Concert Review: Green Day at Pinkpop Festival 2017

7. June 201726. June 2017 Melissa Wilke

This past weekend an estimated 60,000 people per day came together to celebrate music in a small Dutch town called “Landgraaf”. It was already the 48th edition of the Netherland’s biggest and European’s oldest festival Pinkpop. The lineup of headliners was as diverse as ever: Justin Bieber on Saturday, Green Day on Sunday and Kings of Leon on Monday.

We decided to take the chance to check out Green Day once more after their epic show in Cologne earlier this year. Especially after the terrorist attacks in Manchester and London and only two days after a terrorist threat at Germany’s Rock am Ring festival (the festival was interrupted on Friday, but continued on Saturday after a thorough search of the premises showed no sign of any terrorist interference), my friend Raissa and I were ready to rock our worries away. So we jumped into the car and headed from Cologne, Germany to Landgraaf, Netherlands.

Waiting for Green Day | Photo by Raissa Walberg

Green Day’s set started right on time at 9.30pm local time, after an incredible show by Imagine Dragons (stay tuned for our review). Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals), Tré Cool (drums) and Mike Dirnt (bass) accompanied by their long time touring musicians Jason White (guitar), Jason Freese (keys, saxophone) and Jeff Matika (guitar) opened the set with “Know Your Enemy”. The song from Green Day’s hit album 21st Century Breakdown is the perfect opener. It is extremely energetic and gets the crowd pumped for what’s to come in the next two hours. Everyone was jumping and screaming, especially when Armstrong pulled a fan up on stage to sing the bridge with him. The guy didn’t seem to be nervous at all and epically stage dived into the crowd afterwards.

Green Day kept up the high energy with last year’s comeback single “Bang Bang”, “Revolution Radio”, “Letterbomb” and “Holiday”. While the non-single tracks showed that the festival audience didn’t know the lyrics as well as the usual Green Day headline show audience, everyone was still going crazy to the fast rock songs which had some great pyro and explosions to rile up the crowd even more.

After “Holiday”, Green Day made the whole crowd sing along to the American Idiot track “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”. Of course, everyone knew the lyrics, so 60,000 people sang with Armstrong while the sun was setting over Landgraaf – a beautiful sight and one highlight of the evening!