Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong’s Rehab Is ‘No Joke’, Says Producer
Last month after Green Day’s front man Billie Joe Armstrong had a freak out moment on stage at the iHeartRadio music festival, Joe checked into rehab for substance abuse.
After Green Day decided to cancel their appearance at the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience festival, their producer and Warner Brothers Records Chairman Rob Cavallo hints that they may have to cancel even more shows as Armstrong’s recovery is said to be a long one. “His rehab is no joke,” says Cavallo, who weighed in on the issue. “He’s under medical supervision for a while to get him clean.”
The band currently are still slated to make appearances as soon as November 26 at Seattle’s Paramount Theater. It’s unsure whether or not more dates will be cancelled, but they just might be if Billie isn’t doing well. “His doctors are still evaluating,” says Cavallo who is responsible for producing arguably two of the best Green Day albums, 1994’s Dookie and 2004’s American Idiot.
Rob Cavallo continues to discuss the probability of how short the road will be for recovery, and it doesn’t look good, saying, “All I can say is I don’t know if we’ll see him before or after Christmas. It’s basically undetermined when he’ll be back.”
Earlier in the week Mike Dirnt, who’s the bassist for the band went on BBC Radio 1 and spoke to host Zane Lowe about Billie’s condition while promoting their three albums, ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tre! Dirnt went on to say:
“With hindsight 20/20, it was a tremendous undertaking. Although we were having fun, we didn’t take our nose out of the book for a long time. I think it catches up with you a little bit. We definitely just jumped off a moving train. We hadn’t slept in forever and Billie had definitely had the worst of it. He’d been going through his own struggles . . . We were there with him, but you can only handle things on your own . . . At the end of the day, when we got off the road, the most important thing was my friend’s life.”
Do you think Green Day will cancel more dates?
