It's fair to say that 10 years ago, when he was whining about having nothing better to do than masturbate, no one thought that Billie Joe Armstrong would play the same role to our generation as Bob Dylan did to his.
It's probably still fair to say that.
Though Green Day's "American Idiot" has been touted as the band's opus that declares war on "the establishment," the album really treads ground already covered by previous albums, "Dookie" and "Insomniac." As Spectrum Managing Editor Ben Cady poignantly observed, "American Idiot" is about alienation.
Armstrong sings on the "well-circulated" single, "Well maybe I'm the f----t America/ I'm not a part of redneck agenda/ Now everybody do the propaganda/And sing along to the age of paranoia." While these lines point at George Bush's Texas upbringing and policy-making since beginning the "War on Tera," it also mentions that Armstrong feels like he's being persecuted.
Green Day knows a thing or two about persecution. The heat that Good Charlotte and New Found Glory catch for betraying the essence of punk rock has nothing on the center-of-the-sun temperatures Green Day endured in the mid-'90s. Nobody else was around to help carry the load. They didn't have a Yellowcard or an All-American Rejects they could point to and say, "Look, they're the real sissies up in here. Yo?"
So when Armstrong chants his all-too easily relatable blurb, "I walk a lonely road, the only one that I've ever known," he's not just talking about having incandescent hair. That gives "American Idiot" validity over so many quasi-punk pieces being tossed around summer skate park tours.
Let's not forget that the content is the catchiest collection of pop tunes they've written in years. They make a metaphorical connection to The Who, ripping off the "Teenage Wasteland" riff on "Homecoming," their call to bring the troops home from Iraq. They follow it up with extravagant instrumentation on the five-part nine-minute song, including tubular bell chimes and tympani drum hits. It's one of two extra-long tracks split into parts of five, like a Shakespearean performance.
According to MTV.com Green Day plans to make another connection with Daltry and Townshend by making "American Idiot" into a movie, just like The Who did with "Tommy" in 1969. The band also reportedly plans to play the entire album from beginning to end when they tour this fall.
That might be a bit ambitious. It's a good album, but it's not the second coming of "Dookie." Points are also taken for having a bleeding red grenade in the shape of a heart on the cover. It seems like a more appropriate idea for a band like the Hearts that Hate, of DJ Lars' "Signing Emo" fame.
