Green Day played their new album ‘Saviors’ in full last night, and aired some deep cuts. at an intimate show in Anaheim, California.
The show came ahead of a major upcoming world stadium tour that will take the band through the UK, Europe and North America from May 30 up until September 28. Any remaining US tickets can be found here, and for the UK and Europe, tickets can be found here.
The Anaheim show, which they only announced on Monday (March 18), took place at the House of Blues last night (March 19), and saw them play the entirety of the new record, albeit out of order.
It saw nine of the album’s tracks receive their live debut, including ‘Coma City’, ‘Living In The 20s’ and ‘Suzie Chapstick’, all of which you can watch below.
The one-off show also saw the band dust off a couple of tracks that haven’t had a full-band outing since 2005, in the form of ‘She’s a Rebel’ and ‘Extraordinary Girl’, both from ‘American Idiot’.
The inclusion of seven tracks from 1994’s ‘Dookie’ in the setlist, as well as seven tracks from 2004’s ‘American Idiot’, is a preview of the fact that the band will be playing both of those albums in full on the ‘Saviors’ tour to mark their 20th and 30th anniversaries, respectively.
At the BRIT Awards earlier this month, NME caught up with the band, where they spoke about their longtime relationship with Courtney Love and the possibility of more surprise London live shows.
It came off the heels of Armstrong performing two intimate shows across London earlier that week, breaking out some covers of iconic rock songs as part of The Coverups and bringing out Hole star Love during both shows.
“Playing at The 100 Club is legendary. We go in, play a bunch of covers. We do it at home, mostly for our friends, and I just love playing. Even if we’re just playing a really great Buzzcocks song, it’s a great time,” Armstrong said, going on to recall how the collaboration with Love arose.
“I was texting with her and I said, ‘Come on out, sing a song’, and she did. It was great. She did [David Bowie’s] ‘Suffragette City’, she did [Cheap Trick‘s] ‘Surrender’ and we got to do ‘Celebrity Skin’ – a Hole song – and the whole room freaked out,” he explained. “We’ve known her since ’94, she’s always great! She’s a wild woman, she has a lot of great stories and I love Courtney… She’s definitely like a rock n’ roll-er in herself. She’s got her sea legs back so we’ll maybe be hearing more from her.”
When asked whether fans can expect any more surprise intimate shows later this year, Armstrong hinted that more may be announced as the band come up to performing their UK tour dates. “Hopefully! We’d love to do it,” he said. “Maybe before we play Wembley Stadium we’ll play a smaller venue or something…”
Released in January, ‘Saviours’ marked Green Day’s 14th studio album, and first full LP since 2020’s ‘Father Of All Motherfuckers’.
The album was given a glowing four-star review by NME, and described as some of “their best work since ‘American Idiot’”.
“Not only does ‘Saviors’ spiritually bridge the gap between [‘Dookie’ and ‘American Idiot’], but it uses the palette of the best of the band to tell us something else,” it read. “Look to the artwork: ‘Dookie’ was a cheeky carpet-bombing of shit, ‘American Idiot’ was a hand grenade, ‘Saviors’ is an act of defiance met with a shrug; a band saying, ‘We’re still here and we’re still fucked’”.