On one of the first nights of Linda Lindas' current tour, opening stadiums for Green Day, the young Los Angeles punk band raided their elders' backstage suite.
“We filled her dressing room with toilet paper,” boasted bassist Eloise Wong. “We replaced the faces on all her backstage posters with Linda Lindas’ cat faces. We put fart cushions on Tré [Cool’s] “They approached us with their arms crossed, a stern look on their faces, and Tré said, ‘Looks like someone had a case of the f— this morning.’”
“They told us we had to start from the bottom,” said guitarist Lucía de la Garza, laughing at their budding prank war. “Because they would turn on us a hundred times worse.”
It was a bold move for a band whose members are still in their teens, whom Green Day had invited to play in front of upwards of 50,000 people a night alongside legends like Smashing Pumpkins and Rancid. But its audacity speaks to the Linda Lindas' confidence in their status as the new favorite rock band to open stadiums.
After a July warm-up show for the Rolling Stones at SoFi Stadium (following festivals like Coachella and a stadium tour with Paramore), the Linda Lindas are playing some of the biggest venues in the country ahead of the release of their new album, “No Obligation,” due out in October.
Even with two members still in high school, they already feel very comfortable there.
“After the library video went viral, we were like, ‘Oh, we should release something,’” drummer Mila de la Garza said. “We’re really proud of our first record, but it wasn’t that intentional.”
(Jingyu Lin / For The Times)
“It’s funny, club shows are scarier because you can see every single person,” guitarist Bela Salazar said. “But honestly, I feel like, for me, the bigger the crowd, the less scary it is.”
The Linda Lindas, also featuring drummer Mila de la Garza, became a sensation in May 2021, when they performed a pandemic-era livestreamed set at the Cypress Park Library.
The band, who ranged in age from 10 to 16, had already honed their skills at the Los Angeles rock camp Girlschool and opened gigs for heroes like Bikini Kill and Alice Bag. But their single “Racist, Sexist Boy” became an ultraviral hit after that library performance. The band released their charming, preternaturally accomplished debut, “Growing Up,” on punk stalwart label Epitaph in 2022.
Now, after a few years of serious touring and writing while completing their studies, the band is preparing for its second era: as an ambitious and relentless punk group that can compete with legends on its own merits.
“This amazing Japanese band called Blue Hearts has a song called ‘Linda Linda,’ and I thought they must be great if that’s what they got their name from,” Green Day singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong said of his young tourmates. “They happen to be a great band and it was an obvious choice to put them on the bill. I think their success shows great taste and that they have an independent spirit. If the Linda Lindas continue down this path, they’ll make the best records of their generation.”
The Linda Lindas pose backstage at Citi Field in New York City.
(Jingyu Lin / For The Times)
The group didn't even flinch when they met the Rolling Stones backstage at their SoFi concert in July.
“They were so nice!” Salazar said of the rockers who were old enough to be her great-grandparents. “Mick Jagger was very nervous, just like he is on stage.”
“He came up on his golf cart and gave us a fist pump,” Wong recalled. “Ron Wood greeted us all in the catering room and Keith Richards shook all of our hands like, ‘Hi, I’m Keith,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I know! ’”
While it’s hard to imagine a band with more of an A-list following at such an early stage in their career, all of this would mean nothing if their music didn’t back them up. On “No Obligation,” the Linda Lindas push harder, think deeper, and fully develop their formidable talent and chemistry as a band.
“After the library video went viral, we were like, ‘Oh, we should put something out,’” Mila de la Garza said. “We’re really proud of our first record, but it wasn’t that intentional. We’ve gotten all this experience from touring and playing, and we knew this record was going to be better than the first one.”
It is. From the album’s growling title track to the tricky Spanish-language “Yo me estreso” to the B-52’s-worthy vamp “Resolution/Revolution,” their songs take new turns and hit nearly every mark.
“All in My Head,” a Best Coast-style cover of 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 / Doctors know I got money to burn.”
“It was a book with an unlikable protagonist that makes you think, ‘Oh, God, I hate that I can relate to this character,’” said Lucia de la Garza.
The album lives up to the urgent precedent set by peers like Green Day on “American Idiot,” which critiqued the chauvinistic 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 guys, they’re still trying to figure out how to wield their ferocity in a heated election cycle.
“It’s funny, club shows are scarier because you can see every single person,” guitarist Bela Salazar said. “But honestly, I feel like, for me, the bigger the crowd, the less scary it is.”
(Jingyu Lin / For The Times)
“It’s not like we’re saying, ‘Let’s write a revolutionary song,’” Wong said. “It’s like, ‘There’s something here that sucks and I need to get it out of my head.’”
“It’s really frustrating to be surrounded by young people who are spreading ideas that we wish weren’t so ingrained in our society,” said Lucia de la Garza. “But I don’t know if it’s the job of artists to speak out about issues. I think it’s the job of human beings to do what they can and help everyone.”
They'll have plenty of time to do so on Green Day's stadium tour, which hits SoFi on Sept. 14. This will be the Linda Lindas' last performance before the members still in school return from summer break. They say they don't brag to classmates about their exploits on the road and don't feel rock stardom has changed them much.
“We’re still kids. I don’t think we find it difficult to relate to our peers, or for our peers to relate to us,” Mila de la Garza said. “We’re just grateful to be able to spend our summer break recording music and playing with bands we admire so much.”
But their most experienced headliner has words of warning, should the Linda Lindas start trashing their tour dressing rooms more frequently.
“Oh, those Linda Lindas have some shenanigans ahead of them,” Armstrong said. “Just remember that Green Day has pyrotechnics.”
