The iHeartRadio festival was this past weekend, because hey, why not, another music festival. We can never have enough music fests with a handful of big names and then, like a hundred bands you’ve never heard of. Anyway, Green Day was playing the festival, and had agreed upon a forty-five minute set list, when the organizers gave them a one minute notice. For the record: For anyone who’s ever performed live, this is kind of de rigeur. Well, apparently frontman Billie Joe Armstrong didn’t take it well, flipped off the festival, smashed a guitar, and stormed off stage. So now he’s going to rehab for … substance abuse? Really? Okay then. From the YouTube description on the video:
“Billie Joe is seeking treatment for substance abuse. 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. We regretfully must postpone some of our upcoming promotional appearances.” – GreenDay.com
It was cut off, here are the setlist times from iHeartRadio.com, Green Day’s videos add up to half an hour, here it says they were suppsed to have 45 minutes.
10:35p PT / 1:35a ET: USHER
11:05p PT / 2:00a ET: GREEN DAY
11:50p PT / 2:45a ET: RIHANNABillie Joe armstrong stops halfway through “Basket Case” to play a new song only to realize that they have one minute left on the stage. He gets angry and complains before smashing his guitar and flipping the camera off during Green Days set at iHeartRadio music festival in Las Vegas.
So as you can see, it wasn’t like they were cutting them off at some arbitrary time in order to tell everyone to shut up and go home; they had a schedule to stick to, and going on longer would have taken time from Rihanna’s set. This isn’t a matter of talent or who’s more famous; They agreed to the time limit, there’s a set list that the festival has to stick to, and they can’t hold up the show because one of the performers is having a hissy fit.
