After Liz died I couldn’t listen to this record, let alone any other Green Day, since it was her favorite band. Time heals a lot. Let’s see if it’s as good as I recall…
Green Day – American Idiot – 2004 (iTunes – Amazon)
“…while the moms and Brads are away.”
I think, with that lyric, Billie Joe shows just how strong a songwriter he is. Evoking contempt for and a callous, shallow acceptance of, divorce that pervades generation X’s lives, he steps up his game, the band’s and we are all the beneficiaries of it.
American Idiot is the Screed Political Punk Rock Opera as fully realized art form. It’s angry as hell and there’s a story in there somewhere and it resonates as a bully retort against a government gone awry.
It’s also hummable as hell.
Now, I’m a big fan of suites. My band used to make fun of me because I would try to write songs that would link together and make them learn them that way. I loved the way songs would flow together on brilliant albums like XTC’s Skylarking or Queen 2. Even if they weren’t supposed to be interlocking, it made for a listening experience that much grander. It’s a meaty listen when it’s done right and it’s done SO right on Idiot.
Legend has it that the band had recorded Cigarettes & Valentines only to come to the studio one day and discover the masters stolen. And rather than rerecord that album they decided to start from scratch. Whatever they were working on would be prelude to this. Someone find the thief and shake his hand.
Much ballyhoo is made of the 9+ minute epic “Jesus of Suburbia”, a song which could also, like the second side of Abbey Road, be a series of unfinished song ideas that have a common thread linking them. On top of creating a piece of music that is a success on all it’s pistons like this one, they managed to get this almost-10-minute frankenstein airplay!
But, for my money, it’s the OTHER suite, Homecoming that is the unsung hero of the album. Not as poppy, more aggressive andschizophrenic. Almost an equal is size, it never gets it’s due. It’s a brilliant series of songlets, a denouement to an album of despair and desperation.
There are so many other great moments on Idiot. “We are the Waiting”, with it’s assured elegiac chorus of “Are we? We are the waiting (unknown)”, the voices desperate for leadership followed immediately by the speed punk show of “St. Jimmy” who is the “Patron Saint of the denial, with an angel face and a taste for suicidal.”
It’s no wonder this is being made into a stage show up in Berkeley. I, for one, will stand in line when it comes to LA.
The characters are some of the most excitingly drawn I’ve ever heard. They give the Rat and Mary runs for their money. From The Jesus of Suburbia, the son of divorce raised on “Soda Pop and Ritalin” to St. Jimmy, the “punk Rock Freedom Fighter” as Wikipedia describes him (who, might actually be a personality of JoS, the American Idiot) to Whatsername, the rebel chick “extraordinary girl”. She is the kind of punk I would have fallen in love with in college. You know the type…army jacket, mini-skirt, jack boots. Ah, college….
[Special mention should be made for the exceptional “American Edit” mashup by the DJ “Dean Grey”. You can get it here and I recommend it. Because it’s one of the best concept mashups of the decade. Or just google “American Edit”]
While Armstrong has claimed that “Wake Me When September Ends” is actually about his father who died in September in ’82, I would hard pressed to believe that he didn’t expect the song to be taken as a post-9/11 cry for salvation. Even if he didn’t it works too well here and I will take it that way.
Everything comes together on American Idiot; the angry punks of Dookie, the rock-appreciators of Insomniac & Nimrod, the ambitions of Warning, the years of listening to Boomer music (The Beatles, The Who, Queen are all in here), the wide-awake, open eyed clear understanding of the shithole those aforementioned Boomers were leaving in their wake, it’s all here. Billie Joe is 32, a father, a punk, a husband, a citizen & taxpayer and he really doesn’t like the world he is inheriting.
THIS is the album that defines the Bush administration. Or at least it should be.
I guess I like it after all.
Grade A+
A Side: Jesus of Suburbia, American Idiot, Holiday, Wake me When September Ends
BlindSide: Homecoming, Are We The Waiting, Letterbomb
DownSide: Nothing. If you don’t like this album then Rock has nothing for you. Go listen to Belle & Sebastian and get outta the way.
