Posted on: September 22, 2024, 02:18h.
Last updated on: September 22, 2024, 02:50h.
It’s easy to figure out what’s behind the hatred Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong expressed for Las Vegas on Friday night when you consider where he said it. The singer was standing on a stage erected in a San Francisco baseball stadium. It was Oracle Park, not the Oakland Coliseum, but you get the idea.
Armstrong grew up worshipping the Oakland A’s and, like millions of the team’s fans, is enraged that billionaire owner John Fisher has decided to thumb his nose at the ballclub’s 56-year history in the East Bay just to build a cheaper new stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. (OK, so maybe it’s more like the team’s tens of thousands of fans, judging from lackluster attendance figures in recent years.)
“We don’t take shit from people like fucking John Fisher,” the “Dookie” singer huffed as the sold-out crowd of 42,000 cheered. “I hate Las Vegas! It’s the worst shithole in America!”
Of course, what happens in San Francisco doesn’t stay in San Francisco anymore — not since the advent of social media.
The band’s current “Saviors” tour includes no stops in Las Vegas, and it is wise not to add any while the memory of Armstrong’s tirade remains fresh.
Vegas Vitriol in Vain?
Things haven’t always gone so great for Green Day in Sin City.
On Sept. 21, 2012, during his band’s set at the pop-oriented iHeartRadio Music Festival, Armstrong halted the band’s 1994 hit “Basket Case” to throw a conniption fit. He smashed his guitar and stormed off stage early when confronted with a blinking sign warning him that Green Day’s allotted time was drawing to a close.
“Fuck this shit!” Armstrong screamed. “I’ve been around since 19-fucking-88. And you’re gonna give me one fucking minute? I’m not fucking Justin Bieber, you motherfuckers. You gotta be fuckin’ joking!”
The band issued a statement apologizing for that incident and, not uncoincidentally, Armstrong entered a rehab facility shortly thereafter.
Still, that incident could have happened anywhere. And Green Day seemed to have had a great time during their last visit to Las Vegas — for the When We Were Young Festival on Oct. 22, 2023, which included a surprise show at the intimate Fremont County Club three days earlier.
If Armstrong’s Las Vegas venom is purely baseball-related, as it seems to be, he may have to reconsider the city he spits it at. And that’s because the Oakland A’s may never end up playing there.
Through the 2027 season, the team is committed to play in Sacramento, Calif. which is where it may end up permanently. A growing chorus of industry insiders suspect that this is a good possibility, since Fisher has shown no real plan for how to finance his proposed $1.5 billion stadium on the former site of the Tropicana, and reportedly remains reticent to invest any of his own money.
