Green Day's SoFi Stadium Show Proves They're Now Officially a Classic Rock Band

For the record:
18:07, September 15, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated the anniversary dates for the albums “Dookie” and “American Idiot.” The former is celebrating its 30th anniversary, the latter its 20th anniversary.

For Green Day, it was one thing to land a No. 1 album, as it did with 2004's “American Idiot,” a full decade after the combative Bay Area punk trio had its breakthrough with 1994's “Dookie.” But to tour and play stadiums 20 years after their breakthrough, The? Nobody would have predicted it when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong sang about the extremes of youthful inertia in Green Day's first hit single, “Longview.”

Like the 10-times platinum-selling “Dookie,” “Longview” arrived about 15 minutes into Green Day’s concert Saturday night at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood — part of a world tour in which the band is celebrating the album’s 30th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of “American Idiot” by playing both from start to finish. And although there were plenty of adults in the sold-out crowd with adult responsibilities to attend to — not to mention the kids they had to hoist onto their shoulders — thousands of them happily joined Armstrong’s voices in recalling a youthful boredom so deep that even “masturbation has lost its fun.”

The Saviors Tour, as Green Day calls it after the title of its strong 2024 LP, makes no secret of the nostalgia inherent in 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 have little in common with Green Day—one was prog, the other punk—but today fits comfortably alongside any group built around old-fashioned guitars. (“Is everyone getting a decent amount of time?” asked Pumpkins guitarist James Iha during his band's performance—surely a way to address a gathering of Generation Xers.)

In fact, at various points Green Day reached back even further than “Dookie,” peppering their set at SoFi with bits of John Mellencamp's “Jack & Diane” and Tom Petty's “Free Fallin',” as if to argue that all of this is now classic rock. Which, of course, it is, not least the songs from “American Idiot,” which formed the basis of a Broadway musical that itself is set 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, plus three touring musicians—still play with so much energy and attitude that this memory-filled show never felt like a rehash. The tempos were fast, the power chords crisp; Armstrong's bleached hair somehow looked better than ever. Green Day's stage production included the obligatory pyrotechnics and video screens, as well as an inflatable plane that flew over the crowd, dropping prop bombs in the style of the cartoon cover of “Dookie.” But what piqued your interest was the anti-spectacle of a tough little punk band playing songs about big-hearted losers and dimwitted politicians.

“And just like that – 20 years,” Armstrong said after Green Day finished “American Idiot,” and it was clear that the number shocked him too.

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.