"Look at Wrigley Field," said Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong, seemingly in awe as the house lights lit up the Friendly Confines during a break in the middle of 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams'. "Look at this sacred, sacred ballfield. This is what Chicago does. This is how you take care of your shit. Will someone please call the person that owns the Oakland A's and tell them to fuck off?"
Despite having baseball problems of our own on the north side (in no way am I saying the current Cubs situation is anything near what's going on with the poor Athletics, but in a do-or-die stretch to open up the second half, the Cubs have slumped to a 12-12 record at the time of this writing and just finished getting swept by Cleveland about 10 minutes ago), the one constant through the decades of futile baseball has been the gem that is Wrigley Field. And, as blown away as the band seemed to be, it's not like they're rookies when it comes to playing the Federal Landmark. Making their third appearance at Waveland and Sheffield, it's like they know they have to keep stepping up their game with every stop. When they played for the first time in 2017, they had British indie rockers Catfish and the Bottlemen in support. In their next stop back in 2021, they brought the overstuffed and aptly-titled Hella Mega Tour with Weezer and Chicagoland natives Fall Out Boy on the card. A third visit would require something truly historic to keep one-upping themselves.
This is the part where I could do the slow reveal like I'm a radio DJ unveiling the lineup of a summer rock festival, but that would be wasting your time. If you're reading this right now, it means you know at least something about music. And anyone who knows anything about music knows what Green Day is doing this summer and who they're doing it with.
Despite the fact that the Saviors Tour comes right after Green Day released Saviors, their best effort since 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, this tour had very little to do with the new album. This tour was all about the 30th anniversary of Dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot, and the band was playing both albums front-to-back to celebrate. And as if that wasn't enough, The Linda Lindas, fellow Bay Area punks Rancid, and Chicago hometown heroes Smashing Pumpkins were there to warm the crowd up.
Green Day may have been the Wrigley Field veterans on the evening, but Los Angeles pop punk band The Linda Lindas are becoming familiar enough with Chicago to find the nearest Italian beef place without needing a map. After completing the Chicago Music Festival Trifecta over the last two summers, checking off Pitchfork and Riot Fest in 2022 and following up with Lollapalooza last year, the band has built up quite a following in Chicago and it showed as they took the stage and ripped into 'Linda Linda' to kick the evening off with a bang in front of an impressive crowd. Taking the stage at a ballpark in the middle of a major city during the heart of rush hour would be setting up any other band for failure, but having a city familiar with their live performance and primed to go certainly helped as thousands made it a point to get there early enough to catch their entire set. Those who did knock off work a bit early to be there were treated to a blistering set bursting with what I could only call an abundance of youthful energy from a band who had the looks to match. Seriously, the band ranges in age from 13-19. They have decades of rocking stadiums ahead of them. Special shout out to bassist Eloise Wong aka Linda Linda #2 for having the most infectious smile in all of music, which was on display from the very first note to the very last. That smile could power Wrigley Field for an entire homestand.
For having such intertwined DNA (both hailing from the Bay Area, Billie Joe Armstrong filling in as guitarist for about a week in the early 90's and co-writing the band's hit song 'Radio'), it's strange that it took until 2002's Pop Disaster Tour for Green Day and Rancid to tour together. And despite Rancid also supporting Green Day on a few American Idiot Tour dates, it's taken them 22 more years to get back together again, but the anticipation only made the delivery that much better. With their own breakout album ...And Out Come The Wolves waiting patiently in the wings for its own crack at turning 30, the band leaned heavily into their third studio release, with almost half their set dedicated to one of the best punk albums of the 90's. It's not like there was any danger that they wouldn't get to songs like 'Ruby Soho' and 'Time Bomb', but choosing to kick off their set with 'Maxwell Murder' and following that up with 'Roots Radical', the overshadowed first single off the 1995 album, were inspired choices and set the tone for a performance that was somehow both in-your-face and west coast laid-back. No one seemed to be having more fun during their set than Rancid, rubbing elbows with the likes of CM Punk and James Hetfield backstage.
Rancid weren't the only ones with career defining albums that are juuuuust shy of their thirtieth birthdays. With their own Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness turning the right age for its own tour and nine-disc special edition release, the Smashing Pumpkins might be using this tour as a warm up for a stadium trek of their own in 2025. But the Pumpkins never needed a reason to play, especially in Chicago. And even with a brand spanking new album out (Aghori Mhori Mei came out less than a week ago, not even long enough to lose that new album smell), the band decided to use their time to focus on the hits, not playing a single new album cut. Instead, fans were treated to the usual hits like '1979', 'Cherub Rock', and 'Zero' with a mix of deep cuts (Zeitgeist's 'Doomsday Clock, sounding especially massive with 3 guitars in the live band now) and covers (U2's 'Zoo Station'). And while original members James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlain look and sound as good as they ever have, the gravitational center of the band continues to be frontman Billy Corgan. As quick with a wry smile as he is with a thundering guitar riff and high-pitched scream, Corgan has really grown into his role as one of alternative rock's elder statesmen. And this being a hometown show, Billy was absolutely in his element, holding court with the capacity crowd while he and the rest of the band delivered hit after hit after hit. It was one of those sets that most likely left the majority of the crowd putting tracks off Siamese Dream on their commute playlists this morning.
