Celebrating their 21st year together as a band this month, California punk trio Green Day ought to know a thing or two about working an audience by now.

At the first of three London shows if they’d been any more crowd pleasing they would have given every single audience member a lift home on the tour bus. After four years away from the stage all could be forgiven.

A lengthy set ranged from ancient favourite 2000 Light Years Away, dating from when they were simply young Clash fans, to the cocksure rock opera of tracks from latest album 21st Century Breakdown and the mega-seller that revived their career, American Idiot.

But it was the extras that made the show memorable and explained the band’s longevity, a creative mint on the pillow of almost every song. Peroxide frontman Billie Joe Armstrong fired water, T-shirts and toilet rolls into the crowd and invited a succession of audience members onto the stage to do his lines for him.

It didn’t always work, as when he plucked a girl who was too deranged by fandom to sing anything like the words to Longview.

I occasionally longed for them to make it from one end of a song to the other without the extended cabaret breakdown. Simply blasting out the weighty riffs of hits such as Basket Case and Minority was already more than enough.

A plain acoustic encore finally offered breathing space.

When Armstrong sang, “I hope you had the time of your life,” in Good Riddance, it was clear his band had done everything possible to make it so.
Green Day play Wembley Arena on 1 November (0870 060 0870, www.whatsonwembley.com).