In a cover story from a 1995 issue of Rolling Stone, a bit of the song’s inspiration comes out during the interview:

On the surface the grouchy Armstrong and his band mates have nothing to complain about: Adoring fans, world travel and oodles of money aren’t most people’s idea of a raw deal. Yet Armstrong says that despite the fact that his band now represents punk rock to everybody in the world who before last year never knew what punk rock was, little in his day-to-day existence has changed. “I’m human still,” he says. “I’m probably angry at least five days out of a week just like anybody is. Everybody gets sick of life. It’s human nature.”

Armstrong wrote a song addressing this conundrum called “Walking Contradiction,” and it begins with the lines “Do as I say, not as I do because/The shit so deep, you can’t run away.”