- published: 20 Aug 2013
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Michael Ryan Pritchard (born May 4, 1972) is an American musician, best known as the bassist, backing vocalist and co-founder of the American rock band Green Day. During grade school, he would constantly play "air-bass", and while pretending to pluck the strings, he made the noise, "dirnt, dirnt, dirnt". As a result, his schoolmates began to call him "Mike Dirnt".
Dirnt was born and raised in Berkeley, California. Mike's mother was a heroin addict. He was given up for adoption when he was a baby to a Native American mother. He has one sister, Myla. When he was seven, his adoptive parents got a divorce. Mike lived with his father for a while, but confrontations sent him back to his mother. He lived there on the borderline of poverty; his sister left home at the age of thirteen. "There were all sorts of things happening," says Mike. "When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my mom stayed out all night, came home the next day with a guy, and he moved in. I'd never met the guy before, and all of a sudden he's my stepdad. We didn't get along for years. Later on, when I hit high school, my mom moved away from us, and me and my stepdad got real close. He instilled a lot in me. The one thing my family did give me is blue-collar morals. But then he died when I was 17."