Review
Review
Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer blast the Hella Mega Tour into the London Stadium
The gladiators of pop punk go head-to-head for a blockbuster teen revival that sent 70,000 fans right back to the good old days
Who sits where on the Hella Mega tour bus? Weezer are definitely up front; eating sandwiches from a box and watching Star Wars on their phones. Fall Out Boy would only ever be on the back seat; painting their nails with Tippex and trying to burn things with a lighter. And Green Day would be climbing up on the roof; trying to hold a rock stance on the motorway as the bus brings all three bands speeding back to the school daze of fans around the world.
Originally announced in September 2019, the Hella Mega Tour has been a long time coming – finally arriving at the London Stadium on June 24 in-front of a crowd of 70,000. Spanning three slightly different ages of pop-punk history, Weezer, Fall Out Boy and Green Day move through a night of geek rock, emo pop and skate punk to bring the soundtrack of every early 00s teen movie to one of the biggest stages in the capital.
Paying off like a stadium-sized prom for the kids who probably never got asked to one, the slight differences between all three bands are enough to split the crowd back into high school tribes. Where Green Day mounts a camera on the neck of Mike Dirnt’s bass, Fall Out Boy sticks a flamethrower on Pete Wentz’ guitar – and Weezer’s River Cuomo somehow manages to break his completely. Forced to hum the chords for half of ‘Island In The Sun’, the moment when Cuomo plugs in his new Stratocaster gets the first giant roar of the night – the crowd unified over the Hella Mega power of proper guitar music.
Weaving the hook of ‘Buddy Holly’ into an ‘Enter Sandman’ cover, Weezer rattle through their biggest Blue Album hits astride all their rock and pop influences (even fitting in their cover of Toto’s ‘Africa’). By the time they run ‘Say It Ain’t So’ into ‘Buddy Holly’ for the finale, Cuomo looks like he still can’t quite believe he’s fronting a band with its own confetti canon – grabbing the mic like Freddy Mercury to soak up the stadium like a slightly ironic rock god.
Next up, Office Space’s Ron Livingston introduces a Fall Out Boy set with more pyrotechnics in the opener (‘The Phoenix’) than the whole of Download 2022. Patrick Stump burns through FOB’s biggest hits with flamethrowers, jets of fire and a combustible piano to fight the emo corner with wall-to-wall goth anthems. Hoisting Andy Hurley’s drum kit to the roof of a haunted house for ‘Dance, Dance’, FOB are clearly more at home on the giant stage than Weezer were – but it’s pretty clear who owns it as soon as Green Day turn up.
Getting one of the best crowd reactions of the night before even coming on stage with a warm-up track that nods to one of the greatest spontaneous crowd moments in London gig history, Green Day open big with ‘American Idiot’ – bringing fireworks, flames, confetti and Billie Joe Armstrong exploding into a stadium that can barely contain itself. From here on out, it’s Green Day’s party – Armstrong bouncing off the amps with the same teenage energy he had back in 1994 when Dookie first lit up MTV.
There’s no hint of irony here either as Armstrong plays the crowd like an organ, channelling Live Aid for the second time in the same night as he brings back Freddie’s Day-O chant to keep London bouncing through ‘Holiday’, ‘Know Your Enemy’, ‘Basket Case’ and ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’ – between covers spanning Kiss (‘Rock And Roll All Nite’), The Isley Brothers (‘Shout’) and Bowie (‘All The Young Dudes’).
“Welcome to the Green Day Jubilee!” screams Armstrong as he grabs a Union Jack from the front row and drapes it over his shoulders. Few artists know how to work a crowd like Green Day, and here nothing is left in the wings – getting little kids to crowd surf from the stage, asking a teenager up to play guitar (and letting her keep it), and pelting the audience with a barrage of big-show favourites that carries the band out on a wave of old-school energy.
Glastonbury might be going on at the same time 150-odd miles to the west, but Green Day’s own festival proved that they’re better off with their own crowd and their own friends. The Pyramid Stage isn’t anywhere near big enough for The Hella Mega Tour anyway.
The Hella Mega Tour is stopping in Huddersfield on June 25, Dublin on June 27 and Glasgow on June 29, with tickets available here.
