Green Day's punk opera for the 21st century

Green Day released its debut album Dookie in 1994. That was 15 years ago. The band members were then young promising arrivals from the punk rock scene in California. And what has the passage of time made them today? Middle-aged rockers!

The thought gives me the creeps. Billie Joe Armstrong. Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool are, like everyone of us, also growing old. I know that Johnny Lydon did and not so gracefully, I must add. But still one cannot seem to reconcile punk rockers with aging. They either explode off to oblivion with a big bang or fade away. They do not grow old.

On the other hand though, the reason why we have a front row seat to Green Day‘s aging process is because the band is still around. Only Offspring among its contemporaries come to mind and I do not know what those guys are up to these days. As of now, Green Day might as well be called the last punk band standing and the boys are not only straight and tall. They are magnificent.

The first sign that they were preparing to take on the mantle of elder statesmen of punk evinced itself five years ago with the release of the daring American Idiot. It was totally unexpected, a punk concept album about America losing its dreams. The brats have grown up and gotten all sweet and serious and very smart. Everybody loved it. The CD was named Best Rock Album at the Grammys while Boulevard of Broken Dreams got Record of the Year. And all over the world, people sang Wake Me Up When September Ends as though it were their very own song.

Last I heard, American Idiot is going to Broadway to become a show. With this development future generations will find Green Day mentioned in the same breath as Oscar & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and other great names in the realm of musical theater. Not bad at all for some kids who once praised nihilism and destruction.

Now whoever is in charge of adapting American Idiot for the stage should also take a look at Green Day’s latest album. He will have an easier time with the new one. The band’s first after five years, 21st Century Breakdown is brave, ambitious and masterfully done. These guys really put heart and soul into this project. I can just imagine all the hours they spent learning and learning and learning more in order to come up with a punk opera.

And mind you, they have divided 21st Century Breakdown into three parts so you can really call it an opera in three acts. These are Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints and Horseshoes and Handgrenades. Through these runs the love story of Christian and Gloria, two young victims of 21st century America who have nowhere else or nobody else to turn to but each other. We are the desperate in the decline/raised by the bastards of 1969, they sing.

Still, it is not really a true musical. The tale might be about Christian and Gloria and some songs do refer to them directly. But Green Day has kept them out of the lyrics most of the time. The result is you can lift songs from the album and these will still mean something even without the others. Who knows, the touching ballad Last Night on Earth might be the next Wake Me Up When September Ends and 21 Guns might become an anthem for the kids trying to cope with growing up in this troubled world.

Green Day is now on its way to greatness and I am glad to see that they have taken their music along. Punks may not like the idea that punk rock has now received not only acceptance but also respectability. But that cannot be helped 21st Century Breakdown is too good piece not to be admired. Besides it means immortality for punk as part of classic rock. And I am all for that.

21st Century Breakdown debuted at No. 1 in Billboard Magazine‘s Top 200 Albums list. It went down a notch with the arrival of Eminem’s Relapse. But that does not mean you can now count Green Day out of the running. Judging from the way these guys operate and from the exciting contents of the CD, you can expect to see them back on top one of these days.