Before Green Day took the stage at Truist Park on Aug. 28, they played a recording of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in its entirety. They didn’t walk out to it. It didn’t transition into a Green Day song. They just let it play, and let the crowd go nuts.
And go nuts they did. On the floor, everyone was screaming the words at the top of their lungs. Up in the rafters, it was much the same. In the bathroom, if you listened closely, you could hear snippets of, “Any way the wind blows” and “Mama, ooh ooh oooooh,” wafting out from under stall doors as people softly sang under their breath. From the moment that song started, the party started – no matter where you were.
It’s an apt beginning choice for Green Day, who is on tour celebrating the 30th and 20th anniversaries of their albums “Dookie” and “American Idiot” respectively, the latter of which contains a couple of songs that feel in the lineage of the great “Bohemian Rhapsody” (I joked on Twitter before the concert that “Jesus of Suburbia” is, for people of a certain age, arguably just as important). Choosing such a song to start things off sets the audience up for a night of theatrics, a night of screaming lyrics to songs you love, and a night of revelry.
It’s also – and I mean this in the most positive, loving way possible – such a dad thing to do. Even rockers have to grow up, but I think Green Day has done so in a way that still captures the soul of what they’ve always been about. And musically, they’re really the same as they’ve always been. The live performance is still tight, with Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool holding it down on the bass and drums respectively, and at a youthful 52 years old, Billie Joe Armstrong sounds as good as he ever has. But after decades together, it’s clear the group has mellowed out a bit – still rocking, but to a little bit of a more family-friendly tune.
That mellowing out doesn’t really extend to their energy, however. The band barreled through two albums (along with a few well-timed extras outside of those albums, like “Know Your Enemy” and “Brain Stew.”) without really taking much of a break. All three members seemed to have boundless energy, Armstrong working like a conductor to hype up the crowd, his expression getting sillier and sillier all the while. That hyping up also included a plethora of call and response and, in one of the “daddest” moments of the night, a plea for everyone to put their phone away and live in the moment. The audience, like the good kids we were, obeyed.
Of course, it’s impossible to go to a Green Day concert without politics coming up. “American Idiot” as an album is about as politically charged as they come, and Green Day have never shied away from making it clear where they stand on any given issue. At one point, someone handed Armstrong a Palestinian flag, which he played with draped over his shoulders for a while. They’ve changed the words in the title track from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda,” and some lyrics – such as “‘Sieg Heil’ to the president Gasman” in “Holiday” – somehow feel even more potent today than they did in 2004.
The mellowing, then, is not so much in the message, but in the way Armstrong, Dirnt and Tré Cool choose to present it. Armstrong’s biggest speech of the night was a plea for everyone to “forget all the lies and propaganda” and to just be together, united as one – a big, let’s-all-come-together speech fitting of your progressive rock ‘n’ roll dad.
