In the new book “Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival” by authors Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong revealed that they almost didn’t take part in Lollapalooza 1994 thanks to Jane’s Addiction frontman and Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell.
While Green Day did end up joining the second half of that festival tour, if it were up to Farrell they would have never even been booked.
As Lollapalooza’s former stage manager John Rubeli recalls in the book: “I can’t think of a single time that Perry pushed back or vetoed a band – except for Green Day. … He was like, ‘They’re a boy band. I don’t want to book a boy band.’”
Regarding the whole ordeal, Armstrong said: “Perry was a f*cking a*hole, straight up. He wasn’t a part of that conversation, because he’d checked out, but they asked us to play it and we said yes.
“And it was going to be the Boredoms on the first half, and us on the second half as the opening band. And then all of a sudden, he comes back in and he’s like, ‘I don’t want them on the bill.’ Apparently, he thought that we were a band that was put together by [record executive] Mo Ostin at Warner Bros.”
Rubeli added: “To Perry’s credit, I was able to go through [Green Day’s] history in the Bay Area and how they had released indie records and eventually he said, ‘OK, they can do half the tour, but I want the Boredoms on the other half.’”
During one of Green Day’s performances at Lollapalooza, the band called Farrell out by dedicating their song “Chump” to the Jane’s Addiction frontman.
“For us it was really disappointing, because Perry was someone that we really respected,” Armstrong said. “I think that made us want to play [Lollapalooza] even more, actually, because we wanted to prove that he had his head very far up his own a**.
“He had minions that would come up and say, ‘Perry Farrell’s really angry that you dedicated ‘Chump’ to him. And I’m like, ‘Tell him to stop acting like one.’”
Armstrong went on to say that he never interacted with Farrell personally until the two of them met at Woodstock ‘94 later that summer where they only briefly shook hands.
