green day 21st century breakdown world tour

21st Century Breakdown World Tour

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The 21st Century Breakdown World Tour was a worldwide concert tour by the band Green Day , lasting from July 3, 2009 to October 29, 2010. The tour was to help show support for their newly released album, 21st Century Breakdown across its 132 shows from the Americas, Europe, Oceania and Asia. It is also the first tour where the band would tour in both Central and South America.

• 1.1 Opening Artists
• 1.2 Live album and documentary
• 3.1 Cancelled Performances
• 4 Reception
• 5 Personnel

Background [ ]

Unlike their previous tour, Green Day would officially start the tour nearly 2 months after the album had already been released on May 15, 2009. The first three legs of the tour would happen through 2009 in North America, Europe, and Oceania. Some dates for the second European and fifth overall leg of the tour were announced during its second leg for the tour in late 2009 aimed for the summer of 2010. Dates for the seventh leg of the tour were announced in March 2010 and scheduled to start for in August of that year. The tour concluded in Central America with its final show in Costa Rica on October 29.

Opening Artists [ ]

The tour would be supported by a record number of opening artists, totaling up to 26 artists and bands opening before Green Day. Some would server as the opening act for all the concerts in a leg like AFI while some would only make a one-off appearance like the band's secret side project, Foxboro Hot Tubs . A majority of shows would have an opening act present, with special cases either having multiple or none at all. Only some shows during the band's first, sixth, and final leg of the tour include shows with no opening artists.

Live album and documentary [ ]

Like the American Idiot World Tour , the band would record a live album during the tour which would later become Awesome as Fuck . Unlike its previous tour, the recording location for the album was not centralized, instead having songs recorded from different concert venues across the European and North American legs. Only two venues had more than one song recorded for the album, being the Pannonia Fields II venue at Nickelsdorf in Austria and the Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre in Chula Vista, California. The video version of the album contains most songs played during the January 23–24 concerts at the Saitama Super Arena in Japan, with one song record at the Cricket Wireless Pavilion in Phoenix, Arizona. The live album would be released on March 22, 2011.

Set List [ ]

Green Day's typical setlist would consist of around 20 songs, including hit singles and other songs from 21st Century Breakdown, mixed with their other big hits, ending with one or two encores with at least 2 songs each. Unlike the band's last tour, not all songs from the album were played at least once during the tour. The following is a rough list of most fully-played songs during the tour.

Tour Dates [ ]

Cancelled performances [ ].

Throughout the entire tour, the only performance to be cancelled was the concert at Heineken Jammin' Festival in Venice, Italy during leg six of the tour due to bad weather.

Reception [ ]

From the entirety of the 21st Century Breakdown World Tour, the band generated around $90 million across the 132 shows during its run. The tour also sold a similar amount of tickets like the previous American Idiot tour with around 1.5 million sold. Like the tour, the album was also Green Day's most commercially successful album, hitting one million units sold in February of 2011 with over 3.5 million worldwide as of 2022. Awesome As Fuck was released to a generally favorable reception with 100,000 units sold and around 500,000 units total from both album and DVD sales worldwide.

Personnel [ ]

• Billie Joe Armstrong – lead vocals, harmonica, lead and rhythm guitars
• Mike Dirnt – bass, backing vocals
• Tré Cool – drums, percussion, backing vocals on "King For A Day/Shout"

Additional Musicians

• Jason White – lead and rhythm guitars, backing vocals
• Jason Freese – keyboards, piano, saxophone, accordion, acoustic guitar on "Are We The Waiting", backing vocals
• Jeff Matika – rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, backing vocals

Opening Act Artists

• The Bravery - leg one opening act (July 3–25, 2009)
• Kaiser Chiefs - leg one opening act (July 27–August 7, 2009)
• Franz Ferdinand - leg one opening act (August 8–25, 2009)
• Prima Donna - leg two, two four opening act
• John Olav Nilsen & Gjengen - Oslo Spektrum opening act
• Foxboro Hot Tubs - Evening News Arena opening act (October 31, 2009)
• Jet - leg three opening act (December 4–16, 2009)
• Calling All Cars - Vector Arena opening act
• Donots - leg four opening act (May 30, June 11, July 1, 2010)
• Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - leg four opening act (June 4–23, 2010)
• Johnossi - Ullevi Stadion opening act
• The Hives - Kyläsaari opening act
• Frank Turner - leg four opening act (June 16–19, 2010)
• Paramore - leg four opening act (June 23–26, 2010)
• The Pooh - Vystaviste Holesovice opening act
• Billy Talent - leg four opening act (June 26–29, 2010)
• Rise Against - Messepark opening act
• AFI - leg six opening act
• Lado B - Caracas, Venezuela opening act
• Don Tetto - Nem-Catacoa Festival opening act
• Superguidis - Gigantinho opening act
• Tiro Williams - Ginásio Nilson Nelson opening act
• Nevilton - Arena Anhembi opening act
• Massacre - Buenos Aires, Argentina opening act
• Attaque 77 - Estadio Bicentenario de La Florida opening act
• Vaselina - Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Aymá opening act
• 1 St. Jimmy (character)
• 2 Jesus of Suburbia
• 3 Green Day Discography

