On one of the first nights of the Linda Lindas’ current tour opening stadiums for Green Day, the very young L.A. punk band ransacked their elders’ backstage suite.
“We TP’ed their dressing room,” bassist Eloise Wong boasted. “We replaced the faces on all their signs backstage with the Linda Lindas’ cat faces. We put whoopee cushions on Tré [Cool’s] drum throne. They came up to us with their arms crossed, this stern look on their faces, and Tré was like, ‘Looks like someone had a case of the f— arounds this morning.’”
“We were told that we should start small,” said guitarist Lucia de la Garza, laughing about their incipient prank war. “Because they’d come back at us a hundred times worse.”
This was a bold move for a band whose members are still in their teens, whom Green Day had invited to play in front of 50,000-plus people a night alongside legends like Smashing Pumpkins and Rancid. But their boldness speaks to the Linda Lindas’ assurance of their status as rock’s favorite new stadium show opener.
After a July gig warming up for the Rolling Stones at SoFi Stadium (following festivals like Coachella and an arena tour with Paramore), the Linda Lindas are playing some of the biggest venues in the country in advance of their snappy, insouciant new album, “No Obligation,” set to drop in October.
Even with two members still in high school, they’re already very comfortable up there.
“After the library video went viral, we were like ‘Oh, we should release something,’” drummer Mila de la Garza said. “We’re so proud of our first record, but it wasn’t as intentional.”
(Jingyu Lin / For The Times)
“It’s funny, the club shows are scarier because you can see every person,” guitarist Bela Salazar said. “But I honestly feel like, for me, the bigger the crowd, it’s less scary.”
The Linda Lindas — also with drummer Mila de la Garza — became sensations in May 2021, when they performed a pandemic-era live-streamed set at the Cypress Park library.
Then ranging in age from 10 to 16, the band (two siblings, a cousin and a family friend) had already honed their chops through the L.A. rock camp Girlschool, and had opened for heroes like Bikini Kill and Alice Bag. But their single “Racist, Sexist Boy” became an ultra-viral hit after that library set. The band released its charming, preternaturally accomplished debut, “Growing Up,” on the punk stalwart label Epitaph in 2022.
Now, after a few years of serious touring and writing while they completed their schoolwork, the band is gearing up for its second era — as an ambitious, relentless punk act who can hang with legends on their own merits.
“This amazing band from Japan called the Blue Hearts has a song called ‘Linda Linda,’ and I thought they must be great if that’s the reference they got their name from,” said Green Day singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, about his young tourmates. “Turns out they are a great band, and it was a no-brainer putting them on the bill. I think their success shows great taste and they have an independent spirit. If the Linda Lindas stay on that kind of path, they will make the best records of their generation.”
The Linda Lindas pose backstage at Citi Field Stadium in New York.
(Jingyu Lin / For The Times)
The group didn’t even flinch when it met the Rolling Stones backstage at their SoFi gig in July.
“They were really nice!” Salazar said, of the rockers old enough to be their great-grandparents. “Mick Jagger was really jumpy, like exactly how he is onstage.”
“He sauntered over on his golf cart and gave us double fist bumps,” Wong recalled. “Ron Wood said hi to all of us at catering, and Keith Richards shook all of our hands like ‘Hello, I’m Keith,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know!’”
While it’s hard to imagine a band with more A-list supporters so early in its career, it would all mean nothing if its music didn’t back it up. On “No Obligation,” the Linda Lindas rip harder, think deeper and fully grow into their formidable talents and chemistry as a band.
“After the library video went viral, we were like ‘Oh, we should release something,’” Mila de la Garza said. “We’re so proud of our first record, but it wasn’t as intentional. We’ve gotten all this experience touring and playing, and we knew this record was going to be better than the first.”
It is. From the snarling title track opener to the tricky-timed, Spanish-language “Yo Me Estreso” and B-52’s worthy vamp “Resolution/Revolution,” their songs take big new swings and land pretty much all of them.
“All in My Head,” a Best Coast-style belter riffing on Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” feels like a genuine radio single, with eminently quotable lyrics about modern therapy culture — “I like it better when it’s all in my head / The doctors know that I have money to spend.”
“It was this book with an unlikable protagonist where you’re like, ‘Oh, man, I kind of hate that I can relate to this character,’” Lucia de la Garza said.
The album lives up to the urgent precedent set by peers like Green Day on “American Idiot,” which lambasted the jingoistic culture of the Bush presidency in 2004. Yet even for a mixed-ethnic band of young women, who made their reputation with a brutal critique of toxic dudes, they’re still figuring out how to to wield their ferocity in a heated election cycle.
“It’s funny, the club shows are scarier because you can see every person,” guitarist Bela Salazar said. “But I honestly feel like, for me, the bigger the crowd, it’s less scary.”
(Jingyu Lin / For The Times)
“It’s not like we’re going, ‘We’re gonna write this revolutionary song,’ ” Wong said. “It’s like, ‘Here’s something that sucks that I need to get out of my system.’ ”
“It’s really frustrating to be around young people that are perpetrating ideas that we wish weren’t so ingrained in our society,” Lucia de la Garza said. “But I don’t know if it’s the job of artists to speak about issues. I think it’s the job of human beings to do what they can and uplift everyone.”
They’ll have ample time to do it on Green Day’s stadium tour, which hits SoFi on Sept. 14. This will be the Linda Lindas’ last stand before the members who are still in school return from summer break. They say that they don’t brag to classmates about their exploits on the road and that they don’t feel like rock stardom has changed them much.
“We’re all still kids. I don’t think it’s hard for us to relate to our peers, or for our peers to relate to us,” Mila de la Garza said. “We’re just grateful that we get to spend our summer breaks recording music and playing with bands that we admire so much.”
But their more-seasoned headliner has words of warning, should the Linda Lindas start trashing their tour’s dressing rooms more often.
“Oh, those Linda Lindas have some pranks coming their way all right,“ Armstrong said. “Just remember that Green Day has pyro.”