2022’s Outside Lands Festival checked off every possible box with its lineup, offering something for everyone no matter their age or genre inclination. Acts like Disclosure and Illenium pleased the EDM crowd, Mac DeMarco, Mitski, and Phoebe Bridgers appeased the indie stans, and Weezer delighted the 90s rock fans.
One group, however, proved unique in its ability to unite the OSL crowd and draw a genuinely staggering number of energized music lovers to the Lands End stage. Green Day, who headlined this year and closed out Day 2 of the festival on its main stage, reached across the generations and garnered an exuberant audience of young punk lovers and their kindly parents, of old school enthusiasts who listened to DOOKIE on the day of its 1994 release and 8 year-olds just discovering the wonders of punk rock.
See also: Here's What You Missed At Outside Lands 2022
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The barely-contained anticipatory energy was palpable well before they formally took the stage, with the audience heartily singing along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and hopping eagerly to the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”, both of which Green Day piped down from the speakers to loosen up the crowd. Once the clock struck 8:25 pm, though, the power trio of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool stormed the stage and without a word of introduction launched immediately into “American Idiot”, the title track of their legendary album of the same name.
The transitions into “Holiday” and “Know your Enemy” were as instantaneous, establishing a bewilderingly high-energy tenor that - remarkably - the band and crowd would manage to sustain for the remainder of the 90-minute performance. When brief remarks from Billie Joe Armstrong finally arrived, they came in the form of impassioned, sincere shoutouts to his hometown of Berkeley and the SF Bay’s brilliance. Armstrong expertly navigated a line many artists struggle to negotiate, forming a rapport with the audience while ensuring the energy remained high and the focus remained on the music.
After “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” - one of the many anthems off of American Idiot - the group dove into two hits off of their 1994 classic Dookie before delighting classic metal and glam rock fans with covers of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” and KISS’s “Rock n Roll All Night”. They quickly returned to their “Just the Hits” logic - which appeared to be the rationale behind their set that night - and leapt into six wildly popular tracks from their most successful albums.
Standouts here include “Brain Stew” - an unapologetically coarse punk-metal banger from their 1995 project Insomniac - and “When I Come Around” - the cheery, infectiously catchy single off of Dookie - and “Minority” - an acerbic takedown of Falwellian Christian conservatism from 2000’s Warning, all of which induced plenty of jumping and raised fists among the crowd.
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One of the most memorable and heart-warming moments of the evening - and of the entire festival - came when Armstrong pulled a 10 year-old up out of the crowd, gave him a guitar, and let him play the entirety of “Knowledge”, a cover of an Operation Ivy track. (If you haven’t read our article on the history of the Bay Area punk scene, Operation Ivy is an influential ska-punk outfit from Berkeley who evolved into the famed alt-ska group Rancid).
Montgomery, the young guest guitarist, proved more than up to the task and - donning a 49ers cap - played the three chords required of him with such charming gusto that Armstrong let him keep his guitar; the audience was beside themselves for the entirety of this moment.
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The remainder of the set proved as joyous and rambunctious as the former half, with Armstrong both brandishing a Brazilian flag with the text “F*** Bolsonaro” printed on the front and even breaking a guitar string during “Basket Case”, the blazing pop-rock earworm that has proven to be among their most beloved tracks. After some Journey and George Michael covers to pad out the set’s runtime, Green Day closed with utterly electrifying renditions of the three tracks for which they’re now known: the crushingly somber, operatic “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, the overwhelming, ingenious 10-minute “Jesus of Suburbia” which houses 7 songs in one, and, finally, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” - the song that’s been played at every high school graduation since 2004. Wildly impressive visual spectacles accompanied these final tracks, including phantasmagoric light shows, fire displays, and even a full-fledged 2 minute-long fireworks display visible from across the city.
However reductive and banal this may sound, Green Day - truly - is a special band. They rose to prominence at a time when many began questioning the myths enveloping the American Empire, when many Gen X-ers were entering the workforce and starting families, and when many Gen Z-ers were learning to walk. For some young folk, American Idiot formed the soundtrack of their childhood, contouring all of their earliest memories.
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Saturday night at Outside Lands then constituted one of those exceedingly rare opportunities to experience a feeling of commonality with literally tens of thousands of other people - of all background and ages - as you collectively rage against the machine with a band who, remarkably, is as earnest, enthusiastic, and electrifying as they were 20 years ago.
See also: All The Best Outfits Seen At Outside Lands 2022
Photography by: Alive Coverage
