Former Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum put it best when he tweeted, “I thought Billie Joe Armstrong’s rant was the most punk rock thing he’s ever done. Then he had to go and ruin it by apologizing. Corporate rock is alive and well. Never really bought that band anyways,”
It was an interesting statement considering it was Green Day who inducted Matt Sorum into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame with Guns N’ Roses just 5 months earlier in April 2012.
Three Punk Rock Kids Wanting to Make Great Music
Drinking and shenanigans seemed to be part of Green Day’s image. From their humble beginnings in California, they appeared to be just three punk rock kids who wanted to make great music with the help of a little lubricant.
Singer Billie Joe Armstrong admitted in 2013 to Rolling Stone that he had anxiety getting onstage in front of people and alcohol would help alleviate some of the nerves. He would say, “…I’d have anywhere from 2 – 6 beers and a couple of shots before I went on stage. I’d go out and play the gig and drink for the rest of the evening on the bus. Fall asleep, wake up the next day, feel like crap, do soundcheck. It was over and over again. In that way, I was a functioning alcoholic.”
Uno, Dos, Tre
Green Day had recorded so much material by the summer of 2012, they put out 3 individual albums. Uno, Dos and Tre, had release dates roughly a month apart in the latter part of 2012. Each record featured a different member on the cover.
Prior to the first of the three albums coming out, the band was out promoting the record. They were showing up on venues that traditionally rock bands wouldn’t go on, including America’s Got Talent and The Voice.
Green Day Plays the iHeartRadio Music Festival
Formerly Clear Channel, iHeartRadio tried to rebrand itself. Since 2010, the annual iHeartRadio Music Festival advertises bringing together artists from various genres. In reality, it more heavily leans towards pop music.
About a week before Uno came out in September 2012, Green Day played the festival. They were joined by a pretty eclectic lineup including Usher, Psy, and ‘Lil Wayne.
On September 21, 2012, the band played a set at the iHeartRadio Music Festival which lasted about 25 minutes. It’s clear the crowd wasn’t really into Green Day and they were there to see the pop acts. Before Billie Joe Armstrong’s epic rant, he tried to excite the audience by getting them to sing along and stand up. They’re not really having any of it.
Prior to the band’s performance of their huge 1994 single “Basket-Case” from their record Dookie, the band was notified they only had four minutes before they had to leave the stage.
Armstrong would start his rant and then proceed to start the song. It was partway through the song that the band was notified they only had one minute left. Armstrong completely lost it.
Billie Joe Armstrong Rants On Stage
“Bring your [explicit] Usher back up here [explicit]. I got a [explicit] minute for a [explicit] song. I’ve been around for [explicit] 25 years Las Vegas. I got at least one minute for a [explicit] song…”
“You got to be [explicit] joking. This is a [explicit] joke. I got one minute, one minute left. Oh, now I got nothing left. Now I got nothin’ left. Let me show you what one [explicit] minute [explicit] means. One minute. God [explicit] love you all. We’ll be back.”
The clip of the rant went viral but nobody outside of the band’s circle knew whether the rant was a punk-rock statement or something more serious.
Billie Joe Armstrong Goes To Rehab and Green Day Apologizes
Shortly after the performance, Green Day announced that Armstrong was going to a month-long outpatient rehab program for “treatment for substance abuse”. They go on to say, “We would like everyone to know that our set was not cut short and to apologize to those we offended at the iHeartRadio Music Festival. We regretfully must postpone some of our upcoming promotional appearances.”
The band had booked a tour to support their upcoming records following the iHeart appearance but the incident cancelled those dates and killed any kind of promotion for their subsequent two records which ended up selling pretty poorly compared to the band’s previous works.
Almost 7 months after the incident, Billie Joe Armstrong and his bandmates were ready to hit the road again to promote the shows. They sat down with Rolling Stone magazine to discuss what went on at the iHeartRadio Music Festival. During the interview, Armstrong tied a lot of the problems back to 2009 when the band started to promote 21st Century Breakdown stating, “There were meltdowns on that tour that were huge.”
At a 2010 show in Peru during an anti-technology rant, Armstrong would shout, “I can’t wait for Steve Jobs to die of effing cancer.” Jobs would die a year later.
“…I was overbooked and exhausted… ” – Billie Joe Armstrong
Billie Joe Armstrong would reveal to Rolling Stone that in the summer of 2012, it was a really mixed up time for him saying that on one hand he was happy and had one of the best times making the 3 records but following the mixing of the albums, he was hit with tragedy when his aunt passed away. “That hit me pretty hard. Then I started getting overwhelmed. We were doing press every day, there was the tour, we were thinking of another tour after that, and then another tour after that. I was overbooked and exhausted and I thought, ‘My God, I feel like this and the first record hasn’t even come out yet.”
In the same interview, Armstrong would reveal that he was taking sleeping and anti-anxiety drugs, revealing he didn’t know what he was taking during the day and what he was taking at night and would claim that his backpack sounded like a giant baby rattle. Armstrong was also drinking to the point where he would, “Wake up in a strange house, on a couch. I wouldn’t remember how. It was a complete blackout.”
One week prior to the iHeartRadio gig, Armstrong revealed that the band’s manager knew that the singer needed to get help.
“It’s funny because there was an incident in England. We were playing some shows in Europe. I was at my pill-taking height at that time, medicating the crap out of myself because I couldn’t sleep. We went to Japan, we went to England, we were zigzagging everywhere… I’m sitting in my room and I got a text from my manager saying, ‘Come on down. We have to talk about the writing festival.’ I went down there. He was sitting there and he goes, ‘We’re getting on a plane. We’re cancelling the rest of this tour and you’re going into rehab.’ I was like, ‘What? What are you talking about? I’m not going to do that.’
During the same interview, Billie Joe Armstrong would reveal what his stint in rehab was like, saying he had some contact with his bandmates as well as his wife. The band’s bassist Mike Dirnt revealed he would write letters to both Billie Joe Armstrong’s wife and Billie Joe saying, “I wrote him and Adrienne a few letters explaining how I felt. How I was concerned and proud of him.”
“Billie apologized to me from the bottom of his heart…” – Mike Dirnt
Billie Joe Armstrong ran into Dinrt at a coffee shop unexpectedly in Oakland, with Dirnt recalling, “Billie apologized to me from the bottom of his heart. It was just two old friends on a park bench. I hope to be on a park bench with him when I’m old, feeding birds and having conversations.”
Armstrong would characterize his regimen in rehab as meditation through prayer combined with meetings and common sense about limits saying, “We’re going into this tour and making sure we do everything we can where everybody feels healthy, safe and happy.”
In regards to Green Day fans, Armstrong would feel even more remorse saying, “I let them down. The things in Vegas, some people love it, some people hate it. I know I’m never gonna relive that. That’s a side of me I don’t want my fans to ever see again. I want to put on good shows. I want to be reliable and we plan on being reliable.”
Billie Joe Armstrong would say that while he appeared high-functioning on the outside, that wasn’t the reality of his life saying, “The other part of my life was falling apart slowly. My foundation was cracked. Honestly, I don’t know if I would be around if I hadn’t gone to rehab.”
Green Day would end up hitting the road in 2013, playing the European festival circuit and numerous US dates.
For the past 5 years, they seem to have put that incident behind them and have since released two records including 2016’s Revolution Radio and Father of All.
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