Perry Farrell alienated his Jane's Addiction bandmates with an onstage fight last year, and now Billie Joe Armstrong has shared his own horror story, calling Farrell an "asshole" over how he treated Green Day at Lollapalooza in the '90s.
This revelation came in the new book Lollapalooza: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival, an oral history from authors Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock. In it, one-time Lollapalooza stage manager John Rubeli recalled Farrell vetoing Green Day performing at the festival, calling them a "boy band" before learning about their indie roots.
"Perry was a fucking asshole, straight up," Armstrong said. "He wasn't a part of that conversation, because he'd checked out, but they asked us to play it and we said yes. And it was going to be the Boredoms on the first half, and us on the second half as the opening band. And then all of a sudden, he comes back in and he's like, 'I don't want them on the bill.' Apparently, he thought that we were a band that was put together by [record executive] Mo Ostin at Warner Bros."
He continued, "For us it was really disappointing, because Perry was someone that we really respected. I think that made us want to play [Lollapalooza] even more, actually, because we wanted to prove that he had his head very far up his own ass."
Armstrong ended up dedicating Green Day's Dookie song "Chump" to Farrell during the concert. The song includes lyrics like, "I don't know you, but I think I hate you / You're the reason for my misery / Strange how you've become my biggest enemy."
Armstrong said, "He had minions that would come up and say, 'Perry Farrell's really angry that you dedicated 'Chump' to him. And I'm like, 'Tell him to stop acting like one.'"
The pair apparently made peace soon after, when they shook hands that same summer at Woodstock '94.