Perhaps it was that 2024 was an election year. Or maybe because the ridiculous and contrived social-cultural-political divide needs to be exploded. Or maybe it was because the market’s unyielding thirst for rock never dies. Whatever the reason, Green Day’s “The Saviors Tour” this past summer, featuring the band’s insurgent punk-pop-kick-out-the-hard-rock jams from their touchstone albums Dookie (celebrating its 30th anniversary) and American Idiot (celebrating its 20th) along with songs from their excellent new album, Saviors, resonated with a cross-generation of fans like never before seen.
“Someone wrote to me and said, ‘I saw you in 1994 and ’98, 2004 and now I’m seeing you again with my adult children,’” the band’s Billie Joe Armstrong tells Pollstar. “That’s a beautiful thing when it becomes something like that. You’re not just bringing your family to Disneyland, you’re bringing your family to a Green Day show.”
The band’s longtime booking agent, CAA’s Jenna Adler, adds, “It’s been nothing short of inspiring watching this band transcend three generations and seeing so many young people out there enjoying Dookie for the first time and referring to American Idiot when they first saw it on Broadway as a musical. That’s how they discovered Green Day, parents of Gen X and later, and the Boomers. It’s everybody. And to see it all come together is nothing but remarkable and really inspirational. It shows you what the artistry is all about.”
“The Saviors Tour” has grossed a total of $123.8 million across its 33 dates from the tour’s June 10 opener in Berlin, Germany, until its final 2024 U.S. show at Petco Park in San Diego on Sept. 28, according to reports currently submitted to Pollstar’s Boxoffice. Per Pollstar’s estimations based on current data, by the time the tour wraps up in July 2025, it could reach as high as an estimated $200 million. Donots, The Interrupters, Nothing But Thieves and Made Of Ace joined the band in Europe, with The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid and The Linda Lindas in North America. From this year’s data, the band will fall into the year’s top 25 highest-grossing tours worldwide.
Green Day is set to return to stages in January with headline gigs and festival appearances in Australia, Asia, the Middle East and Europe. As this story went to print, the band was announced to be headlining both weekends of 2025’s Coachella, with Armstrong saying, “In this world gone sideways we know one thing for certain — rock ‘n’ roll is forever, and its spirit is needed now more than ever. So bring your rage, your hope, and your loudest voice. Coachella, let’s have the time of our lives.” The upcoming dates build on a 2024 global trek that manager Scott Nagelberg of Crush Management referred to as Green Day’s biggest success yet.
“These guys are 35-plus years into their career and are the same incredibly talented, sweet human beings who are still selling out stadiums,” Nagelberg says. “This is the biggest rock tour of the summer, both in tickets and gross. But they can go in and do 27 stadium shows over the course of seven or eight weeks and leave it all there for people to want more. I’m really proud of them, and it starts at the top. Everything we do is supporting them.”
When Green Day released their breakthrough third album, Dookie, in 1994, they didn’t quite expect it to blow up the way it did. Perhaps presaging this year’s “Brat Summer” by 30 years, the songs are filled with themes of youthful alienation, boredom, angst and rebellion backed by chunky rock guitar, absurdly-catchy melodies and Armstrong’s mellifluous voice.
Back then, the East Bay natives frequently performed at Berkeley, California’s 924 Gilman, a unique and beloved nonprofit club staffed by local volunteers, with a culture rooted in bucking against “the man” and not selling out. But the band made up of high school friends Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt, was well on its way to being punk rock’s newest saviors with Dookie eventually going double-diamond – a mind-boggling 20 million albums sold. Five albums and a decade later, they released the timely American Idiot, a protest against then-President George W. Bush and the post-9/11 Iraq invasion, showcasing Green Day’s more mature, articulate and politically savvy songwriting.
Saviors, their 14th album released last January, is considered the third in a trilogy with Dookie and American Idiot, and finds the band returning to form with big punk rock anthems and updated trenchant lyrics like “Another shooting in a supermarket…Playing with my matches and I’m lighting Colorado …We’re all together and we’re living in the ’20s.”
Now that the 2024 portion of “The Saviors Tour” is complete, Adler says thus far the team faced no road bumps or challenges on the road. Only one date (Hershey, Pennsylvania, Aug. 10) was rescheduled after the weather prevented Armstrong from being able to sing.
“We had to postpone one show and make it up,” Armstrong says. “Other than that, things have been running (smoothly). There’s always injuries after a show and we cover ourselves in ice or do an ice bath. We put it all out there on stage and try to live in the moment and be grateful for what we have and find the joy in every night.”
Supplementing the virtuosity and power of Green Day’s core three of Armstrong, Cool and Dirnt was a powerful gale force touring band that includes Jason White and Kevin Preston on guitars and Jason Freese on keyboards, saxophone, accordion (who came in August replacing Coley O’Toole). The show’s maximalist production (facilitated by production manager Zito) with fire cannons, top-notch audio and visuals is no easy haul.
“One thing we’re hearing back from everywhere we go is how top-notch our crew is,” Armstrong continues. “Everybody, all the local venues, our touring crew. We’re surrounded by good professionals. It’s a family atmosphere, everyone’s having a great time. Everyone’s out there cause they’re obsessed with the lifestyle and they love rock and roll. So all the other bands, all their crews, they’ve been amazing the whole tour. It’s really the most synergy, the happiest environment I’ve ever seen moving at this sort of scale.”
