Is it me or this Billie Joe Armstrong’s meltdown in Las Vegas looks staged and the opposite of what a spontaneous and impulsive reaction should look like? Iman said he totally disagrees with me, but I continue to see it as forced…. this, or he was drunk.
Green Day was playing the iHeart Radio Festival in Las Vegas on Friday night, and the band’s set was cut short, from 45 to 25 minutes because Usher and Rihanna wanted to play longer. So Billie Joe totally lost it in the middle of ‘Basket Case’ – or tried very hard to make us believe he lost it – and he began screaming a long tirade with an unbelievable number of f-words as if he was the first one coming up with that word. Did he really think he could still shock the audience by saying, ‘You’re fucking kidding me. What the fuck! I’m not fucking Justin Bieber, you motherfuckers. You’ve gotta be fucking joking. This is a fucking joke’… I mean you have to make good usage of ‘fuck’ and ‘fucking’, after a fuck-diarrhea, the words have completely lost any power and you look plain ridiculous. And Billie Joe, you may not be Bieber, but if your set is controlled by Usher, where is the difference?
Anyway, Billie Joe played it as if he was totally enraged and began to smash his guitar, because yeah he is not Bieber but a real 'punk' rocker,… Bieber was not even playing there by the way, so why isn’t he dropping Usher’s name if it was his fault?
I agree that it was not cool to cut Green Day’s performance to accommodate Sir Usher and princess Rihanna, he has reasons to be pissed off, but this come across as trying a little too hard to be badass and, you know… punk…. But on the other hand, would real punk bands play that family radio festival, this ClearChannel top 40 line-up?
But may be it was a smart move after all, may be it was the only way to make people talk about Green Day at this festival! Guess what, they weren't really the stars of the show, Usher and Rihanna were, but now Green Day is back in the news. Unfortunately, as was reported yesterday, that wasn't the case and Billie Joe is off to rehab.