There are a very slim handful of albums involved in my childhood that really had a huge influence on my later flowering of musical taste; Green Day’s Dookie is one of those. It was possibly the first legitimate punk-ish album I heard and which led me down the Rancid, MXPX, Operation Ivy, etc., path. But that is besides the point. I’m going to go out on a ledge here and say that Green Day most likely holds some sort of significance with at least the majority of my generation. So when I heard about lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s downward spiral that occurred in front of what I can only assume to be thousands upon thousands of people at the iHeartMusic festival in Las Vegas, NV, it made me downright bummed. It made me bummed and it made me uncomfortable and it made confused.
While they were performing, Green Day was alerted on a screen that they had 1 minute left to play, cutting their set by a hefty 20 minutes in order to allocate more time for R&B superstar Usher. According to punknews.org, this sent Armstrong into a profanity-laden rant that for some bizarre reason encouraged the audience to cheer (?), like this was some really cool, respectably planned part of the performance. Armstrong and fellow band member Mike Dirnt smashed their guitars on stage, adding to the insanity.
The band posted the following announcement on their Facebook page Sunday afternoon:
“Billie Joe is seeking treatment for substance abuse. We would like everyone to know that our set was not cut short by Clear Channel and to apologize to those we offended at the iHeartRadio Festival in Las Vegas. We regretfully must postpone some of our upcoming promotional appearances.”
I wish the best for Armstrong and it is unfortunate that his unraveling occurred in front of such a major audience. Still love some Green Day.
Warning, kids: foul language.
City Whitty 512 