Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has opened up about fame ("I don’t like my picture being taken with people") and survival ("I never expected to live this long") in an industry that some have not been able to handle.
“Who knows how long I’m gonna stick around? You know, I could get hit by a f**king bus tomorrow … or just one day not wake up,” the 48-year-old musician told Kerrang!. “It’s a scary f**king business.”
Armstrong said he sees rock stars as “very troubled people” and listed three who took their own lives – Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington and Kurt Cobain. He also cited Tom Petty, who died of an accidental drug overdose. “Nobody knew that the guy spent a lifetime on opiates.”
Armstrong said: “It’s like numbing yourself until you murder yourself. Music has always kind of been a big drug for me, but, at the same time, when you see these casualties, you’re like, ‘Oh, f**k, when is this gonna happen to me?’”
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The singer also admitted he is not completely comfortable with his fame. “The thing that makes it uncomfortable is how f**ked-up social media has become, and how everyone’s got a camera in their pocket now,” he explained. “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.”
Armstrong said he can usually figure out which selfie-seekers are genuine fans. “But then there are people where you’re just sitting there in your f**kin’ sweats and they just want to get a piece of you for their own ego,” he said.