Ever wondered what Green Day might sound like if you took out the guitars and put in piano instead? Well, wonder no more.
Jon Batiste has put a video online where he plays along to Holiday from the American Idiot album. The spin being that the piano maestro has never heard the track before and iss unaware he's listening to Green Day.
“He’s got a Johnny Depp vibe!” Batiste says on hearing Billie Joe’s vocals, adding a jaunty little piano line as he hears the song for the first time, still none the wiser whose track it is. Batiste’s fingers go racing up and down the keyboard and Green Day’s strident pop punk goes all a little bit... jazz. It’s quite something.
When he finds out it’s Green Day, Batiste just exclaims: “Billie!”
Afterwards the pianist analyses what he’s been doing: “I was drawing from Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines (US jazz pianist)... trumpet-style piano...That triplet almost feels like an Irish jig...I like that. It’s a poignant space to sing about,” he sings, laughing and finding nuances that Billie Joe and co probably had no idea were there in the original.
And one figure in particular has Batiste struck by an image of the singer on horseback: “He gets up on a high horse on that part,” he says, his voice sliding into a falsetto. “He rides the horse! He rides his horse! Where’s my horse? Somebody find my horse!”
Batiste has worked extensively across the jazz/soul/hip hop spectrum as well as classical and has collaborated with the likes of Mavis Staples, Stevie Wonder and Prince. He’s less conversant in punk rock, although he did cross paths with Green Day once before when the band guested on The Late Show with Steven Colbert, when Batiste and his group Stay Human were the house band on the talk show.
His 2021 album We Are was widely acclaimed and bagged Best Album at the following year’s Grammys and his latest Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series Volume 1) is released later this month.
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