(Translated from my original Italian text by Simone S)
Green Day formed very young in Berkeley, 1987 and quickly became central to the
Gilman St hardcore scene. Led by singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong (at
the age of only 15), they confronted teen existential angst in a power-pop
style that took from hardcore only its speed.
The Stiff Little Fingers
are clearly the reference model for their first records. After EP Sweet
Children (1987), Green Day debuted with EP 1,000 Hours (Lookout,
1989). The title track blends folk-rock, raga, and psychedelia, much like the style
the
Byrds
had mastered. However, the other tracks, unpretentious melodic
sketches set against high-volume distorted riffs (Dry Ice and Only of
You), were more indicative of the band’s future. Their second EP, Slappy
(Lookout, 1990), boasts Paper Lanterns, delivered in the infamous 90s
California monotone, and 409 in Your Coffeemaker, a mischievous melody.
Their punk rock is snotty but not ferocious, and there is always a catchy
chorus beneath their machinegun fire
Their
first album, 39 Smooth (Lookout, 1990), is almost a concentrate
of lightning-fast choruses (like At the Library) one after another at
breakneck speed. The Kinks’ legacy (who were the first to pair easy melodies
with ‘hard’ riffs), shows up in many refrains from Don’t Leave Me to 16.
Reckless but not idiots like the Ramones, Green Day revives rock & roll’s youthful
school spirit and sarcastic autobiography (girls, parties, school).
On Kerplunk
(Lokout, 1992), Green Day loses a bit of their 1990 fire, but they make up for
it. Billie Joe’s ‘songwriting’ is still a cornucopia of memorable themes but,
in the obvious search for a wider audience, the execution has begun to weaken,
and the songs have become less “noisy”. Private Ale, Android,
and Who Wrote Holden Caulfield return to the wild, playful energy of
their first album, but they’re the exception, not the rule. If 2000 Light
Years Away is the existential anthem tasked with
defining the album’s theme, One For the Razorbacks, Welcome to Paradise,
and One of my Lies are the Mersey Beat masterpieces. These are the new
Green Day. No One Knows and Dominated Love Slave also appear
here.
Billie
Joe is the force behind the band: clear, strong vocals, driving, energetic
guitar, and the rhythm section behind him like a train, never missing a beat.
Mike Dirnt (bass) and Frank “Tre Cool” Wright (drums) are perfectly in sync
with his class-clown spirit.
Exemplifying
the revival of melody in hardcore, Green Day carries the mantle of the
Descendents in pulling off the old trick of capturing adolescent frenzy and
dissatisfaction over fast rhythm and elementary choruses.
Dookie (Reprise, 1994) yielded that idea’s commercial success, but at cost of the exuberant looseness that had originally distinguished the band. The melodies on Burnout and Champ pass by without impact. Having a Blast and She cite Replacements and Husker Du like greats whose albums they’d never listened to. Rarely does the electricity rise to the level of a wild party, rarely does the arrangement manage brilliant color.
But the
new version of Welcome to Paradise immediately brings to mind Billboard
charts, and Longview consolidates the new style: beginning muted,
haphazard drum beat, then an explosion of guitar launching the chorus into
orbit. And so Basket Case begins a cappella with a low hum of guitar in
the background before the drum beat explodes into double time, pausing for a
backbeat, and then resuming at a gallop. The other classic on the release, When
I Come Around, goes along with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s coarse Southern sound. Those
tracks were all it took to make Green Day stars. It hardly matters that In
the End unleashed one of their most memorable breakneck tunes; this is a
complex punk rock that doesn’t exist anymore. The album would sell ten million
copies in the course of five years.
The band
demonstrated how little they had to say relative to other honest hardcore
groups on Insomniac (Reprise, 1995), one of the most obtuse albums in
the history of punk rock. Armatage Shanks, Stuart And The Ave and Geek Stink Breath simply attempt to repeat the success of their counterparts on the previous album. The lyrics add another embarrassment: Armstrong is pathetic in his attempt to pose as the alienated, nihilistic hero. The unusual instrumentation on Panic Song and Brain Stew, the only songs that signal any progress, will still excite old fans.
