Lost in the controversy about Bad Bunny appearing at the Super Bowl halftime show is the fact that the cannabis-loving band Green Day will kick off the music portion of the Super Bowl with a performance at the game's opening ceremony.
In 1987, guitarists Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt, both 15 years old at the time, along with bassist Sean Hughes and drummer Raj Punjabi, a fellow high school student from Pinole, CA, formed the band Desecrated Youth, later renamed Sweet Children.
After signing with Lookout! Records in 1988 and before releasing their first EP in 1989, the group adopted the name Green Day. In the Bay Area, where the band was formed, "green day" was reportedly slang for spending a day doing nothing but smoking marijuana.
The band's name "was absolutely about pot," Armstrong told Bill Maher, adding, "We were trying to be the Cheech & Chong of punk rock." Armstrong went on to say that he stopped smoking weed after he had children, and then described a gravity bong to Maher. "I like burning the substance" as opposed to vaporizing, he said, because he "it smells good, it fills the room." Vaporizing felt like "one more reason to hide the fact that it should be legal."
The band's 1977 album "Nimrod," scored with the acoustic ballad "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," which won the band an MTV Video Award for Best Alternative Video. The other singles released from Nimrod were "Nice Guys Finish Last," "Hitchin' a Ride," and "Redundant," all with rockin' riffs and rebellious lyrics of the type that the 60s hippies wrote.
The musical "American Idiot" based on the album opened in the Berkeley Repertory Theatre at the end of 2009. On April 20, 2010, "American Idiot" opened on Broadway, and Green Day released the soundtrack to the musical.Green Day's "American Idiot" won the 2005 Grammy for Best Rock Album and was nominated in six other categories, including Album of the Year. The album helped Green Day win seven of the eight awards it was nominated for at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards; the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" video won six of those awards. A year later, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" won Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
As they sang while undercover busking at a New York subway station with Jimmy Fallon, Green Day's song "Basket Case" asks, "am I just paranoid, or just stoned?"
Meanwhile, there's increased scrutiny around alternative Super Bowl performer Kid Rock's lyric about "underage girls" being not statutory by mandatory. And Bill Maher has redubbed today "Super Bet Sunday" for "Wager League Sports" as the NFL partnered with DraftKings online sports betting and that drug (gambling) was permitted to advertise a special $300 bonus—not in dollars, but in betting credits.
POST GAME UPDATE: The broadcast did warp the word "mindfuck" but the others in "American Idiot" came through loud and clear. All after "Time of Your Life" was used like a graduation day song to introduce NFLers like Lynn Swan, Payton Manning, and Joe Montana.
During the song "Holiday," which he dedicated to Minneapolis, Armstrong changed the lyrics from "the representative from California has the floor" to "the representative from Epstein Island has the floor." And he continued his long-running criticism of the MAGA movement, changing the lyrics in "American Idiot" to say, "I'm not part of the MAGA agenda."
A video featuring Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart was aired during the pre-game, celebrating Bob Weir and the band's love for the 49ers, and their choice of Levi's stadium for their 50th anniversary shows.
Oh, and Bad Bunny did some stuff too.
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