With a hit Broadway show and its own edition of the “Rock Band” franchise, Green Day is establishing itself as a punk-rock brand.
Green Day fans attending Thursday night’s performance of the just-opened Broadway musical “American Idiot” got an extra-special treat following the final bow: The veteran rock trio jumped onstage for a surprise performance.
At the Grammy Awards on Sunday night (Jan. 31), Green Day gave the world a preview of the musical based on their 2004 album American Idiot.
Moments before the opening curtain of “American Idiot,” the musical theater debut of the punk band Green Day, a t-shirted house manager took the stage at Berkeley Repertory Theater for the tradition of reminding audience members to turn off their cellphones and unwrap their candies. This being a musical by Green Day, though, it wasn’t your typical curtain speech. “Are you ready to rock tonight?” shouted the house manager, John Gay. And sure enough, the crowd roared back, “Yeah!” Such is the rowdy mood surrounding “American Idiot,” a rock opera drawn largely from Green Day’s multiplatinum 2004 album of the… Read more »
Green Day is continuing their march to an inevitable Number One album, setting up rock-opera shop at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on May 18th for the East Coast live debut of 21st Century Breakdown. The band’s Bay Area guerilla gigs in April all featured the record in its entirety. But at the Bowery, Green Day played a pocket-jukebox edition of the album, starting with the opening title track and the first single, “Know Your Enemy.” Then the new six-piece band – with singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool assisted on guitars, keyboards and extra… Read more »
Green Day has the most popular CD in the country, but you won’t be able to find it at your local Wal-Mart. The band says the giant superstore chain refused to stock its latest CD “21st Century Breakdown” because Wal-Mart wanted the album edited for language and content, and they refused. “Wal-Mart has become the biggest retail outlet in the country, but they won’t carry our record because they wanted us to censor it,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a recent interview. While Wal-Mart sells CDs from acts known for raunchy content, they offer customers the “clean” version of… Read more »
NEW YORK – You can forgive some of the Green Day fans packed inside a Manhattan Best Buy if they got a little bit pushy. After all, some of them had been waiting in line for nearly 30 hours for this moment. On May 15th, 500 lucky GD fanatics who had spent the night camping out on the sidewalk finally got a chance to see their idols at a raucous meet-and-greet filled with tears, screams and lots of hugs. There were autographs signed, pictures snapped and terrified-looking Best Buy employees trying their very, uh, best to keep order. Amid all… Read more »
Green Day has been delivering power-punk to the mainstream since Billie Joe Armstrong clutched a monkey in “Longview” nearly 15 years ago. The trio has done it all with one foot firmly entrenched in its hometown East Bay punk scene, stating its allegiance to gutter punks and Gilman Street at every possible chance. It’s been both a blessing and a curse, eternally indebted to the past, but inching ever closer to the future. With the reigning punk royalty out of the picture the past couple years, the number of punk releases declined sharply. Anyone hoping Green Day would bring… Read more »
The early word on Green Day‘s 21st Century Breakdown is that the album somehow marks a seismic shift for the band, and with its windmilled guitars, climbing musical interludes and piano-driven ballads, it’s not difficult to see why. “Oh yeah, that’s ground zero for us,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong smiled. “Coming from Gilman Street, we saw the most creative people I’ve ever seen in my life. There was a band called Schlong, and they did ‘West Side Story,’ and they called it ‘Punk Side Story.’ And then there’s bands like NoMeansNo, [who made] a record like Wrong that’s completely insane.… Read more »
A month and a half after their eighth studio album, 21st Century Breakdown, is released, Green Day will hit the road for their first tour in three years, according to the band’s reps. The North American trek kicks off July 3rd in Seattle and heads to Canada. The 38-date journey wraps August 25th in Los Angeles. The band hasn’t announced any venues yet, but when Rolling Stone first listened to Breakdown, we reported the band was looking to book indoor arenas rather than amphitheatres. Rolling Stone’s David Fricke reported from one of the band’s warm-up gigs in California last week,… Read more »
