Musicals get a bad press. I'm not sure why... talented dancers: check, talented singers: check, talented musicians: check. What's not to like? Cheese is what's not to like. The saccharine, wholesome, moral, dare I say it - Americanistic feel good musical where everyone lives happily ever after and is all very glee (with a capital and a little 'g').
I love musicals. Or rather, I love musicals that make you think and feel and react emotionally. Musicals that affect you and stay with you. Musicals you return to time and time again long after you've left the confines of your velvet seat in row F on the balcony floor.
I'm happy to say American Idiot had that reaction from me on Saturday night. Writing a rock opera (to give it it's deserved proper title) is a fucking hard thing to do. That's why American Idiot is only the fourth recognised one ever to be penned*. Tommy and Quadrophenia being two of my very favourite musical creations ever dreamt up, for me, Green Day had some fairly major boots to fill.
They also faced a fair amount of public speculation how technically good it could be in terms of musicality etc given that they are a punk band, and the age old misapprehension that punk is not a musical genre that is 'good enough' to be taken seriously on the same stage that has been home to masterpieces of the likes of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Being a long term punk fan, and a die hard defender of the importance of the punk genre, and that it's not an angry white man shouting over the same three chords and a five piece drum kit, I wanted Green Day to prove the disbelievers to be wrong once and for all. Having said that, the last thing I wanted was for them to stop being true to their punk roots and be a band for the masses. Punk is and always should be a niche in my opinion.
I wasn't expecting much from them then!... for some people who weren't Green Day to do justice to performing Green Day songs (a favourite band for half my life), to live up to my love for other rock opera's, and to balance on that thin line between being understood and embraced by the masses whilst also still being a punk performance through and through.
American Idiot is a clever, clever concept. It chronicles the life of Jesus of Suburbia and his two friends, disillusioned with the mundane sameness and stifled by their life in American suburbia, and what happens when they attempt to break free. Each character has a choice, follow rage or follow love... journeys which brings them face to face with the great American dream, terror, love, passion, sex, drug addiction, music, suicide, friendship, desperation, glory, regret, parenthood, loneliness, death and life. Subjects like these could have a musical each, it could have gone hideously wrong by trying to incorporate them all in less than two hours of music. Billie Joe pulled it off though. Written in the wake of 9/11, nobody could have blamed him for creating an openly scathing attack on the American government and the decision to go to war in the middle east. Instead he turned this around and made it about the everyman. He looked at why people were signing up for a war nobody believed in, at what was causing people to want to break free, about why swathes of the world were/are so anti-American. In short, the impact on you and me.
To return to the nuances of the musical itself: the first act was angry, it was punchy, it set the scene - for the most part despite the dissatisfaction and disaffection felt by the main trio, it was a glamorous feeling world that was pulling me in, making me want to walk away from my safe job and safe flat and look for something more than all of this. (not a feeling I'm unfamiliar with, but that's for another time). The second half took the power to a whole other place. It was heart breaking, desolate, hopeful, desperate, humbling, angering and empowering all at once. I know the American Idiot album very well and love it. I wanted to feel it on another level though. I wanted to feel about American Idiot how I've felt when I've been to see Tommy - despite knowing every word, each time I've seen Tommy I've felt it in every nerve and every sensory organ in my body. That is what I wanted from American Idiot on Saturday night. And I'm happy to say that's what I got.
*This is a controversial statement to write, it can and has been argued that Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' and David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars' are just two more examples of a rock opera. For reasons I won't go into now, I happen to disagree with this statement. Maybe another blog entry for another time.
