Green Day celebrate the 30th anniversary of Dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot by playing both landmark albums in full on their summer stadium tour with the Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and the Linda Lindas.
“It’s going to be a damn moment,” Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt tells Rolling Stone. “We’ve never done anything like this before. And there’s a really good chance we’ll never do it again.”
Dirnt estimates it will take about 90 minutes to play both albums. “Then we have about 35 to 45 minutes to focus on other things,” he says. “And production-wise, these albums open up some incredible possibilities.” (Green Day played Dookie at the Reading Festival in England in 2013 and again at the Full Fremont Country Club in Las Vegas last October. Both times they took just over 40 minutes. American Idiot, however, is almost an hour long on record.)
Right now, they don’t know if they’ll start the show with Dookie or American Idiot. “We’re still having to really work on figuring that out,” says Dirnt. “Before every tour, we do a lot of pre-production, a lot of thinking about how it’s going to look, feel and sound, because it’s really important to us. It’s fun, but it also really keeps us on our toes.”
The set also includes songs from their new LP Saviors, but the band never leaves a concert stage without playing their classics. “When you play a song like ‘She’, ‘Basket Case’ or ‘Welcome to Paradise’ live, it’s a completely different energy,” says Dirnt. “It closes the loop. There’s this energy that develops between the audience and yourself. We love playing these songs. For us, it’s just as exciting as playing new songs live.”
