Billie Joe Armstrong has had enough of non-fans asking for photos.
In a new interview with Kerrang!, the Green Day star opened up about fame, mental health, and his opinions on social media.
“Sometimes it’s great,” the rock legend said of fame. “When I’m able to communicate with fans and people are cool, and when people get something out of the music and you make these connections. But I think the thing that makes it uncomfortable is how fucked-up social media has become, and how everyone’s got a camera in their pocket now. There are a lot of people out there who aren’t fans who just wanna be guilty by association or something. They wanna hold you in their pocket as a souvenir. And I think that sometimes that’s the part that gets annoying.”
The Kerrang! Cover Story
Billie Joe Armstrong: Life lessons in punk rockRead the full interview now: https://t.co/FAmqaWGj9E
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— Kerrang! Magazine (@KerrangMagazine) August 5, 2020
Armstrong clarified that he loves meeting his fans but is uncomfortable with the non-fans who approach him when he’s “just sitting there in [his] fuckin’ sweats and they just want to get a piece of you for their own ego.”
The wide-ranging discussion also covered Armstrong’s views on mental health. In the chat, he mentioned feeling like he went through a “mid-life crisis” at age 20.
“I didn’t think I was gonna live that long,” Armstrong said. “It’s something that’s always been in my head. Whether it’s people dealing with PTSD or…like, everybody’s got a part of their brain that is neurotic, or maybe even paranoid, or bi-polar, or they have a personality disorder. The punk rock scene, for me, was a scene of all these people with personality disorders coming together a lot of the time. And I didn’t really realize that until later on.”
For more on Armstrong, and his No Fun Monday cover series, click here.
