For the second consecutive evening, American punk-rock trio Green Day took to the stage, to headline the Reading & Leeds Festival.
It all began with a mysterious pink bunny striding across the stage to 'Blitzrieg Bop', by the Ramones, a surreal, but inviting image as the bunny hyped up the crowd for the main attraction of the day.
Lead vocalist and guitarist, Billie Joe Armstrong seemed to be in fine health, remarkable considering his admission to rehab just last September. He was frequently involving the crowd in an 'EYYY OHHH' chant, that personally grated after a few songs but the crowd seemed to get into it.
The theatrics didn't end there though. A fan was brought up on stage to finish off the chorus to 'Know Your Enemy', t-shirt cannons were produced by Armstrong after a short break, both highlights in what turned out to be a two and a half hour set.
Armstrong was also the ringleader of everything, from telling Leeds they were 'much louder than Reading', to earning his fellow bandmates spontaneous cheers, to starting off some Bono-esque rants against the 'system', which was a little bit tiresome if I'm completley honest and sort of took you 'out' of the gig.
Back to the music and with 30+ songs, the band spanned their history, playing 1994 album, 'Dookie', in full, wih a good few songs from the recent triple album, '¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tre!', and 'American Idiot', the rock-opera that thrust them back into the limelight back in the mid-2000's.
They eventually ended the bonanza with a string of hits from their past with the likes of, 'American Idiot, 'Jesus of Suburbia' and 'Good Riddance (Time of Your Life', the last one seeing Armstrong on his own with an acoustic guitar, a fitting end to a strong set, overall R&L got a pretty good UK festival exclusive!
