex Van Halen. The song was composed by Green Day (with Billie Joe Armstrong writing the lyrics), and was co-produced by Rob Cavallo.

...
Wikipedia