SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t the first post-pandemic concert here but the Hella Mega Tour at Oracle Park on Friday—with Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Weezer and the Interrupters—was a coronation of sorts to a return to culture and shared experience. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong announced his intentions right at the outside of the band’s 100-minute stadium-sized set.

“Put your cellphones away,” Armstrong commanded. “You’ve spent a year and half staring at those by yourself. We need you here tonight.”

It was a theme Armstrong repeated later. “There will be no social distancing tonight. We need to be together, we need unity,” he said. The moment felt significant. With three of the biggest names in rock, it felt like the Bay Area’s first “Must-See” concert in a mighty long time.

Green Day opened with hallmark anti-war anthems “American Idiot” and “Holiday.” While the band’s set as a whole was generally apolitical, it was impossible not to feel the poignancy of the moment with those two songs. Written nearly two decades ago about America’s wars in the Middle East and the media’s drumbeat, the lyrics are just as impactful now then as the day those songs were released. With the eyes of the world once again on the Middle East, it current one again.

“The representative from the East Bay has the floor,” Armstrong sang during “Holiday.”

The general structure of Green Day’s set hasn’t veered drastically over the years, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool have dialed in how to get a crowd to eat from the palm of their hands. It was impossible to ignore the band members’ smiles throughout nearly the entire night. It was clear they were thrilled to be back on the stage again. Green Day mixed in new track “Pollyanna” fairly early in the set, and it actually worked as an effective transition between the political songs to the band’s older material.

Cell phone lights illuminated the stadium for power ballad “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” as the crowd faithfully sang along with every world. Green Day then shifted gears for the trifecta of “Longview,” “Welcome to Paradise” and “Hitchin’ a Ride,” even breaking out some pyrotechnics along the way. Armstrong expertly set the pace with his call and response “Hey-Oh” and commands to clap and jump. Fans reached a fever pitch a number of times during the night. The cover of KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” was a fun curveball that got the multigenerational crowd singing along.

The band shifted from the rock stomp of “Brain Stew” to the high-speed punk rock of “St. Jimmy,” then doubled back to “When I Come Around.” Armstrong leaned into the local nature of the show throughout the night, shouting out San Francisco, Oakland, Contra Costa County, El Sobrante and other places on the map. It was less about taking risks and more about serving up the hits and as a way of embracing normalcy.

“Minority” and “21 Guns,” written years ago, hit with a different relevance. Green Day brought up a fan to play along on Bay Area band Operation Ivy’s “Knowledge.” It’s something Armstrong and co. have done for a long time, but it gets the crowd going every time. The 18-year-old woman who crushed it. The sing-alongs continued with “Basket Case,” “She,” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends.”

Green Day excels in the stadium setting because it lean into it completely; there’s no sense in trying to make it feel like an intimate show. The band opts for a communal feeling, going as grand, bright and loud as possible and bringing everyone along for the ride.

One of the more underrated moments of the night came during “Still Breathing,” one of the fewer new-ish tracks the band played on Friday. The song felt like a fitting tribute to the past 15 months, and Armstrong’s vocals were spectacular. Green Day closed out the night with a masterful performance of rock opera “Jesus of Suburbia” into Armstrong’s solo acoustic “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” and a mini-fireworks.

Chicago’s Fall Out Boy preceded Green Day and also embraced its stadium rock stars for a bombastic and over-the-top set that hit all the right notes. The band quickly set the pace with an inferno rendition of “The Phoenix.” Pete Wentz was equipped with a flamethrower on the neck of his bass. Surely that must have been uncomfortable to play with. Like Green Day, Fall Out Boy also placed its bets on the hits from its catalog.

“I’m pretty sure that was the first circle pit of the tour,” said Wentz, the band’s spokesperson between songs. “I talked to our agent three years ago about doing this tour. His response was that he didn’t think kids listened to rock music any more.”

Despite rock falling out of the favor of younger generations, the bands on the lineup have maintained massive devoted followings, as evidenced by the 40,000-plus in attendance.

Wentz’ ode to rock led into “Save Rock and Roll,” which included vocalist Patrick Stump sitting to play a fiery (no, really on fire) piano. Stump even dug into his deepest baritone to recreate the vocal part done by Elton John on the record.

Fall Out Boy kept up the pace for “The Last of the Real Ones” and “Dance, Dance,” with the latter featuring drummer  Andy Hurley being raised on an elevated platform. The crowd jumped in on rousing songs like “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” and “My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light Em Up),” the latter providing one of the highlights of the set.

The band concluded with a trio of upbeat crowd-pleasers including “I Don’t Care” and the anthemic “Centuries” also provided a boost as Wentz donned a black San Francisco Giants jersey.

Weezer elicited some of the loudest sing-alongs of the night. Frontman Rivers Cuomo sported a new mullet and bushy mustache as the band played the heaviest concentration of its material from its debut, but also a trio of songs from its latest, Van Weezer. Cuomo was an understated frontman compared with Armstrong and Stump, but his presence rounded out the lineup well.

Even opener The Interrupters got an eight-song set to open the festivities much earlier int he evening. The Los Angeles quartet, led by vocalist Aimee Interrupter (Aimee Allen), played a high-energy set that got things off on the right note. Playing songs like “She’s Kerosene” and “A Friend Like Me,” the band even mixed in a cover of Billie Eillish’s “bad guy.”

Friday’s show at Oracle Park was triumphant for bringing normalcy, fun, and energy to a world so desperate for it. Hella Mega proved that despite the onslaught of constantly distressing news, there’s still an antidote out there to bring people together and sing their guts out for one night.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald. Follow photographer Steve Carlson at Instagram.com/SteveCarlsonSF and Twitter.com/SteveCarlsonSF.