While we don’t immediately draw a line between Aussie icons The Living End and U.S. punks Green Day aside from their chosen genre, the two became intimately connected recently with the news that TLE’s frontman Chris Cheney would be stepping into a role in the latter’s musical American Idiot this weekend.
The musical is of course based on Green Day’s monster 2004 record of the same name, and the role that Chris will be taking on – that of ‘St Jimmy’ – was formerly the domain of Greenday frontman Billy Joe Armstrong himself, so Chris will want to make sure he nails it.
Ahead of the run of gigs, Chris has appeared on Channel 7’s The Morning Show to bust out a live cover of one of Greenday’s most over-played tracks, ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’, with some of his American Idiot co-stars. Despite having heard this song enough already over the years, it’s quite a lovely version, and hearing it in Chris’s voice helps to keep it fresh.
Chris will be tackling the role from this Thursday onwards, until he tags in fellow Aussie rock legend and Grinspoon frontman Phil Jamieson to take his place for the remainder of the run. Hopefully that means we’ll see a Grinners cover of ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’ on morning telly next week?
The show kicks off at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s Playhouse on Feb 23 with Cheney in the role, while Jamieson will don the costume from the 28th onwards – and no doubt they’ll be checking to see who scores the best reviews.
Green Day themselves will be heading over for an Aussie tour in May, so we could even see a live collab between the three frontmen if we’re lucky. For now, check out the snippet below, or watch the full version here.