Nimbrod (Reprise, 1997) proves that Green Day’s success was by chance: Nice Guys Finish Last, The Grouch, Scattered are limp, repetitive tracks. As intelligent as those of the Beatles, the songs recycle stereotypes and rarely evoke any emotion. The album is flat and, in the end, tedious. The singer unloads his personal fears, but without Gorgan’s* fantasy. There is, anyway, something much worse than the embarrassing pop of Redundant and Hitchin’ a Ride, both released on the single: the exotic, gothic instrumentals on Last Ride In.
The album suddenly wakes up in its second half, almost as though Green Day is winking at their fans. The tumultuous hardcore of Platypus, Jinx, Reject, and Haushinka completely change the conversation. It’s a shame they seem like the reject tracks from earlier albums. The band has fun parodying death metal (Take Back), vaudeville (King for a Day), and folk rock (Prosthetic Head), at their best in these songs. But Green Day revived their career with ballad Good Riddance, undoubtedly the sigh of a more memorable song, which, even worse, includes
classical violin arrangements. For the historic punk-pop group, it’s little
more than a funeral march. The record label is the only reason this album
exists.
Having decisively lost the youthful spirit of their ‘popcore’, Green Day cannot attempt in earnest what they first played for laughs. As happened to all of their predecessors (from the Ramones to Devo), this is a detrimental evolution; their early work was the soundtrack for the demented among us, and it has lost its identity. Too smooth, too clean, too polite, Green Day has become the Young Fresh Fellows without the sense of humor.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
With Warning (Reprise, 2000) any hope of winning Green Day back to the
punk cause were lost.
Few things are more predictable than a new Green Day album:
a dull sequence of catchy tunes that pretend to be reportages of
teenagers' life but sound as sincere and personal as a politician's
promises to the same teenagers.
The model for Warning, Church On Sunday, Blood Sex And Booze is Good Riddance, not their early punk anthems.
Echoes of those (Fashion Victim, Castaway, Jackass) are faint and warped.
Minority is possibly the best song, mainly because this surreal polka
(replete with accordion, and with a captivating riff beaten on the guitar
strings) doesn't sound like Green Day.
The singalong Misery and the folkish Macy's Day Parade move even
farther away, but now the band is beginning to sound senile.
The rock opera American Idiot (Reprise, 2004) is a verbose expression
of these former punks' view of the world. They had never been particularly
literate, and now they want to rely mainly on the lyrics. It sounds like
a really bad idea, but it they manage to turn it upside down.
These analyze the USA from both the political (explicit) and the sociological
(subtle) viewpoints.
Green Day are no Clash and they are no
Kinks, but they are clever enough not to try
to be.
Their rock opera is different from its noble ancestors precisely because it
does not try to be ambitious.
They shun venom (ideology) as well as humour (satire).
They simply tell it like it is, like a young man of their generation feels it is.
This humble and sincere approach helps craft songs that are unusually mature
while being catchy as usual:
Boulevard of Broken Dreams (the stereotypical loner's lament, that they
arrange with guitar effects borrowed from Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man),
St Jimmy, Extraordinary Girl, Are We The Waiting, Holiday.
The trio even succeeds in the two, nine-minute, five-movement suites,
Jesus Of Suburbia and Homecoming (especially the first one),
a format that one would have thought way beyond their reach.
The opera was staged in 2009 in their hometown Berkeley with orchestration
by Tom Kitt.
21st Century Breakdown (Reprise, 2009),
Green Day's second rock opera,
is the album where they fully connected with their early 1960s models.
Less ambitious than
American Idiot (dispensing with the epic pieces and focusing on their
forte, the short melodic song), this album
is dominated by Who-style guitar pop
(21st Century Breakdown,
Before the Lobotomy, and especially
Know Your Enemy)
and by Kinks-style vignettes of ordinary life such as
Viva la Gloria and
Last of the American Girls.
The ballads Last Night on Earth and especially Restless Heart Syndrome wed the tenderness of John Lennon's litanies with the pomp of glam-rock.
Only Christian's Inferno and Murder City exhibit a
punk-rock overdrive, and Horseshoes and Handgrenades unveils an
anthemic riff in the vein of garage-rock.
The most original moments come with
Peacemaker, a
country & western gallop with strings and choir,
and Viva la Gloria? (Little Girl), the best refrain of the batch, reminiscent of the
music-hall and Broadway show tunes.
Marginally successful is also the rhythmic experiment of East Jesus Nowhere.
