Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong opens up about his battles with substance abuse in the new issue of Rolling Stone,which hits newsstands on Friday.
"I couldn't predict where I was going to end up at the end of the night," says Armstrong. "I'd wake up in a strange house on a couch. I wouldn't remember how. It was a complete blackout."
He finally confronted his problem after an onstage meltdown in Las Vegas last September, where the frontman smashed his guitar onstage and shouted, "I'm not Justin Bieber." Armstrong's recovery sidetracked promotion of Green Day's album trilogy ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré!, and the group was forced to postpone tour dates.
"I remember tiny things," Armstrong says of the Vegas incident. "The next morning, I woke up. I asked [my wife] Adrienne, "How bad was it?" She said, "It's bad." I called my manager. He said, "You're getting on a plane, going back to Oakland and going into rehab immediately."
Armstrong’s interview comes as Green Day gear up for their live return to the stage March 10 at the Fox Theater in Pomona, CA.
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