Review: Green Day had left a bad taste in my mouth for years. But finally, it’s all good.
My first Green Day concert — in December 1995, back when Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool sometimes truly behaved like punks — was one of the shortest headlining shows I’ve ever seen from a major-label national act.
It was so long ago that I haven’t the faintest recollection anymore of how far into their set they actually got. But I remember how it ended, and that ending wound up tainting my opinion of the guys for decades.
At the time, I was a senior at the University of Arizona, and a couple friends and I had road-tripped up to see them at Mesa Amphitheatre outside of Phoenix. Concerts were a significant luxury for me then, but I was a significant fan of “Longview” and “Basket Case” and “Welcome to Paradise” and especially of “When I Come Around,” so we’d sprung for halfway-decent seats.
And everything was going great ... until at one point, some jerk in the pit threw an object that hit Dirnt.
In a flash, the then-23-year-old bassist flew into a mini-rage and moved to confront the person. After his initial outburst subsided, he appeared to settle down enough to get back up there and play a little more; but he couldn’t get over it, proceeding to smash his bass guitar on the stage then storming off. Armstrong and Cool followed suit. Show over. Thousands of fans left unsatisfied.
I’ve told that story probably a hundred times since, always in a slightly resentful tone. So it is nice to have — as of Monday night — a much different Green Day story to tell.
A much more positive one.
It’s not just the fact that, on Monday night at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, the band produced one of the longest major headlining shows I’ve seen of late: a 2-hour-and-20-minute opus constructed around in-sequence/in-their-entirety re-creations of both its debut album “Dookie” and its seminal concept album “American Idiot.”
It’s also not just the fact that Armstrong, Dirnt and Cool seem to have mellowed considerably with middle age (although I wouldn’t say they’ve completely matured; more on that in a minute).
No, what impressed me most on this latest go-around is how tight their live sound is after all these years.
Me having been living in Charlotte now since 2006, and Green Day having not made an appearance here since April 2005, I’d long missed out on chances to make new memories with the band. As such, while I’d seen them do solid one-off performances on awards shows and the like in recent years, you’ll have to forgive me if I walked into the venue Monday holding my breath a little at the idea of an aging punk-rock singer trying to maintain a high level of vocal quality for nearly 2-1/2 hours.
Yet Armstrong — sporting a caramel-colored bouffant hairstyle and his trademark guyliner, still youthful-looking at 52 — proved also to be youthful-sounding. Pretty much all night long.
From leadoff song “The American Dream Is Killing Me’s” first verse right up to (but not including) the last line of closing song “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” (more on that in a minute, too), his vocals sounded robust and reminiscent of the original recordings.
And with support from Dirnt, Cool, two bonus touring guitarists and a keyboardist, Armstrong tirelessly blitzed through the 30th-anniversary celebration of “Dookie” and 20th-anniversary celebration of “American Idiot,” going lengthy stretches without seeming to take a breath.
The only diversions from the playlist of any significance came 1) during “Know Your Enemy,” when Armstrong summoned one of the many “American Idiot”-T-shirt-wearing fans onto the stage for a quick duet of the song’s breakdown — Well, violence is an energy (Oh-eh-oh-eh) / Well, from here to eternity (Oh-eh-oh-eh) ... ; and 2) during the middle of “Letterbomb,” late in the show, when Armstrong gave a somewhat shout-y inspirational speech.
“Tonight, think about your loved ones!” he yelled. “Think about the people that you care about the most! Think about your family, your friends! If you are alone, you are not alone! If you think you are alone, you are not alone! If you’ve got mental health issues, you are not alone! Because tonight is about peace and love and unity and joy, and people coming together!”
If you came for stories behind the music, you left with not a single one.
But if you came for nonstop music, you got it — a whopping 37 songs, including a handful of well-played wild cards (“All by Myself,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Minority,” “Brain Stew,” “Time of Your Life”) and five “new ones” (from “Saviors,” Green Day’s 14th album, released in January).
Within the framework of that nonstop music, the highlight visually might have been the 30-foot-tall inflatable reproduction of the iconic hand holding the grenade in the shape of a heart that’s bleeding out, from the “American Idiot” album cover. Or it might have been the explosion of long red streamers, during “St. Jimmy,” that made a mess of the rafters and the gigantic overhead fans and will probably take workers several hours on Tuesday to cut down. Or it also might have been the sight of a crazed-looking Tré Cool leaving his drum kit to skip around the stage in a leopard-print bathrobe while singing his wacky signature ditty, “All by Myself.”
Lyrically, meanwhile, the most buzz-worthy moment was probably not the change in “Holiday” from “The representative from California has the floor” to “The representative from Charlotte has the floor,” but rather the change in “American Idiot” from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.”
As for the whole maturity thing?
Well, consider this: Armstrong did most of “Time of Your Life” solo, with his acoustic, but as he drew the song to its close he was joined by Cool, Dirnt and a blizzard of confetti. Cool came out skipping, with a bucket of drumsticks slung over his shoulder. Armstrong sang the kicker — “I hope you had the time of your life” — in an off-key bass deeper than Barry White, for comedic effect. Dirnt snatched Armstrong’s guitar away, then held it up for Cool to hit hard, once, with a drumstick. Armstrong flopped onto his back and made a snow angel in the confetti. Cool handed a few drumsticks to a few fans, then tossed the bucket 15 feet into the air. It clanged to the ground near the foot of his drum kit.
It was as if, for the final 60 seconds of their marathon effort, the three men all turned into boys again. But unlike the first concert of theirs I saw, this time the boys from Green Day walked off the stage grinning, heads held high.
And this time, I left happy, too.
Green Day’s setlist
1. “The American Dream Is Killing Me”
‘Dookie’:
2. “Burnout”
3. “Having a Blast”
4. “Chump”
5. “Longview”
6. “Welcome to Paradise”
7. “Pulling Teeth”
8. “Basket Case”
9. “She”
10. “Sassafras Roots”
11. “When I Come Around”
12. “Coming Clean”
13. “Emenius Sleepus”
14. “In the End”
15. “F.O.D.”
Mini Set:
16. “All by Myself”
17. “Know Your Enemy”
18. “Look Ma, No Brains!”
19. “One Eyed Bastard”
20. “Dilemma”
21. “Minority”
22. “Brain Stew”
‘American Idiot’:
23. “American Idiot”
24. “Jesus of Suburbia”
25. “Holiday”
26. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
27. “Are We the Waiting”
28. “St. Jimmy”
29. “Give Me Novacaine”
30. “She’s a Rebel”
31. “Extraordinary Girl”
32. “Letterbomb”
33. “Wake Me Up When September Ends”
34. “Homecoming”
35. “Whatsername”
Encore:
36. “Bobby Sox”
37. “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)“
This story was originally published August 27, 2024 at 5:19 AM.
