Green Day delivers a terrific night of punk rock and positivity Saturday at the Rose Bowl

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Early in Green Day’s tour finale at the Rose Bowl on Saturday singer Billie Joe Armstrong paused on stage to address the crowd as the rest of the band riffed on the song “Letterbomb” behind him.

“I’m so sick of the negativity that’s going on out there,” Armstrong declared. “The cynicism, the corruption. Not tonight! Tonight is going to be about compassion and love and the truth!”

It was a message that Armstrong and Green Day repeated throughout the 27 songs and 2 1/2 hours they were on stage, in the songs and in the singer’s frequent exhortations to the crowd: Don’t despair. Fight for what’s right. Love each other. Live your truth.

And most of all, at least on this night with this iconic American punk band, have fun, an order that was a breeze to comply with for the fans in the not-quite-full stadium, given the kind of show this band can deliver when it’s at its peak as it was on Saturday night.

The band kicked off the night with a burst of energy, blazing through “Know Your Enemy,” and then a pair from the current “Revolution Radio” album, “Bang Bang,” and the title track. They’ve been touring this album nearly a year now, and the performance showed it.

This isn’t your sloppy, drunk, just-messing-around punk rock — you don’t get to the arenas and stadiums without being professional, and three decades into a career that’s seen Green Day inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool — augmented on tour by three additional musicians — know how to give the fans a show.

Armstrong, in particular, is a showman, running back and forth across the stage almost without pause Saturday, leaping off his sound monitor to finish off one song or another — at 45 it’s impressive that his knees can take it — and interacting with the fans almost nonstop, making a connection between the stage and the stands that was truly exciting, even endearing to watch.

“Up on your feet, this is not a (bleepin’) tea party, this is a rock ‘n’ roll show!” he shouted early on, and the crowd responded with a roar then and throughout the night when they weren’t singing along to one Green Day hit after another.

Standouts in the top half of the show included “Holiday” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” the first of eight tracks performed from the landmark “American Idiot” album, and “Longview,” a signature song from the group’s 1994 breakout album “Dookie.” But older, more obscure songs — “2000 Light Years Away” and “Armatage Shanks” — got almost as big a response and almost as much singing along from the fans.

Four times throughout the set Armstrong pulled fans onto the stage to sing or play guitar, and it didn’t matter that much how good they were — my favorite was the guy who said it was his birthday and nailed his vocal and performance on “Longview” but totally flubbed his stage dive back into the crowd — because it really felt like it was more about the community of band and fans — and the fun both wanted to share — than anything else.

Other songs, such as “Welcome to Paradise,” “Minority” and “Basket Case,” remind you of how many hits Green Day has scored on alternative radio over the years, but as the show wound down, the band returned to a pair of tracks from “Revolution Radio” to show how relevant and fresh its albums remain today. “Forever Now,” the final number of the main set, on album and on stage Saturday, is showpiece, a three-part mini-rock opera with a hint of the influence these guys have drawn from such forbears as the Who, and absolutely not the kind of song a band reaches for if it’s on cruise control.

A pair of encores wrapped things up with a lovely bookend of all the things that make Green Day special. The first came with all the power the group could muster, a pairing of “American Idiot” and “Jesus of Suburbia,” two epic anthems built for the big stages these guys play.

But the second encore sent the crowd home with some of that love and kindness that Armstrong had preached all night, as he walked on stage alone with an acoustic guitar to sing “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” one of the gentlest numbers in Green Day’s catalog, followed by “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”

That song’s refrain includes the lines, “It’s something unpredictable, but in the end is right / I hope you had the time of your life,” and heading home you just know it summed up how all these fans felt about the show they’d just experienced together.

The British rock band Catfish and the Bottlemen have been rightly making a mark in the United States over the past year or two and were picked to open for Green Day on part of its tour, including Saturday. Unfortunately, the usual Rose Bowl traffic mess kept me from getting there in time to catch their 30-minute set, but based on the albums alone they’re definitely worth a listen.

Green Day

When: Sept. 16

Where: Rose Bowl, Pasadena