It's a bit tempting to peg
Green Day's sprawling, ambitious, brilliant seventh album,
American Idiot, as their version of a
Who album, the next logical step forward from the
Kinks-inspired popcraft of their underrated 2000 effort,
Warning, but things aren't quite that simple.
American Idiot is an unapologetic, unabashed rock opera, a form that
Pete Townshend pioneered with
Tommy, but
Green Day doesn't use that for a blueprint as much as they use
the Who's mini-opera "A Quick One, While He's Away," whose whirlwind succession of 90-second songs isn't only emulated on two song suites here, but provides the template for the larger 13-song cycle. But
the Who are only one of many inspirations on this audacious, immensely entertaining album. The story of St. Jimmy has an arc similar to
Hüsker Dü's landmark punk-opera
Zen Arcade, while the music has grandiose flourishes straight out of both
Queen and
Rocky Horror Picture Show (the '50s pastiche "Rock and Roll Girlfriend" is punk rock
Meat Loaf), all tied together with a nervy urgency and a political passion reminiscent of
the Clash, or all the anti-Reagan American hardcore bands of the '80s. These are just the clearest touchstones for
American Idiot, but reducing the album to its influences gives the inaccurate impression that this is no more than a patchwork quilt of familiar sounds, when it's an idiosyncratic, visionary work in its own right. First of all, part of
Green Day's appeal is how they have personalized the sounds of the past, making time-honored guitar rock traditions seem fresh, even vital. With their first albums, they styled themselves after first-generation punk they were too young to hear firsthand, and as their career progressed, the group not only synthesized these influences into something distinctive, but chief songwriter
Billie Joe Armstrong turned into a muscular, versatile songwriter in his own right.