Green Day Announce '21st Century Breakdown' Tour Dates

It's been more than three years since [artist id="988"]Green Day[/artist] hit the road, and they're making up for lost time.

On Monday (April 20), they announced the first dates of a massive world tour in support of their upcoming album [article id="1604950"] 21st Century Breakdown [/article] (due May 15), a two-month jaunt that will take the band across the U.S. and Canada.

The tour kicks off July 3 in Seattle and wraps August 25 in Los Angeles. No venues have been announced yet, nor have on-sale dates or opening acts.

Green Day's last tour -- in support of their massive American Idiot album -- spanned two years and was their most successful (and lengthy) jaunt to date. While working on Breakdown, the band took time off for a week-long tour as alter egos the [article id="1585150"]Foxboro Hot Tubs[/article].

With Monday's announcement of a tour, it's shaping up to be quite a week for Green Day fans. On Friday at 8 p.m. ET, their much-anticipated new video for the song "Know Your Enemy" will make its world premiere on more than 250 MTV on-air and online outlets.

Dates and cities for Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown tour, according to Reprise Records:

» 7/3 -- Seattle

» 7/4 -- Vancouver, BC

» 7/6 -- Edmonton, AB

» 7/7 -- Saskatoon, SK

» 7/9 -- Winnipeg, MB

» 7/10 -- Fargo, ND

» 7/11 -- Minneapolis

» 7/13 -- Chicago

» 7/14 -- Detroit

» 7/16 -- Hamilton, ON

» 7/17 -- Ottawa

» 7/18 -- Montreal

» 7/20 -- Boston

» 7/21 -- Philadelphia

» 7/22 -- Pittsburgh

» 7/24 -- Hartford, CT

» 7/25 -- Albany, NY

» 7/27 -- New York

» 7/29 -- Washington

» 7/31 -- Nashville, TN

» 8/1 -- Atlanta

» 8/3 -- Tampa, FL

» 8/4 -- Miami

» 8/5 -- Orlando, FL

» 8/7 -- New Orleans

» 8/8 -- Houston

» 8/9 -- San Antonio

» 8/11 -- St. Louis

» 8/12 -- Kansas City, MO

» 8/12 -- Omaha, NE

» 8/15 -- Denver

» 8/16 -- Salt Lake City

» 8/18 -- San Jose, CA

» 8/20 -- San Diego

» 8/21 -- Las Vegas

» 8/22 -- Phoenix

» 8/24 -- Sacramento, CA

» 8/25 -- Los Angeles

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“We don’t want to cash in on our past success”: The story of Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown

Following the release of American Idiot, Green Day were once again the biggest rock band in the world – and under pressure to deliver something very special. Not that they would be rushed into anything…

As Green Day ’s American Idiot cycle came to an end in 2006, the band found themselves treading unfamiliar waters: they were, as frontman Billie Joe Armstrong noted, no longer the underdogs. While 1994's Dookie thrust them into the spotlight a decade prior, their 2004 career-changing seventh studio album presented a new level of superstardom that required careful onward navigation. Where would they go from here?

“We’re like a boxer who’s fought his way up and is now the champion,” Billie Joe considered. “We’ve got to stay in good shape or else we’re going to get our asses kicked!”

The trio’s decision to take their time on album number eight, then, was deliberate, resulting in their longest-ever gap between records. American Idiot took them up to December 17, 2005 and allowed for a few sporadic sets the following year. But 2006 as a whole was all about coming to terms with the conclusion of their most successful chapter yet, as well as turning thoughts towards what would become 21st Century Breakdown. It would also involve time away from music.

