Eddie Van Halen Cried When He Met Billie Joe Armstrong

01-20-2024

(SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show) Green Day appeared on SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday morning to promote their new album "Saviors." During the chat frontman Billie Joe Armstrong recalled meeting Eddie Van Halen.

"When I saw Van Halen in '84 I was 12, and they were my favorite band, and I cried," Armstrong recalled of his first-ever rock concert. "It's like [Eddie's] guitar playing came from a different place. He reinvented how to play guitar, but they also wrote great songs, and I think that's the main thing I took away from Van Halen."

"We went to the Midwest to see them play, and they were incredible. It was kind of an emotional thing," Billie Joe told Howard before recalling how surreal it felt to go backstage and chat with the guitar legend while he prepped for a show: "He's talking to me and shredding at the same time, and I was just like 'Oh my god.'"

"This really insane thing happened where [Eddie] kind of started crying. He looked at me, and he put his hand behind my neck ... and he goes, 'You're the only one that understands me,' and he just had tears coming down his eyes ... He was like, 'People think I'm an alien the way I play,'" Billie Joe said. "It was this really kind of heavy experience ... I didn't really know what to say. I was like, 'Man, you have no idea how much you've meant to me as a musician and a songwriter.'" Check out more from the appearance here.