Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong has said that his past drinking problems were related to issues with stage fright.
The singer entered rehab in 2012 after an onstage meltdown during a performance at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.
He then returned to the stage with Green Day the following year, and has spoken openly about his recovery since.
In a new interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Armstrong said: “I get massive stage fright, it’s the anticipation of all day going on and getting ready to go on stage at a stadium or something.
“I started around the record after ‘Dookie’, that I would get so nervous that I started drinking more before shows. I was like, ‘Hey that works, I’m gonna keep doing that’. Then I realised, ‘Woah I keep drinking after the show too and during the show’. It just kinda happened.”
He added: “I’ll be fine for a few drinks then some other guy starts to come into the picture. Not angry, I start to turn into everyone’s drunk annoying uncle.
“It can get really funny then it can turn where I can’t switch it off and I’m drinking until [4am]. There were other human garbage can moments where other drugs were involved but that’s the thing, I just want to keep going.”
On recent single ‘Dilemma’, a track from Green Day’s 14th studio album ‘Saviors’ (out this Friday, January 19), Armstrong discusses his substance issues.
“We’ve seen so many of our peers struggle with addiction and mental illness,” he said. “This song is all about the pain that comes from those experiences.”
Reviewing ‘Saviors’, NME said: “There’s some serendipity in the band hitting the road to celebrate 30 years of ‘Dookie’ and 20 years of ‘American Idiot’ later this summer. Not only does ‘Saviors’ spiritually bridge the gap between the two, but it uses the palette of the best of the band to tell us something else.
“Look to the artwork: ‘Dookie’ was a cheeky carpet-bombing of shit, ‘American Idiot’ was a hand grenade, ‘Saviors’ is an act of defiance met with a shrug; a band saying, “We’re still here and we’re still fucked”.