While the “Saviors Tour” is a massive celebration of the band’s most acclaimed and most successful albums Dookie and American Idiot, as well as the release of Saviors (all produced by Rob Cavallo), rather than kick off the tour with its full production, the band opted to hang around London and step into pubs for a more intimate experience to hone their chops and harken back to their early club days together.
When it came time to set out on the full “Saviors Tour,” Nagelberg and the rest of the team worked out a production concept that would fully celebrate the different themes of each album. The team settled on inflatables of its iconic album cover, which came out while the band performed each record in full. A large blimp settled over the stage during Dookie, while the hand holding the heart grenade sat behind them throughout American Idiot. “Each album had its own aesthetic look, and we created three different acts throughout the course of the show,” Nagelberg says.
The other challenge was working with the band so they could maintain their seemingly indefatigable stamina. Armstrong (aged 52), Cool (51) and Dirnt (52) left it all out on the stage approaching each show as if it were their last. After putting on a nearly two-and-a-half-hour concert, they’d sit in ice baths to recover from the physical exertion.
“These guys have been touring for 30-plus years and they’re going out and playing a two-hour-and-20-minute set night after night,” Nagelberg says. “They’re athletes out there. It’s a lot on anyone. That’s the challenge. Just taking care of themselves and making sure they rest and have proper time to recover. The biggest challenge was pure athleticism and exhaustion from playing such a long set with no breaks three to four times a week. But we have an amazing team around the band.”
Entering stadiums was also a no-brainer for the band, especially after following the success of the “Hella Mega Tour,” (with Fall Out Boy and Weezer) which also played the big buildings and landed at No. 3 on Pollstar’s Year End Worldwide Tours chart in 2021.
“We love playing baseball stadiums, so it was a challenge because we’re in the middle of baseball season,” CAA’s Adler says. “We always go with less is more, so even though we could have played another three to four weeks, we didn’t want to do that. We always want to leave a little bit on the table, and we were very strategic about the markets. We don’t want to overstay; we want to do what’s right. And it’s not doing 25 shows just for the money.”
While Green Day has played their biggest hits for several decades at this point, they admit they’re still learning new ways to reinvent their top tracks. Dirnt, who is an incredible bassist, says that he likes to look out into the crowd and see how different fans react to different parts of the songs, Cool, the brilliant drummer, says he still returns to their older tracks to study them.
“A couple of nights ago, I listened to Dookie and American Idiot with headphones and I was thinking, ‘Oh wow, I play this one a little differently now.’ And ‘Oh, I gotta remember to hit that part like this.’ You’re always learning with that much material,” Cool says. “You’re always going to find new places to play it, or maybe you’ll do a little guitar stuff that’s not on the record. And some more flavor and just have fun with it.”
For Armstrong, “The Saviors Tour” also brought the opportunity rediscover hidden gems on their records.
“Playing the deeper cuts, anything from ‘Immediate Sleepless’ to ‘Extraordinary Girl,’ you realize these are powerful songs,” Armstrong says. “And we never used to play ‘Homecoming’ at all, but it’s been something our fans have been pushing us to play for the last 20 years.”
The looming election throughout the first leg of the tour seemingly helped fuel the timeliness of “The Saviors Tour,” with themes of American Idiot for many feeling more resonant. Armstrong says he hoped the songs would serve as a time capsule, rather than songs like “Holiday” and “American Idiot” gaining further meaning in these times of divisiveness.
“It feels like the perfect timing,” Adler says. “With the election and the messaging of American Idiot unfortunately resonating a little bit more now than anyone anticipated when it first came out. I would say it’s a bit poignant, they could have released the song if they were around or alive 50 years before it first came out. It could have come out during the Reagan presidency and still would’ve found an audience. It’s a piece of art that stands the test of time, I’m sure 100 years from now people might still be able to relate to it.”
Though Green Day’s lyrics and individual members’ views are known to lean left, fans from across the political spectrum were spotted in the crowd at the U.S. shows, which may be the greatest testament to the universality of their music and its messaging. “I’ve seen some Trump shirts at some of our shows,” Armstrong says. “We’re not just staying in California and being in an element that’s comfortable, the music is getting out to everyone.”
While fans may expect to hear the big hits when Green Day hits the stage, they still played five songs from their latest album. They began every night with “The American Dream Is Killing Me” and closed each show with “Bobby Sox,” encouraging their fans to jump up and down and, as Cool says, “testing the structural integrity of these baseball stadiums.”
“Every night, we get everyone, including ourselves, jumping up and down like crazy,” Dirnt says. “That, to me, is one of the joyous parts of the evening seeing everyone jump up and down in wild abandon for a few moments and just let it all out.”
Green Day, over nearly 40 years, have accomplished something perhaps no one would ever thought possible upon first hearing Dookie: They’ve become one of the greatest all-time rock bands who today put on one of the best live shows by any act of any genre anywhere.
“You’re working with one of the best bands ever,” Nagelberg says. “Everything we’re doing is just trying to support and do right by them to make sure they’re bringing their best and biggest show possible. On the career management side, it’s really a team effort with everyone at Crush and CAA. We’re so fortunate to work with a brilliant band.”
“They’re true musicians and artists and they’re current,” says Adler concurring. “They’re not relying on the past. They’re present and connect with what’s happening around them, not to mention they’re incredible musicians. I don’t think a band can sustain a career at this level if they weren’t as talented as they are.”