Billie Joe channelled his energy into helping victims of Hurricane Katrina, taking his family out to New Orleans to build houses, and later regrouping with Mike and Tré for a charity cover of The Saints Are Coming with U2. In terms of an actual sabbatical, he travelled to France and Mexico, while Tré headed to Cuba, and Mike ventured to Europe.

After nearly a year, new material was “getting there”, but the desire to avoid doing anything reactionary to the album’s predecessor played on their minds. “In no way do we want to make music that feels like we’re cashing in on our past success,” Billie Joe explained shrewdly.

It wasn’t until October 2007 that fans finally had a solid update. Green Day had been chipping away at “something like 45 songs”, and were almost ready to start demos.

But then they did something no-one saw coming, when a garage rock band by the name of Foxboro Hot Tubs appeared as if from nowhere in December, with new songs to boot. Two months later, seemingly letting the world know that Green Day had slipped further down his priorities, Billie Joe temporarily resurrected another side-project, Pinhead Gunpowder , for several Oakland club gigs. By April 2008, the focus was back on the Hot Tubs, and the arrival of their brilliant debut, Stop Drop And Roll!!!

A string of U.S. tour dates followed, and Billie Joe, Mike and Tré ostensibly boasted an all-new ‘anything goes’ phase. “I started liking Foxboro Hot Tubs more than Green Day,” Billie Joe confessed. “We partied so much that I ended up with walking pneumonia at the end of that tour.”

“It meant we could get some swagger back,” added Mike. “We took that swagger and all that fucking energy back to the studio.”

He wasn’t wrong. Stepping away from the rehearsal space they’d been demoing at previously, Green Day hit four local(ish) studios, joining forces for the first time with renowned producer Butch Vig. Ultimately, this partnership would result in their boldest effort yet.

As had been the case up until that point, though, it was the journey there that was complicated. The record’s primary writer had made his vocals inaudible in early mixes to keep 21st Century Breakdown’s lyrics secret.

Billie Joe wouldn’t show Butch or his bandmates what he’d written until later in the year, when he read them aloud in tracklist order. Only then would Mike, Tré and Butch learn what had inspired his songwriting: politics, religion, drugs, prosperity and poverty, self-destruction, and love.

Across its three acts – Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints, and Horseshoes and Handgrenades – and 69 minutes, Billie Joe used everything from Hurricane Katrina to his wife, Adrienne, as creative stimuli.

Sonically, it was the next logical step for Green Day, too. While the likes of Murder City and The Static Age could have comfortably sat on American Idiot, 21st Century Breakdown as a whole delivered more : ultra-sleazy, mariachi-esque vibes (Peacemaker), mini-rock operas (the title-track, American Eulogy), lighters-in-the-air sing-alongs (21 Guns), and epic rallying-cries (Know Your Enemy).

“It’s a musical narrative,” Billie Joe pondered. “It ebbs and flows. It takes you from a saloon in the 19th century to a dark melancholy place, to driving down a street, blasting your radio loudly while throwing beer bottles out the window.”

Green Day struggled to let the album go when it was complete, however. Even after initially submitting it to Warner Bros. ahead of its May 15 release in 2009, they hastily took it back again.

But this painstaking approach worked wonders. Kerrang! awarded the album the perfect 5/5 rating and the record hit Number One in the U.S. and the UK, as well as scooping their second Best Rock Album win at the GRAMMYs.

Across the pond, the 21st Century Breakdown U.S. tour grossed $74 million, while the UK hosted what Billie Joe referred to as “the biggest fucking show in [the band’s] lives” at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Green Day’s eighth LP would also make its way into theatres as part of the American Idiot musical in 2010, with five tracks used in the production’s storyline. Not content with creating the records that inspired it and writing the book, Billie Joe took on the role of St. Jimmy between tours that year, and went on to make another 50 appearances in 2011.

Their triumphs weren’t to last, however. And while Green Day’s frontman later confessed to having some “huge” meltdowns on 21st Century Breakdown’s touring cycle, these problems snowballed very publicly in 2012.

But the band didn’t know that just yet. For now, they basked in what they believed was the best record they’d ever made.

