Tre Cool Frank Edwin Wright III was born December 9, 1972 in Frankfurt, Germany, making him the youngest member of Green Day. He was raised in the rural northern California town of Willits, California with his father and two older siblings. Tre's closest neighbor was none other than Lookout! Records founder, Lawrence Livermore, who also played in the punk band, The Lookouts. At age 12, Livermore recruited Tre to join The Lookouts, and gave him the name of Tre Cool (which comes from Tres Cool, meaning Very Cool in French). After Green Day's first tour, the original drummer, John Kriftmeyer decided to leave Green Day in order to attend college. Billie Joe and Mike asked Tre, who was already a 5-year veteran of the Gilman Street scene, to be their drummer.
Tre decided to drop out of high school his sophomore year. However, he did pass an equivalency test, earned his GED, and even began taking classes at a nearby community college. When the demands of Green Day's touring intensified, he had to drop out of college. Tre's father served as a driver for three of their tours. Frank Wright II, Tre's father says, "I watched them go from a bunch of kids to a group of musicians with work eithic. 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)
Tré was filmed being Punk'd for Season 5 of said show, but denied the broadcasting rights to the show. As a result, MTV was not allowed to air the episode.
