Green Day’s Final Insult
By: Alex Lee Thomson
For those people that grew up in the wonderment of America's most exciting new-era punk band, Green Day, the events that shortly followed the release of their 'American Idiot' album may have disillusioned you as they transformed from affable underdogs into mainstream go-getters. We're not saying fame is bad - we've been over this - but we do expect bands to at least try and remain true to their identity and more importantly, their fans. So, as Green Day gear up for a new album (rumours of three to be released over the next 18 months), we're treated to a new offering in the shape of Lennon cover, 'Working Class Hero'.
Green Day spent the 90s building up a faithful fan-base of teenagers who adhered to the angst ridden workings of modern mediocrity. They captured, through the release of tracks suck as 'Brainstew', 'Longview' and 'Basketcase', the post-John Hughes world of growing up and dealing with matters as trivial as smoking, drinking, depression and masturbation. Their music was the soundtrack to this Rockfeedbackers' youth for nigh on ten years, and so naturally, like their fans the world over, I was more than excited by the release of 'American Idiot'. The year before the acclaimed albums launch it was reported that the masters of their album had been stolen, but what actually happened (it's believed) is that their major label rejected the recordings and so the band released the LP themselves under the guise of The Network, thus burying the now infamous tapes and wiping the slate clean for what was about to be unleashed. The first time we heard what would be 'American Idiot' was with the release of the album's title track. It boasted fluorescent guitars, compulsive drums and the usual morose bass lines formerly associated with the band, but they seemed different; more professional and direct, excitingly so in fact. They hit us with the lines, "don't want to be an American idiot, one nation controlled by the media, information age of hysteria, it's calling out to idiot America", and we believed them. At last, I thought, this is a band outside of the industry, above the hype generators and revelling in the dust of true music, they were after all a punk band and this was their anti-Bush, anti industry manifesto aimed at the world that had finally grown weary of the Bush-Blair love affair.
Cue the whirlwind tours, festival dates and a mountain of singles that followed and we were losing faith. Their overindulgent videos that plagued the telly were backed up by an overplay of singles that ceaselessly looped on every radio station for months. It was great that the band were getting attention after some decades of effort, but who was all this new promotion being aimed at? Do punk fans watch Top Of The Pops (RIP)? With 'American Idiot', the band had a chance to start again, and far from the angsty darkness of their previous work, they had reinvented themselves and targeted a much younger, and broader, audience. They appeared everywhere from daytime TV to VH1, and suddenly the world was mad for Green Day and their pop-punk power-chord compositions that brought 'punk' into the mainstream in a pseudo-Avril Lavigne manner. They were so overdone, whoring themselves around the industry as they did, that they lost all credibility as artists. The message of the album was misplaced amidst a drowning sea of their excess and over-the-top attitude until finally they wrote off the majority of their 15 year long devotees over the course of a two day stint at Milton Keynes Bowl. Billed as a one-off Green Day show not to be missed, even I bought into the hype - although I'd seen them just months before in Manchester, I paid stupid money (face value as well) to go along and see this 'amazing' show. Among a myriad of problems at the event was a golden circle (punk rock 101, no-no), the uber-low stage (coming in at around 4 foot high), the exact same set-list as all of their previous UK shows and the devastatingly poor sound quality - no doubt designed to give the best audio feedback for the DVD that was being made of the spectacle. Lifelong fans left with looks of severe dejection, throwing their t-shits in the bin with a passionate anger and resentment brewing. They had sold out their fans to make a DVD. They'd lured us with promises of unforgettable musical ecstasy, packed us in, then violated us and charged for the honour. Never before had I, or the countless others present, felt such a deeply cutting blow.
As the message boards lit up with thousands of likeminded banter, we tried to disregard the incident and remember why we loved the band. We settled back and listened to 'Kerplunk' and 'Dookie' with new found comparison but just couldn't get back into bed with them as we had done so eagerly before. As more and more people jumped on the bandwagon we lost all respect for them until they reached what we thought was rock bottom; playing a duet with U2 at the Superbowl. We thought it was as low as any punk band could go, until that is they re-emerged a few weeks ago with their new song, a bastardisation of John Lennon's 'Working Class Hero'.
The limit of self-importance and hedonism was breached with a song supposedly reinterpreted to be about poverty in Darfur, a worthwhile cause that has also seen risings from the likes of Regina Spektor and REM, but the way that which Green Day decided to attack their song and stomp over its true meaning is nothing short of disrespectful to Lennon. The holier-than-though delivery aside this has all the marking of a band quite happy to ride along on former glory as U2 have done with 'Joshua Tree', with the over inflated arrangement that has all the big 'n' little bits in all the right places solely there to attach itself to a tried and tested power-rock formulae. There's nothing, in any way, shape or form that gives this song any purpose in music. It's a worthless display of power, knowing that they are now the world-famous super group they are, Green Day have turned their amps up and delivered a cover that's not even a scratch on the Marilyn Manson version of the same song, knowing that it'll sell anyway as people have already bought the lie.
It's sad when a band, who could potentially do so much good for their genre, turn around and piss all over it. Having spent 15 years becoming the beams of light they were, only to ruin it over the course of 12 months, we were hoping for the band to realise the error of their ways in time for their new material. We were of course - wrong. They are now a band so out of touch with themselves that they think it's OK to do a below-par cover of a legendary song and pass it off as meaningful. They have lost, in all ways, everything that made pre-'American Idiot' Green Day so extraordinary. They have become a cog in the whitewash mediocrity that just months ago they were trying to rid the world of, and as this song was unveiled on American Idol of all places, we have to say; Green Day, welcome to one nation controlled by the media, and an information age of hysteria...