Look, I'll just come out and say it...there was no way to sit through this show and not think about getting older and the cruel and everlasting forward march of time. Green Day was celebrating breakouts that happened both two and three decades ago. Rancid and the Smashing Pumpkins have also been around for quite a while. The oldest Linda Linda wasn't born until three years after 9/11. But this wasn't meant to be a somber affair. This was meant for us to revisit two of the seminal pop-punk albums of the late 90's/early 2000's and inject them directly into our veins.
I will say that the only downside to the Saviors Tour focusing around the album plays of both Dookie and American Idiot is that it really doesn't leave a lot of room for many songs off the new album. It's a shame because they really do work well, each reminiscent of another Green Day live classic that you know and love. And before getting into the main business of the evening, Billie Joe and the gang kicked their set off with a pyro-drenched rendition of 'The American Dream is Killing Me', throwing us something we haven't seen before as an appetizer before starting in on the first course of material we're intimately familiar with.
Watching the band tear through that new single and immediately launch into 'Burnout' to kick off their Dookie album play, it was clear just how much time has passed that Billie Joe and bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool have been doing this for. Armstrong no longer looking like a teenager, with some crows feet at the conclusion of his eyeliner. Cool, who used to be an absolute Tasmanian Devil behind the kit, now sitting a lot more upright and aware of his posture as he drums. Dirnt still flies through the air with the best of them, but maybe limited to a handful of times a night instead of multiple times each song.
But while there may be some slight signs of aging when looking at the band, their performance has never been sharper. Coming off of a tour date that had to be rescheduled due to a vocal injury by Armstrong, the extra time seemed to be just what the doctor ordered, as Billie Joe was screaming and shouting and singing at the top of his lungs without any limitations whatsoever. 30 years of Dookie may have changed a lot, but he can still spit and sneer his way through 'Basket Case' just like he did in the 1994 music video. And even healthier posture doesn't slow down Tre Cool from positively carrying every single song that the band performs (something I've been shouting from the rooftops for years). Mike Dirnt still plays some of the best bass in punk history with his signature style onstage where it almost seems like he's having a conversation solely with himself while playing his bass like it's trying to escape his grip. This is my sixth time seeing Green Day since 2005 and they have not missed a single step. And with the enthusiasm they showed ripping through an album they've been playing for longer than a chunk of the audience has been alive, it almost seems like we could be seeing them play Dookie on tour to celebrate it's 50th anniversary before we know it.
Throwing in a six song mini-set of half new songs, half classics as a break between albums, the band was right back at it with 'American Idiot' kicking off American Idiot and we were right back off to the races. When it comes to the evening's theme of revisiting these classic albums decades after their initial cultural impact, it's both interesting and kind of disheartening how many themes in American Idiot are still not only relevant today, but how many of the warnings (no pun intended) have still gone unaddressed and how many of the countries problems have been left to rot and fester over the last two decades. We may not be at war with the Middle East anymore, but when the main conflict that's enrolling your nation is domestic rather than foreign, songs like the self titled track and Holiday hit that much harder.
But not everything about revisiting these albums is a downer. Far from it! Hearing these albums played in full was an absolute nostalgia blast of a party for two and a half hours. For everyone inside Wrigley Field and all the fans in folding chairs outside the walls listening to the sounds of the show flow over the surrounding streets, it doesn't matter what you were doing when you listened to these albums. Hell, for those of us that had 'Longview' speak to us as teenagers, we most likely listened to a lot of these songs doing exactly nothing at all. It was about taking a step back and appreciating these two seminal albums as the classics they are. It was about having an excuse to feel and act young again. It was a chance to catch some songs live that you may not have appreciated as much in the past (like how 'Homecoming' is just as good as 'Jesus of Suburbia' and hopefully now that we all see that, we can expect it more in future setlists).
More importantly, it's about bringing literal generations of fans together, some of whom see American Idiot as 'old Green Day'. The time between Dookie and American Idiot was only ten years, but looking back it felt like whole lifetimes happened between the two releases, and I guess for someone that was twelve when the first was released and 22 when the second one was, it kind of did. And somehow the two decades that have happened since American Idiot feel like a shorter period of time.
It doesn't make sense to me either, but I look forward to revisiting the topic during the 50th anniversary of Dookie/40th anniversary of American Idiot/20th anniversary of Saviors Tour in 2044. Just in time for another election!
The Saviors Tour continues across the US through the end of September.
Green Day Setlist - Wrigley Field, Chicago 8.13.24
The American Dream is Killing Me
Burnout
Having a Blast
Chump
Longview
Welcome to Paradise
Pulling Teeth
Basket Case
She
Sassafras Roots
When I Come Around
Coming Clean
Emenius Sleepus
In The End
F.O.D.
All By Myself
Know Your Enemy
Look Ma, No Brains!
One Eyed Bastard
Dilemma
Minority
Brain Stew
American Idiot
Jesus of Suburbia
Holiday
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Are We The Waiting
St. Jimmy
Give Me Novacaine
She's A Rebel
Extraordinary Girl
Letterbomb
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Homecoming
Whatshername
Bobby Sox
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
