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Green Day was the opening band on the second half of the 1994 Lollapalooza tour, but it wasn't the then-traveling festival's founder Perry Farrell who booked them. In fact, the Jane's Addiction singer tried to get them cut from the bill because he thought they were a "boy band."
The story is part of the newly released book LOLLAPALOOZA: The Uncensored Story of Alternative Rock’s Wildest Festival, which gives the oral history of the festival's original run from 1991-1997 through the accounts of several musicians and music industry members.
“I can’t think of a single time that Perry pushed back or vetoed a band — except for Green Day," John Rubeli, who was a Lollapalooza stage manager at the time, recalled in the book (via Consequence). "He was like, ‘They’re a boy band. I don’t want to book a boy band.'”
“Perry was a f***ing a**hole, straight up," Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said bluntly." 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 [Japanese noise band] 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.”
Rubeli added: “To Perry’s credit, I was able to go through [Green Day’s] history in the Bay Area and how they had released indie records and eventually he said, “Okay, they can do half the tour, but I want the Boredoms on the other half.'”
“For us it was really disappointing, because Perry was someone that we really respected," Armstrong admitted. "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 a**.”
Unhappy with Farrell's accusations, Green Day decided to dedicate their song "Chump" to him.
“He had minions that would come up and say, ‘Perry Farrell’s really angry that you dedicated ‘Chump’ to him," Armstrong recalled. "And I’m like, ‘Tell him to stop acting like one.'”
Green Day ended up becoming one of the biggest rock bands from that era and are still going strong. They're playing several festivals this year, including Coachella.