One of the great challenges faced by the events during Grammy Week, including the FireAid benefit, is how to set the proper tone: How do you have a celebratory event like big concert or awards show without seeming tone-deaf to the tragedy and loss so many suffered in the Los Angeles wildfires that ravaged the city earlier this month?
Green Day and Billie Eilish provided a perfect answer in the opening song from the FireAid concerts — which are being held simultaneously at the neighboring Los Angeles arenas the Intuit Dome and Forum — by duetting on a 16-year-old Green Day song that, regardless, could have been written for this moment: “I’m here to honor you/ If I lose everything in the fire/ I’m sending all my love to you.”
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In an amusingly appropriate pairing, after the band’s Billie Joe Armstrong sang the first verse of that song, “Last Night on Earth,” from the band’s 2009 album “21 st Century Breakdown,” another Billie — Eilish — came out to sing the second verse and the rest of the song with the band.
Eilish left the stage to applause after the song and Bay Area native Armstrong exhorted the crowd: “Los Angeles! We are still alive! We love Los Angeles, and we’ve got your back.”
The band continued the theme with their 2016 song, “Still Breathing”: “I dodged a bullet, and I walked across a landmine/ I’m still alive/ Am I bleeding from the storm?/ Just shine a light into the wreckage.” But they resumed their more familiar stance with a powerful version of their 1994 classic “When I Come Around” before ceding the stage to yet another Billy — presented Billy Crystal.
