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Monday, March 30, 2009

Now this is awesomeness covered in awesome sauce
Posted by Jill | 9:22 PM
It's hard to believe that it's been five years since American Idiot came out and turned Green Day into a Clash-wannabe band performing songs about masturbation into the voice of disaffected young America in the Bush years. It may now be impossible to listen to "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" ever again in the way it's impossible to ever listen to "Stairway to Heaven" again, but I don't think there's a song that better embodies the sheer rage most of us had at what was happening to our country in 2004 than "American Idiot":




And like a Penn and Teller magic trick, Billie Joe Armstrong went from punk prince in eyeliner, rock 'n' roll king to the high school set to singing duets with Elvis Costello:




I realize that theatre is usually ModFab's beat, but since he hasn't picked up on this one yet, I will. I don't know if American Idiot started out as a punk opera, but it ended up as one, so it was only a matter of time before someone got the idea to conceptualize Armstrong's magnum opus for the stage:
On Monday, the band announced plans to bring its multi-platinum and Grammy award-winning album, “American Idiot” to the stage in their Northern California hometown.

Green Day will collaborate with Michael Mayer, the renowned director of “Spring Awakening,” which won eight Tony Awards including best director and best musical in 2007. The new show — also titled “American Idiot” — will receive its world premiere in the band’s own backyard at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

“American Idiot,” which just wrapped it’s first workshop (aka its testing phase) in New York City, follows working-class characters from the suburbs to the city to the Middle East, as they seek redemption in a world filled with frustration, according to the band’s label, Reprise Records.

“We are really excited to be working with Michael Mayer on this project,” Green Day’s frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement to Access Hollywood. “We’d been thinking of bringing ‘American Idiot’ to the stage, but knew we needed to find the right partners. After meeting with Michael to discuss the possibility, he invited us to see ‘Spring Awakening.’ We were so impressed with that production, as well as his vision for ‘American Idiot,’ that we knew we’d found the perfect collaborator. Plus, doing it in our hometown at Berkeley Rep was an obvious bonus. They’re an amazing theatre group, very adventurous, and their willingness to take chances is in keeping with the spirit of the album. The end result will be terrific, and we’re really proud.”

It's a long way from a repertory company in Berkeley to Broadway, and I have a certain amount of skepticism as to how Jesus of Suburbia, Jimmy, and Whatshername are going to translate to the stage. There's a certain Bialystock and Bloom gonzo aura to the whole enterprise, but it seems that the band is serious about this and has brought in some heavy-duty talent with the credentials to pull it off. But with Broadway largely running on fumes, much-anticipated movie adaptations, TV and movie stars, revivals of shows we all performed in high school, the foul-mouthed puppets that have been having explicit puppet sex onstage since July 2003, and the 4,987th actress shrieking "Defying Gravity" from the rafters at the Gershwin, a stage adaptation of American Idiot might be quite the ticket on the Great White Way.

Howie Klein has more.
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2 Comments:
Blogger Cujo359 said...
Color me skeptical, as well. I wish them well, though. American Idiot certainly gave me an emotional lift when it came out.

The way things seem to be going with the Obama Administration in charge, I think the album's going to be pretty topical for the next few years at least.
3/31/09, 3:05 AM  
Blogger Melina said...
I love that record. It was one of the first bands that Will and I both liked at the same time and really connected on...and I will definitley see the show if it comes to the NY area.
I have great faith in Billie Joe Armstrong, and you can see by who he collaborates with (Elvis Costello, for one, and can't you see the thrill in his eye up on stage with Billie playing what must be one of the best songs ever written?...no action; hard to believe that it was written so long ago when it holds up so well...) that this is an incredibly talented guy who grew up to use his words to say something (and he always was, really, but that was lost in the youth of it all.)
But more than that, in those dark days, as Cujo noted above in the great post linked above, he took the stage that he had built for himself and his band and he shouted the truth from it.
The story was (as I think Billie himself told in an old Rolling Stone article that I read in some Dr's waiting room) that after the huge success that they had, he felt like he had to say something. he went off and retreated to write something real about what was going on, and came back with American Idiot.
Hows that for growing up real quick...isn't he still in his 20's?
Well, maybe late 20's by now...
I adore him.
American Idiot could be the last words he ever wrote and it would be enough. It made millions of American kids, and their significant grownups, think about what was happening to their future, raise their fists, and get moving to stop the destruction of this country.
and look how long it took....if we're ever gonna be out of these deep woods grown up around us.

Thanks for posting that Jill. it really made my day.

PS did you get Michael Moore's email today? I'm sure its on his page, if not...sorta interesting, Mooresian read with some bluster but alot of truth. hes been lurking around and you never know whats coming out of him next!

PPS how come we didn't know that this American Idiot show was being put together in NY? Seems like we shoulda been invited to a read through or something...
4/1/09, 10:42 AM  
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