Green Day Plays the Hits at Great Coachella Show

by Julian Spivey

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Green Day co-headlined day two (along with rapper Travis Scott) of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., on Saturday, April 12, and put on one helluva rock show that spanned the entirety of the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career.

The band, all now in their early 50s, still performs with the same vigor and verve they did 25-30 years ago.

Green Day began its 18-song, 90-minute set with the great one-two punch of “American Idiot” and “Holiday,” off their magnum opus album American Idiot, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last fall. The crowd was thrilled when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong made the lyrical change from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda,” to “MAGA agenda,” to reflect the changes in the country from the George W. Bush era to the era of Donald Trump.

It always cracks me up how some conservatives bitch and moan online when he does this as if they ever thought a band of guys heavy on the eyeliner and has made a career of speaking out against conservatives would approve of any of the current administration’s policies.

American Idiot would have the most songs performed of any of their albums, unsurprisingly, throughout the set, with memorable performances of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” and “Jesus of Suburbia” sprinkled in. Never afraid to be political or ruffle feathers, Armstrong changed the line, “Runnin’ away from pain when you’ve been victimized,” to “Runnin’ away from pain like the kids from Palestine.”

The band played a couple of songs from its most recent album, last year’s Saviors, but didn’t play the Grammy-nominated “Dilemma” or “The American Dream Is Killing Me,” which I would’ve loved to have heard and would’ve felt perfect with the set. Instead, the band opted for “One Eyed Bastard” and “Bobby Sox” from the album.

For longtime fans of Green Day going back to the ‘90s, there was plenty of those hits performed during the evening, like “Basket Case,” “Longview” and “When I Come Around,” all from 1994’s Dookie, “Brain Stew” from 1995’s Insomniac, and back to “Welcome to Paradise” from 1991’s Kerplunk.

Among other terrific performances throughout the evening, which I streamed on the festival’s YouTube, were “21 Guns” and “Know Your Enemy,” from 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown, with ‘Enemy’ having a fan brought on stage from the crowd to perform a verse of, and “Minority” from 2000’s Warning.  

Anyone who’s seen Green Day before, whether in person or via an online stream, knows they’re going to end their show with “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” which is possibly the group’s most famous song, despite being so different sonically from much of their repertoire. The group has been known to bring a fan from the crowd to play guitar on the song and did so on Saturday night, choosing someone with a sign saying they could do it. The young man seemed to be having the time of his life, and Armstrong seemed to have quite the time messing with him on stage. It was a fun way to end a great show.