Former Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum probably put it best when he tweeted out,
"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," he would conclude. It was a funny statement considering it was Green Day who
inducted Matt Sorum into the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame with Guns and Roses just five months prior
in April of 2012. drinking and shenanigans seemed to be part of Green Day's image. from their humble
beginnings from California, they appeared to be just three punk rock kids who wanted to make great
music with the help of a little lubricants. In fact, even after the band got famous, the band's
singer Billie Joe Armstrong admitted to Rolling Stone in 2013 that he had anxiety getting onstage
in front of people and would reveal alcohol would help alleviate some of the nerves admitting,
"I played on stage loaded a lot. I'd have anywhere from two to six beers and a couple of shots before
I went on stage then 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. Green Day is a very polarizing band on my channel,
just like several other bands I've covered in the past including Dave Matthews Band, garbage,
Foo Fighters and Linkin Park. I'm not afraid to admit that I like Green Day. granted, I'm a
fan of their earlier work prior to them getting signed to a major label and of course, I was a
big fan of "Dookie" in 1994 and 2004's "American Idiot", I was also a fan of. I even checked out
their musical "American Idiot" a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it but I've always felt
like for the last 10 years and for the 10 years prior to that, Green Day was always living in the
shadow of "Dookie" and then they were also living in the shadow of "American Idiot". 2009 would see
the release of "21st Century Breakdown", which I felt was a mediocre record. I still remember
living up north at the time and hearing "know your enemy" and "21 guns'' played over and over again
on Sirius XM hits one. three years later the band was set to do something a lot of bands don't do,
while double albums get released every now and then by certain bands who are really ambitious,
record labels aren't a fan of the move because the results in the records cost more than their
competition and therefore hurts their bottom line. Green Day did something completely different. They
had recorded so much material by the summer of 2012, they put out three individual albums called
"uno", "dos" and "Tre", whose release dates would be roughly a month apart in the later part of
2012. each record would feature a different member on the cover. Personally I've always liked "uno"
and "tre" the best. "dos", I could take it or leave it. Prior to the first of the three albums
coming out, which was "uno", the band was out promoting the crap out of the record. they were
showing up on venues that traditionally rock bands wouldn't go on, including America's Got Talent and
The Voice. I don't really watch these shows and Howard Stern being on America's Got Talent wasn't
enough for me to tune into that awful show. for those of you who don't know, IHeartRadio used
to be called Clear Channel. yes, Howard Stern's former boss, when he was on terrestrial radio.
After Stern left, the failing company had tried to rebrand itself with little luck. Since 2010 they
had been holding the annual iHeartRadio Music Festival which brings together artists from
various genres or so it's marketed. in reality is more heavily leaning towards pop music. Green Day
had their "uno" album coming out in September of 2012 and about a week before the record dropped
they played the festival and they were joined by a pretty eclectic lineup including Usher,
psy, if you guys remember Gangnam style, and 'lil wayne. by this point in their career, Green Day
were workhorses. They had been working non-stop since 2009 putting out records, doing a musical,
touring and of course that type of lifestyle will eventually catch up with you, especially
as you get older. at the same time, many people who find themselves in this situation, are too
attracted to the money to stop. In Billie Joe Armstrong's case, he was now part of the 1% that
was so vilified at the beginning of the 2010s. that's not to say that money was his motivation,
he's a musician after all and if he's anything like me, I go stir-crazy sitting for too long at
home and doing nothing. according to one estimate, Billie Joe Armstrong was the 42nd richest singer
in rock n' roll, with a net worth of more than $55 million, making him wealthier than fellow
rock legends like Vince Neil and David Lee Roth. Armstrong would tell Rolling Stone in 2013 that,
as the Occupy Wall Street movement was starting he'd say, "I feel like a 99 but technically I'm
a one-percenter. I know that's where I come from, the 99, even though I can afford for my
kids to go to a good college." The Occupy Wall Street movement would even inspire the song "99
revolutions", which would end up on the "tre" album. In my opinion, it's one of the better
songs off the three records. on September 21st, the band would be playing a set at
the iHeartRadio Music Festival which would only be about 25 minutes in length, which was much shorter
than a typical Green Day show. when you watch the performance, you can tell the crowd wasn't
really into Green Day and they were there to see the pop acts, even before Billy Joe's epic rant,
you can see him try to excite the audience by getting them to sing along and stand up
but they're not really having any of it as you can see in this clip. [Music] "Get up you [explicit]".
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 proceeded to start the song but it wasn't until the band was partway
through the song that they were notified they only had one minute left that Armstrong completely lost
it. Here's the clip. "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. I'll tell you that right now. I'll tell you one thing,
I'll say Julio Cesar Chavez has got one [explicit] minute a knockout [explicit]
some other [explicit] for [explicit] Argentina, I'll tell you that." [Music] "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." of course, the clip would go viral but
nobody outside of the band's tightness circle knew whether the clip was a punk-rock statement
or something more serious. Shortly after the performance, Green Day announced that Armstrong
was going to a month-long outpatient rehab program for, as the band put it, "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 canceled those dates and killed
any kind of promotion for their subsequent to records, "dos" and "tre" which ended up selling
pretty poorly compared to the band's previous works. Almost seven months after the incident,
Armstrong and his bandmates were ready to hit the road again and 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 would tie 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 end up dying a year later. Armstrong would say,
"it was a really stupid thing. a lot of that stuff was just going on." Armstrong would also reveal to
Rolling Stone that in the summer of 2012, it was a really mixed time for him saying that on one hand
he was happy and had one of the best times making the three records but following the mixing of the
albums, he was hit with tragedy when his aunt would pass away. he would claim, "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." I don't know about you guys but I can relate to this level of stress and anxiety. It
kind of feels like you can't do it and it becomes overwhelming and it's just a nasty cycle that just
repeats itself and if affects everything in your life from sleeping to eating to just basically
functioning. In the same interview, Armstrong would go on to 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. on top of that,
Armstrong was also drinking to the point where he would, as he put it, "wake up in a strange house,
on a couch, I wouldn't remember how. it was a complete blackout." What's ironic about this whole
thing is that one week prior to the iheartradio gig, Armstrong would reveal that the band's
manager knew that the singer needed to get help as he recalled how the band was on tour in Europe and
Japan. Armstrong would reveal, "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
and one night I called a friend of mine who was up the hotel room next door. I said, "come on over,
have some coffee. It's 7:00 a.m. and I'm like, 'I just took all the stuff I can't sleep.' it
was all normal talk, like how we're talking now. afterwards, 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 canceling 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.' We talked about it later. we got to this theater gig we were playing
in London. I said, 'I don't want to cancel these gigs. it just can't happen. tell you what, as soon
as we get home, when we're done with the press and the stuff, after iHeartRadio, the week following
I'll go into rehab but I can't cancel any of the stuff now." "it turned out I was a week ahead of
schedule," Armstrong would say. during the same interview 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 would reveal that he would be writing 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." Armstrong would end up running 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." 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 five years, they seem to
have put that incident behind them and have since released two records including 2016's "revolution
radio" and their upcoming record, "father of all", which comes out today. if you guys love Green Day,
then check out my look at the band's historic 1994 album "Dookie" on the screen now. As always guys,
if you have suggestions for topics you like to see me cover, be sure to reply to the pinned
comment down below. don't forget to hit the like and subscribe button. take care.