Bay Area pop-punk heroes Green Day headline Oracle Park
One of the biggest bands to emerge from the San Francisco Bay Area in the last 30+ years, Green Day brings its latest massive stadium tour to Oracle Park this Friday with support from alt-rock favorites Smashing Pumpkins, fellow locals Rancid and openers the Linda Lindas.
Green Day came to fame as the most commercially successful punk band involved with the fruitful underground East Bay scene that grew out of Berkeley all-ages venue 924 Gilman Street. Much like the earlier rise of their Bay Area thrash-metal counterparts in Metallica, the band built from developing a ravenous local teenage fan base to more mainstream success before exploding to global superstardom. Main songwriter, singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and future bassist/vocalist Mike Dirnt first started playing music together as Pinole Valley High teens in 1987, working under the names Blood Rage and Sweet Children before settling on their current moniker in 1989. While Dirnt originally played guitar, he switched to bass after the departure of original bass player Sean Hughes.
That power trio line-up that initially included former Isocracy drummer John Kiffmeyer (aka Al Sobrante) would be signed to local musician and zine/label owner Larry Livermore's Lookout! Records imprint, releasing the band's debut four-song EP 1,000 prior to the trio's first album, 39/Smooth in 1990. The songs showcased Armstrong's knack for catchy melodies and romantic, confessional, occasionally scatological lyrics powered by a sound that nodded to succinct, tuneful blasts of British pop-punk pioneers the Buzzcocks and mod revivalists the Jam. When Kiffmeyer decided to enroll in college, the band would tap Tre Cool -- who started playing in Livermore's band the Lookouts when he was only 12 years old -- as a fill-in replacement before inviting him to be a full-time member for the recording of Green Day's sophomore effort, Kerplunk.
The album laid down the template for the band's early success, mixing Armstrong's alternately snotty and vulnerable, heart-on-his-sleeve sentiments with muscular riffs and the punchy propulsion of a rhythm section revved up by the addition of Cool (who also penned and sang the comic country tune "Dominated Love Slave"). The record quickly became the best-selling album of the Lookout! catalog and started a bidding war to sign the band, a battle won by Reprise Records.
Their major-label debut Dookie in 1994 broke the band into the mainstream, charting multiple hit singles that received heavy rotation on alternative-rock radio and MTV -- including "Longview", "Basket Case," "When I Come Around" and a re-recorded version of "Welcome to Paradise" from Kerplunk -- and remain modern rock radio staples to this day. That year also saw the band steal the show at Woodstock '94 with their mud-spattered set and win the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance.
Riding the high of Dookie, Green Day followed up with the darker effort Insomniac the following year. The trio might not match the runaway success of Dookie during the rest of the decade, but Green Day still consistently charted singles and albums through the rest of the '90s while experimenting with their pop-punk formula with the acoustic guitar and strings of the plaintive "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)."
The trio would enjoy a return to huge sales and their greatest critical acclaim yet in 2004 with the release of American Idiot, their ambitious punk-rock opera that gave the conceptual works of the Who a 21st century twist, following the story of a disaffected antihero Jesus of Suburbia in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War. The effort marked a significant shift in tone for the band as Armstrong's lyrics turned his focus on social commentary and protest. That album and its politically charged 2009 follow-up 21st Century Breakdown would provide the songs for the band's Broadway stage musical American Idiot that had it's premiere run at Berkeley Rep.
Since then, Green Day has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2015, embarked on a number of creative offshoots with side projects like Foxboro Hot Tubs and the Network while still releasing new music, including their latest album Saviors earlier this year. While the trio is playing songs from the record on the current Saviors Tour visiting stadiums across the U.S., the current jaunt is notable for Green Day revisiting its two biggest albums -- Dookie and American Idiot -- in their entirety to mark the 30th and 20th anniversaries of their respective releases. American Idiot also recently received the deluxe reissue treatment with vinyl and CD packages that include a full live concert, unreleased demos, related b-sides and bonus cuts, and two Blu-ray discs that feature the film "Heart Like A Hand Grenade," 35 minutes of Green Day live at the BBC, and the new documentary, "20 Years of American Idiot." Meanwhile, Dookie was just this week certified as a rare "Double-Diamond" album by the RIAA, making it only the 13th album to surpass the 20 million unit mark in U.S. sales.
The band tops a stacked bill when the tour stops at Oracle Park in San Francisco for a sold-out show Friday. Main support will be provided by fellow '90s alternative-rock mainstays the Smashing Pumpkins, who are still led by principle songwriter, guitarist and sonic architect Billy Corgan. Bay Area punk contemporaries Rancid -- which was founded in 1991 by Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman, two former members of influential Gilman Street band and Green Day inspiration, Operation Ivy -- will also share the stage. Opening the show is Los Angeles-based teenage all-girl group the Linda Lindas, who rose to viral fame with video to their song "Racist Sexist Boy" became a huge pandemic hit.
Green Day with the Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Linda Lindas
Friday, Sept. 20, 5:30 p.m.
Oracle Park