Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong abruptly cut short Green Day's set at this past weekend's iHeart Music Festival in Las Vegas after the band's set was allegedly cut short my the show's producers.
In the video below, Armstrong can be seen cutting short the classic track "Basket Case" in order to play a new song, before seeing a prompter with "1 Minutes" on it facing the stage. The singer then launched into a verbal tirade.
"Let me tell you something, I've been around since 19-fucking-88," he yelled. "And you're gonna give me one fucking minute? You've gotta be fucking kidding me! You’re fucking kidding me. What the fuck! I'm not fucking Justin Bieber, you motherfuckers."
Armstrong then smashed his guitar, flipped off the camera and told the crowd, "God love you all, you'll see us again," before exiting the stage.
It has since come out that Armstrong has checked himself into rehab for undisclosed reasons, and the band have issued an official statement clarifying the events at the festival.
"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," the band said in a statement. "We regretfully must postpone some of our upcoming promotional appearances."
Uno!, the first of three upcoming albums from Green Day, is out tomorrow.
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For the full story on Green Day's upcoming trilogy of albums, check out and exclusive cover story with Billie Joe Armstrong in the November issue of Guitar World.
Josh Hart is a former web producer and staff writer for Guitar World and Guitar Aficionado magazines (2010–2012). He has since pursued writing fiction under various pseudonyms while exploring the technical underpinnings of journalism, now serving as a senior software engineer for The Seattle Times.
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