10 Rock Bands That Had A Really Shaky Start

When it comes to rock and roll, no one's really expecting you to be flying off the hinges right out of the gate. Even though there have been many spectacular debut albums throughout the years, some acts need to build up some steam before really sinking their teeth into the public consciousness. Judging by these first impressions though, the fact that these acts saw success at all was nearly unthinkable.

That being said, a bad first impression can come from many different things. While the band itself might have been great in a live setting, it may have taken a while for them to actually find themselves in the studio rather than hitting the ground running. Hell, sometimes artists debuts just crib as much as they can from their influences and hope for the best. At the same time, sometimes the personnel at hand might also play into things, as most of the classic lineups of these acts weren't really solidified until later on.

In some extreme cases, it comes down to the band itself is great but the aesthetic is not, causing them to do some course correction to make up for it later. For as much as the building blocks of something great may have been in here, these musicians clearly had a lot of work to do.

As the years have gone on, Green Day have turned themselves into a well-oiled machine of pop punk excellence. With a few small exceptions like the Uno Dos and Tre trilogy, the crux of these punk brats' sound has created some of the most essential rock music to come out of the past few decades. If you want to know the real start of the group though, you got to go back a little further...to the '80s.

Long before Dookie really set the world on fire, the real start of Green Day began when Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt were still teenagers on the California punk scene. Instead of having Tre Cool behind the kit though, original drummer John Kiffmeyer was a bit of a rough fit in the group. Though albums like 39/Smooth didn't exactly suffer on the melodic front, you can just hear that these guys aren't really gelling properly, as John's tom rolls struggle to really keep up with Billie and Mike.

Once Kiffmeyer decided to leave Green Day for college though, Tre's arrival ended up having its own problems, with his snare rolls being too frantic before finally settling into the groove. It wasn't until Dookie that everything fell into place though, with Tre learning to sit in the song to perfectly offset Billie's rhythm guitar. As opposed to the typical hit the ground running band, there was a good chance we could have not gotten the pop punk explosion at all if this played out differently.