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Green Day: 21st Century Breakdown

M idway through Déjà Vu, the documentary about Crosby Stills Nash & Young's noble attempt to interest America's conservative heartland in Neil Young's Bush-bashing Living With War album, Young appears on satirist Stephen Colbert's TV show. "Didn't you get all this out of your system with Vietnam?" asks Colbert. "Shouldn't you let someone else protest this one?" "I tried," shrugs Young. "I waited until I was 60, then it was too late to wait, I had to do it myself." It was a comment that left you reeling, not for the reasons Young thought it did - honestly, musicians today, tsk tsk, no political conscience, only interested in celebrity and copping off with Agyness Deyn - but because of its wrongness.

How did a man once so eager to demonstrate his awareness of new musical developments that he told an incredulous early 80s interviewer his favourite band were A Flock of Seagulls get so out of touch? How had he managed to miss Green Day's American Idiot, an album released 18 months after the invasion of Iraq? It's not like it slipped out on an obscure indie label to a smattering of critical acclaim then vanished. It topped the charts in 19 countries and sold 12m copies.

There's a chance Young was conveniently turning a blind eye. After all, Green Day had already done precisely what Young was currently claiming he alone among musicians had the guts to do - tour an anti-war album through America's red states to much booing. Or perhaps he just found Green Day's transformation into the world's most successful protest singers too unlikely to countenance.

Previously a punk band of the jokes-about-willies-and-poo variety, Green Day had drifted rudderless since their 1994 breakthrough album Dookie, their attempts to mature undermined by their music's unerring ability to turn up on the soundtrack of gross-out comedies such as Freddie Got Fingered and Road Trip. The righteous anger of American Idiot not only gave Green Day focus, it dignified the previously undignifiable: a trio of men in their 30s who still found it incumbent to pull "Look at me, I'm completely nutty!" faces when a camera was pointed in their direction. It also covered up the album's shortcomings, not least the fact that it was a rock opera, with a plot (in which the Jesus of Suburbia meets a punk rock freedom fighter called St Jimmy, who turns out, as is somehow always the way in rock operas, to be merely an aspect of himself) that had a definite hint of the We Will Rock Yous about it.

You could argue that the Bush administration was the best thing ever to happen to Green Day, but its end leaves them facing a dilemma: what to do now the focus of their ire has departed? They're evidently not willing to give up their position as multi-platinum protest singers, regardless of who's in the White House. 21st Century Breakdown essentially serves up more of the same - another rock opera, this time divided into three acts - with a swaggering confidence that's both the making of the album and the source of some of its drawbacks, not least the lyrics, which, lacking an obvious target for their anger, buckle under the weight of their own importance. "This diabolic state is gracing my existence like a catastrophic baby," sings Billie Joe Armstrong on Christian's Inferno, a line that's a bit of a catastrophic baby in its own right.

On the plus side, there's a hugely imposing certainty about the album's sound and songwriting. For all its occasional nods to punk past - like the Sex Pistols' Holidays In the Sun, Horseshoes and Handgrenades opens with tramping jackboots while the ghost of Hüsker Dü haunts Viva La Gloria's tune - the main currency of 21st Century Breakdown is king-sized stadium rock. The episodic title track lurches from Big Country to Queen to Mott the Hoople; Before the Lobotomy is propelled by Keith Moon drum fills; there are McCartney-esque piano ballads. All of them display the same impressive, if faintly unnerving ability to come up with melodies that sound instantly familiar.

But there's also something familiar about 21st Century Breakdown's problems: they're the same as the problems with American Idiot. It's too long, the storyline becomes impossible to follow, the concept album format permits Green Day space to occasionally do things you wish they wouldn't, not least the vaudeville oompah of Viva La Gloria, which seems to carry with it the dark threat that this all might end up on a Broadway stage one day. Still, you can understand why Green Day are happy to repeat the kind of mistakes that sold 12m copies last time around. If it seems a little less bold, a little less surprising than its predecessor, you still wouldn't bet against 21st Century Breakdown repeating its success.

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21st Century Breakdown Tour

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21st Century Breakdown

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

Since Green Day were the Nineties punk brats nobody expected to grow up, everything they do comes as a surprise. What’s more bizarre: the fact that they sound so ambitious and audacious on their eighth album, or the fact that they even made an eighth album? Either way, the losercore mutts who crashed the radio in 1994 chanting “I got no motivation,” with Billie Joe Armstrong wasted on his mom’s couch — they’ve ended up the last band standing, the ones living up to their era’s loftiest ideals and still writing their toughest songs long after they should have landed on Sober House . And they did it with a goddamned rock opera .

