As I walked through the throngs of people smashed together on the lawn at DTE music theater, I couldn't help but wonder what brought each one of the spectators into the wooded outskirts of the metro Detroit area. What songs were they hoping to hear? Were the fifteen year old goth kid and his girlfriend excited about hearing songs off Green Day's breakout album Dookie? Was the balding man a few feet in front of me an old school punk fan, or just a disciple of top 40 radio? What made the five middle aged women in front of us dance?
I could have spent much of the three hour setlist trying to find the unifying thread behind Green Day's widespread popularity, but it would have been at the cost of the spectacle unfolding in front of me. The concert itself was less about the music of Green Day, and more a piece of performance art that tries its best to bring you in to Green Day's universe for three hours of uninhibited fun. More circus than rock show.
I would not consider myself a Green Day fan. I haven't actively followed their music since I bought Nimrod when I was in middle school, and of the 30+ songs they played I could probably only name a handful. I have nothing against Green Day, and I must say that the songs I loved when I was young haven't lost their luster. I still get excited to hear When I Come Around, Basket Case, She, and the rest of my early alt-rock radio favorites.
Luckily, Green Day does their best to make sure you don't have to be a hardcore fan to at least enjoy yourself. They reward the casual listeners in ways you only see in big amphitheater and stadiums. They are the perfect example of a band that has "made it", and the show pulls no punches in that regard. The mildly popular album tracks come out in the beginning of the show, played with as close an ear to the studio renditions as you can get on a live tour. Rising up behind the band is a wall of digital screens that look almost like a city skyline shooting up into jagged peaks and valleys. The screens alternating music waves and flashes of color with pictures of the band that descend into static. Just in front of the screens, there are a handful of firework cannons that spit out blasts of white light and sparks to punctuate the ends of songs and the crashing of guitar chords and bass drums. As the show wore deeper, the band began bringing kids on stage to sing along, much to the chagrin of the majority of the audience at one point my friend summed this annoyance up perfectly: "we paid twenty dollars to hear Green Day not sing Longview." The songs at this point began to grow more grandiose in scale. Early verses would be backed by just the strumming of an acoustic, with pauses before the chorus, only then to explode into a fully backed verse soaked in fireworks and cries from Billie Joe Armstrong to join in. By the encore, the audience was in a state of rapture that wasn't quelled until the stage lights came on.
At one point the band teased the audience by playing bits and pieces of classic rock songs such as the opening riff to Stairway to Heaven, a verse of Sweet Child O' Mine, and Back in Black. If it was funny to imagine what brought an eclectic group spanning three generations to a Green Day concert, it was surreal to see everyone immediately react to the highlights of an average hour of classic rock radio.
I was probably one of the only people out of around 15,000 to think that three hours of Green Day was a little much, but I was tired of standing and still feeling the effects of a long weekend spent drinking in the sun on a lake in northern Michigan. Cultural fascination can only carry one so far in the face of exhaustion.
As I made my way to the car after the show, tired and in pain from hours on my feet, I couldn't help but go back to my original question. What brought these people together?
Only now, looking back on the evening does it start to make sense. Green Day has a little something for everyone. This is a band whose musical career spans over twenty years. They were playing garage band punk music and listening to The Replacements and The Ramones before I was even enrolled in kindergarten. Since then they've put out solid punk rock (everything on Dookie), hokey "class song" material (Time of Your Life), emo tinged pop music (Boulevard of Broken Dreams), and wildly popular political commentary (American Idiot). What used to be a staple of the alternative rock stations of my childhood has slowly grown to be a cash cow and chart topper. Something for everyone.
All of this comes together as a picture of a band that has accomplished all its goals. They have built a feverish audience, put out a handful of very successful albums, and developed a piece of performance art fit for the stages it is played on. But I can't help but feel like they have lost some of that same energy that originally attracted me to the three chord fuzz of the early hits. The hunger is missing. Can a band that is filthy rich and wildly successful ever capture the same magic that helped get them to the top? The songs were all hiding behind fireworks and call and response, cues that tell people when to cheer and when to sing. The chords sounded the same, but didn't always feel the same. When Billie Joe Armstrong talked to the crowd between songs about how much he loves Michigan, it felt like something out of This is Spinal Tap. The sheer scale of it all can't mask the gimmicks and air of workmanlike performance from everyone involved. The band is going through the motions, but it's all part of the show.
Is this a bad thing? Do I feel bitter that Green Day has sold out? No. They obviously play the music they want to, and love the chance they get to perform in front of crowds this size. And those crowds are full of genuine fans who love the music for what it is. Green Day aren't the punks they used to be. They are fathers just like some of the men in the crowd. They play music for fun to an audience that just wants to have a good time.
And after all is said and done, isn't that what rock and roll is supposed to be about? 15,000 soccer moms, sons, classic rockers, punks, stoners, hippies, and at least one detached twenty-something music snob had fun at a Green Day concert yesterday. It was all part of the show, and I couldn't be happier.
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