Basic Info
Full Name: Frank Edwin Wright III Age: 39; born December 9, 1972
Hometown: Willits, California, USA
Eye Color: Blue
Natural Hair Color: Brown
Height: 5'10"
Marital Status: Engaged to his girlfriend Dena in March 2011. Prior to that he was married to Lisea Lyons in March 1995 and in May 2000 to Claudia, though they separated in 2003.
Children: Daughter, Ramona, born January 1995 to Lisea; Son, Frankito ("Little Frank"), born 2001 to Claudia.
Family: Tre grew up with his father and 2 siblings. He now lives in Oakland, California.
Instruments: Drums, accordion, and guitar
Other Bands: Tre has also played with The Lookouts and Samiam. Most recently he played with the Network and Foxboro Hot Tubs.
Biography
Frank Edwin Wright III was born December 9, 1972 in Frankfurt,
Germany, making him the youngest member of Green Day. He grew up in the
Mendocino mountains in California with his dad and his 2 older siblings.
His dad, a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, decided to move the family
there to insulate them upon his return to the United States. Tre's
closest neighbor was none other than Lookout! Records owner Lawrence
Livermore, who also owned the punk band the Lookouts. At age 12,
Livermore recruited Tre to join The Lookouts, and that's when Livermore
gave him the name of Tre Cool ("Tre", a common nickname for someone
named with a "III" is pronounced like "tres," the French word for
"very"). After Green Day's first tour around the country (following the
release of 39/Smooth), John Kiffmeyer decided to leave the band. Looking
no further than Gilman Street, Billie Joe and Mike recruited Tre, who
was already a 5 year veteran of the Gilman Street scene.
Tre
decided to drop out of high school his sophmore year. However, he did
pass an equivalency test and earned his GED, and he even began taking
classes at a nearby community college. He had to drop out of college,
however, when the demands of Green Day's touring intensified. Tre's
father, who owns a small trucking company, overhauled a used bookmobile
and served as the driver on three separate tours. "I watched them go
from a bunch of kids to a group of musicians with work eithic," says
Tre's father, Frank Wright. "On their first tour or two, it was more of a
party than anything else. I still scratch my head and say, 'How in the
hell did they make it?' They used to practice - in my living room here -
a lot of the songs they did on Dookie. You hear it coming together, and
you don't expect people are going to go out and buy it. But when it
does, you just say, 'Wow, that's so cool'" (Rolling Stone, January 26,
1995).
Tre's daughter Ramona was born in January of 1995; then he married his long time girlfriend Lisea Lyons in March. He and Lisea are divorced now, but Tre remarried in May of 2000, to Claudia. Claudia and Tre have a son named Frankito, which means "Little Frank". Tre and Claudia divorced in 2003. He March 2011 he got engaged to his girlfriend Dena.
By
that point, Mike had already moved out, leaving home when he was 15 to
live out of his truck. He then rented a room in Billie's mom's house,
and later he lived in a punk squat. Billie and Mike began living for
their weekends at the Gilman Street Project. Mike still continued to go
to school, play in Sweet Children (which later became Green Day, of
course), and live on his own. He supported himself by working as a cook.
Mike almost didn't graduate from high school, because his mother
refused to sign one of his mandatory-attendance forms. "I took my mom
aside," Mike says. "I said, 'This is how it is. You have so much shit
going on in your life, so if once every semester you ask me if I've done
my homework and jump all over my case, that's not right. Have I failed
yet? No. And I'm going to graduate if you stay off my back. The one time
in your life you chose to have morals, and it's going to fuck me up.
Don't play mom once a year. It doens't fucking cut it.'" In the end,
Mike did graduate from high school, and he even took more than a year's
worth of courses at a community college. Then Billie and Mike moved into
a squat in Oakland, California (the inspiration for "Welcome to
Paradise").
Billie
was 10 when he met Mike Dirnt in the school cafeteria in 1982. During
sleepovers at each other's houses, they played songs by old heavy metal
warhorses such as Ozzy Osbourne, Def Leppard, and Van Halen. Other
influences would be the "thrash and drang" of the Bay Area's alternative
music culture percolating throughout the eighties. Clubs such as
Mabuhay Gardens and Berkeley's 924 Gilman Street regularly showcased
local groups like the Dead Kennedys and Buck Naked. He wrote his first
song, "Why Do You Want Him", a song about his mother and his step
father, when he was 14. At the age of 15, Billie, Mike, and a drummer
named John Kiffmeyer formed a punk band and named
themselves Sweet Children. Their first gig was actually at Rod's
Hickory Pit. One day before his 18th birthday, and halfway through his
senior year, Billie dropped out of high school (Pinole Valley High
School) to devote all his time to Sweet Children. He knew what he
wanted to do - play music, and school was just getting in the way. At
this point, Billie had the nickname "Two Dollar Bill", referring to the
price of the joints he sold.
