There’s something to be said for aging gracefully in rock music. Coming of age as a punk band, teenage despair becomes a rallying cry for a generation of fans and devotees alike that can quickly fade. Once a star emerges, the risks surrounding it fade with it: Can a band built on an anti-establishment ticket sustain its momentum beyond its founding era, when the establishment itself becomes the engine of its continued success?
For Green Day, now 30 years since their groundbreaking third album, “Dookie,” the answer is clear. The band, which brought its Saviors Tour to Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium last night, has mapped the exuberance of its youth—the pyrotechnics, the stage-jumping, the unwavering energy—to as extreme a venue as possible, from five levels of sold-out seating to $125 tickets to park in the adjacent lot. But the California natives made light of their early club days. As they played “Dookie” and “American Idiot,” the former released in 1994 and the latter a decade later, they performed with the intensity and exemplary fidelity of the original recordings with the hunger of twentysomethings, as if time itself had frozen, at least for one night.
What sets the band apart is the virtuosity of its core members, including lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong, guitarist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool. Playing for two and a half hours, they nailed every note, every chorus, with precision and mastery. The band’s spirit permeates the performance, from the calls for sing-alongs to Armstrong’s shifting eyes between verses, as if to cut through the wild currents of the songs themselves.
Still, the caustic honesty of “Dookie” hasn’t mellowed with time. Armstrong’s musings on masturbation and despair still sound electric on “Longview,” while the angst of “Basket Case” resonates. These sentiments were loudly welcomed as the band made their way through the album, with the audience rapt by every track. The crowd, as expected, was largely made up of millennials eager to recharge their batteries with nostalgia. But there were also teenagers, some young enough to be hoisted on their parents’ shoulders while wearing noise-canceling earplugs.
This cross-generational appeal is a testament to the strength of their songwriting and performance skills. “Dookie” arrives with sharp melodies and hook-filled songs. And when they move into “American Idiot,” after Trey dances around the stage in a leopard-skin cape to sing “All By Myself” and the band plays “Brain Stew” and “Know Your Enemy” with a fan onstage, the connection between eras rings as if no decade has separated them. Each record carries a Green Day pop-rock sensibility—even the naivety of “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is akin to the fast-paced chords of their hottest songs.
No show could have had the same energy and vigor without Armstrong, who at 52 was still as strong and energetic as ever. It was humbling to see the level of energy he maintained. He managed the audience effortlessly; his voice was as nasal and precise as ever, and his boyish good looks remained intact. To move around the stage with such spark, more than three decades after he began his career, was a lesson not only in determination but in staying determined.
At the time, the Saviors tour could have been a nostalgia play, and in most ways it was, from the opening sets by Rancid and Smashing Pumpkins to the main set made up entirely of albums celebrating decade-old achievements. But Green Day has lost none of what has made the group such an enduring force. If anything, it’s a reminder that good art can become a commodity over time—small club shows, this one isn’t—but when handled with top-notch professionalism, it will continue to find its audience, no matter the time or place.