American Idiot seemed like their career kamikaze — a concept album about American hopes and dreams, with characters named St. Jimmy and Jesus of Suburbia? Nice try! But it not only rescued Green Day from midlife limbo, it charged their musical batteries. With nearly 6 million copies sold and counting, Idiot became the sort of multiplatinum rock blockbuster that isn’t supposed to exist anymore, because Green Day blew up into the sort of band that isn’t supposed to exist anymore — raging with heart-on-sleeve passion, willing to risk falling on their faces with a grand statement. Even the songs that didn’t work or the plot threads that didn’t make sense just increased the fun, because Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool were refusing to go down slow. 21st Century Breakdown is even better, so masterful and confident it makes Idiot seem like a warm-up. They’re back in rock-opera mode, dividing the album into three parts, “Heroes and Cons,” “Charlatans and Saints” and “Horseshoes and Handgrenades.” But there are no nine-minute excursions this time — only two of the 18 songs crack the five-minute mark — and Green Day focused their ideas into their sharpest, toughest tunes. Armstrong brings a compassionate edge to his snarl, even when he’s spitting out self-lacerating lines like, “My generation is zero/I never made it as a working-class hero.”

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Like American Idiot , 21st Century Breakdown is a Seventies-style epic, telling the story of two young punk lovers on the run in the wreckage of post-Bush America. The heroes are Christian and Gloria, two kids sold out by the church (“East Jesus Nowhere”), the state (“21 Guns”) and every adult they’ve ever believed in (“We are the desperate in the decline/Raised by the bastards of 1969”). Christian’s the impulsive, self-destructive one (“Christian’s Inferno”), while Gloria’s more idealistic and political (“Last of the American Girls”), but they’re forced to take care of each other — because nobody else will.

All over the album, Green Day combine punk thrash with their newfound love of classic-rock grandiosity — one moment they’re quoting Bikini Kill, the next they’re wailing away like it’s the final minute of”Jungleland.” The title tune is a multipart opus that pays cheeky tribute to a host of 1970s-heartland radio anthems — Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Sweet’s “Fox on the Run,” Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes.” Armstrong takes a tour around the country, from his hard-luck childhood (“Born into Nixon, I was raised in hell/A welfare child where the teamsters dwelled”) to the modern age (“Video games to the towers’ fall/Homeland Security could kill us all”). He ends with nothing to show for it except his anger — and the heart to turn that anger into actual songs.

The ballads are their glossiest ever; “Last Night on Earth” could be Air Supply, and don’t think for a minute they don’t love the idea of pissing people off with that. But the highlights are the rage-fueled punk anthems. They barrel through Latin-flavored guitar raves (“Peacemaker”), Clash-size bootboy chants (“Know Your Enemy”) and four-chord garage slop (“Horseshoes and Handgrenades”). “Last of the American Girls” comes on as a fabulous left-wing love song to a rebel girl — when Armstrong sings, “She won’t cooperate,” he’s giving her the highest compliment he can imagine.

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Green Day set their sights on religion this time, with “East Jesus Nowhere” as their anthemic attack on Christian hypocrisy. But mostly they’re singing about America waking up from an eight-year nightmare. In the lofty ballad “21 Guns,” they even seem to have a kind word or two for disillusioned Bush supporters (“Your faith walks on broken glass/And the hangover doesn’t pass”).

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Part of the thrill on 21st Century Breakdown is that the Green Day guys don’t need to be pushing themselves this hard. It’s not like there’s anyone left for them to compete with. (What, Sponge are gonna do a three-disc adaptation of Moby Dick ? Probz not!) Yet the extra strain is audible in the music, and every song adds to the overall vibe of grown men trying way too hard to communicate, challenging themselves along with their audience. They revitalize the whole idea of big-deal rock stars with something to say about the real world. They’re keeping promises they never even made, promises left behind by all the high-minded Nineties bands that fell apart along the way. If it’s a continual surprise that Green Day are the ones to pick up the torch and run with it, that’s part of what makes 21st Century Breakdown so fresh and vital — Green Day sound like they’re as shocked as anyone else.

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Green Day Plays '21st Century Breakdown' Tour 2nd Leg, 8/3-9/4

After wrapping up a sold-out stadium tour of Europe, multi-platinum rock band Green Day will hit the road next week for a series of North American tour dates, including an August 7th stopover at this year's Lollapalooza Festival in Chicago. This is the second leg of the band's U.S. tour in support of their Grammy Award winning album 21st Century Breakdown. Please see below for all tour dates.

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