It was one thing for Green Day to score a No. 1 album, as it did with 2004’s “American Idiot,” a full decade after the scrappy Bay Area punk trio broke out with “Dookie” in 1994. But to be on the road playing stadiums 20 years after that? Nobody would’ve called it back when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong was singing about the extremes of teenage indolence in Green Day’s first hit single, “Longview.”
As it does on the 10-times-platinum “Dookie,” “Longview” arrived about 15 minutes into Green Day’s concert Saturday night at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium — part of a world tour on which the band is marking that album’s 20th anniversary and “American Idiot’s” 30th anniversary by playing both from beginning to end. And though the capacity crowd was long on adults with grown-up responsibilities to tend to — not to mention children to hoist onto their shoulders — thousands of them happily joined voices with Armstrong to recall an adolescent boredom so deep that even “masturbation’s lost its fun.”
The Saviors Tour, as Green Day is calling this trek after the title of its strong 2024 LP, makes no bones about the nostalgia baked into its premise. In addition to Rancid and the Linda Lindas, Saturday’s opening acts included the Smashing Pumpkins, another ’90s rock band that decades ago seemed to share little with Green Day — one was prog, one was punk — but today can fit comfortably next to any group built around old-fashioned guitars. (“Is everybody having a reasonable time?” Pumpkins guitarist James Iha asked during his band’s performance — certainly one way to address a Gen X gathering.)
Indeed, at various points Green Day reached back even further than “Dookie” to pepper its set at SoFi with bits of John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” as though to make the argument that all this stuff is classic rock now. Which of course it is, not least the songs from “American Idiot,” which became the basis of a Broadway musical that itself is due to be revived next month at the Mark Taper Forum.
Yet not unlike the Rolling Stones, the 50-something men of Green Day — Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool, along with three touring musicians — still play with so much energy and attitude that this show steeped in memories never felt like a retread. The tempos were speedy, the power chords crunchy; Armstrong’s bleach-streaked hair somehow looked better than it ever has. Green Day’s stage production featured the obligatory pyrotechnics and video screens, as well as an inflatable airplane that flew out over the crowd and dropped prop bombs à la the cartoon cover of “Dookie.” But what held your interest was the anti-spectacle of a tough little punk band blazing through songs about big-hearted losers and dim-witted politicians.
“And just like that — 20 years,” Armstrong said after Green Day finished “American Idiot,” and it was clear the number shocks him too.
