Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Recalls Emotional First Encounter With a Crying Eddie Van Halen: “You’re the Only One That Understands Me”

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day spoke last week about his first experience seeing Van Halen live, and the emotional reaction he received upon meeting Eddie Van Halen a decade later. Armstrong first recounted seeing Van Halen in 1984, when he was 12.

“[Van Halen] were my favorite band, and I cried,” Armstrong told Howard Stern on January 17. “It’s like his guitar playing came from a different place. He reinvented how to play guitar. But they also wrote great songs, that’s the main thing that I took away from Van Halen. The songs were just so f—ing great.”

In 1996, when Van Halen briefly reunited with David Lee Roth, Armstrong and some friends flew to Kansas City to see the band. According to Armstrong, “We didn’t want to do it in California because we knew it was going to be a s–t show.”

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day Recalls Emotional Meeting with Eddie Van Halen

He then recalled his first and only meeting with Eddie Van Halen, calling it “an emotional thing.” Armstrong continued, “First we went back and I met Wolfie [Van Halen], who was super cool, and then they were like, ‘Do you want to meet Eddie?’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ And so he’s back there and he’s got his guitar on, he’s plugged in, and it’s like he’s talking to me and shredding at the same time, and I was just like, ‘Oh my God!’”

Billie Joe Armstrong grabbed Eddie Van Halen’s hands and marveled at their “gigantic” size compared with how nimbly he played guitar. Armstrong then said, “Then this really insane thing happened, where he started crying. He looked at me and he put his hand behind my neck, and he goes: ‘You’re the only one that understands me.’

“He had tears coming down his eyes and I didn’t really know what to say,” Armstrong continued. “I was like, ‘Man you have no idea how much you’ve meant to me as a musician and as a songwriter.’ He’s like, ‘People think I’m an alien because of the way I play,’ and I’m like, ‘It’s all about your songs,’ and he goes, ‘Exactly, exactly.’ It was this really kind of heavy experience.”

The emotional meeting ended with the arrival of Wolfgang, who urged his father along. “Eddie’s shredding, and [Wolfgang’s] going, ‘Dad, dad, dad … we have to tune,’” said Armstrong. “And then Eddie said the coolest thing, it was like a father-son moment: he goes, ‘Do you want to tune to me, or do you want me to tune to you?’

“That kind of bond that a father and son had as musicians, it always stuck with me as this beautiful thing,” Billie Joe Armstrong concluded.

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