Footnotes:
    [1] Partial
    [2] With Gavin Freitas
    [3] With D Generation

Show Notes: Kerrang: "2,000 assholes and Billie Joe's mom."

Stephen Forbes: "This happened at the Filmore in SF in '97. The story is, this guy with a green mohawk (typical gutter punk) that hated Green Day came with his girlfriend (also a gutter punk with green mohawk) who loved Green Day. The guy was spitting on people and pushing and hitting people in the crowd and generally just being a total dick. The best part of the story is that after Billie jumped in the crowd he accidentally punched the girl instead of the guy. The girl ended up getting free tickets to the remaining two or three shows they were doing at the Filmore. Yes, I was there. It was crazy, I couldn't see what happened after Billie jumped into the crowd, but there was a write up in a local paper about how he punched the girl and how he felt bad and gave her free tickets to the remaining shows. I thought it was so cool that Billie went after that guy though. He really deserved it! Maybe the girl too for bringing that jerk."

Laura: "The signal to everyone that Green Day was coming on was the song Whip It. Everyone started to pogo and scream. Mike didn't use his G-3, though some say it was stashed away behind an amp. Billie Joe introduced his mom by shining a flashlight on her and telling the crowd to say, 'Hello, Mrs. Armstrong!' After a few minutes of babble about how drunk they were and how good they felt to be home, Billie Joe's expression changed. Suddenly, he yelled out, 'You wanna fight?! Come up here! Come on! You little mohawk motherfucker!' And with that, he jumped into the crowd to fight the dude. The two guys had to be dragged apart. Mike stood there looking surprsied. He offered this in Billie's defense, 'Go back to your mama, bitch!' Billie Joe came back onstage looking pissed. Ironically, the song they played after the fight was Nice Guys Finish Last. They played the favorites from Dookie and Kerplunk, and a Pinhead Gunpowder cover of a Joni Mitchell song. As well as the best from Nimrod and Geek Stink Breath from Insomniac, blah blah blah. The moshing was wild shit, man. Tre kept doing stuff to rile up the crowd. All three guys seemed ready to take on anything that came their way. (Shoes, fists from little dickheaded moshers, etc.) When it came time to play Knowledge, of course they wanted to choose someone from the crowd to play guitar, but beforehand, Billie laid out a whole long speech about Jesse Michaels. Since Marisa and I were right below Billie's view, we yelled at him to let her come onstage. BUT NO. We knew he wouldn't let her though she'd hoped. A photographer in front of Marisa who happened to be a friend of Billie's, climbed onto the crowd barrier the same time as Marisa. Billie saw her and said, 'Not you!' She totally looked like she was gonna cry, so I hugged her. The guy was so obnoxious about being onstage, playing Blue. Towards the end, Billie Joe started spraying water on people. They trashed the stage after being up there two hours. Billie Joe was laying there like a mental patient, letting harsh feedback reverberate from his guitar while the drums lay smashed with Mike's new Fender bass inside."

Superdookie: "Craziest show of my life. As is documented on the bootleg, Billie jumped in to the audience to stop some "mohawk motherfucker" from beating people up in the pit. I ended right next to Billie. A couple of songs later, Billie gave his mother a shout out. She was apparently in one of the boxes in the balcony. He apologized for getting in to a fight and pleaded not to put him "on report" or something. Billie was quite drunk. Billie did a funny half-hearted cover of Sugar Ray's "Fly" changing the lyrics to "I just want to fuck. Wrap your legs around me baby. Wrap your legs around me baby." They took requests at some point and Billie made some comment about how the crowd probably wanted them to play the Smashing Pumpkins. He also bemoaned the disappearance of Jesse Michaels and (kinda) dissed Rancid ("Psah! Whatever!"). Someone threw a cup or something on stage during "Prosthetic Head". Almost on cue, Billie looked the person right in the eye and sang the line, "You're pathetic!". I was hanging out near the backstage exit after the show and asked some guy who was exiting if I could borrow his backstage pass. For reasons I will never understand, he gave it to me, only asking that I give it back to him after I came out (I guess he hung around outside while I was there). So I went backstage. Tre had a couple of groupies hanging off him but I shot the shit with him a bit. I had long hair at the time and he made fun of it. I asked him to sign the back of my shirt and he wrote "Kick Me". I also asked him about a story he'd told on KROQ about riding a unicycle, falling off, and losing one of his testicles (which, Mike quipped, now made him a "eunuch-cyclist"). Having seemingly forgotten that he'd recounted the story to the audience of LA's biggest rock station, he looked at me quizzically and asked me how I knew about that. Mike was cool. I asked him about the collaboration they'd done with Bone Thugs n' Harmony and why it wouldn't be released (I asked him if it sucked). He said that it didn't suck but wasn't sure why they couldn't release it. I didn't really get a chance to talk to Billie as he was surrounded by industry types. After a while I got frustrated and just butted in, thanking him for writing music that had got me through a lot of shit. He seemed to really appreciate that and thanked me for letting him know. On the way out, I gave the guy back his backstage pass. I really could not believe the next day that all of that had actually happened."

Opening Band(s): D Generation

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Tour Statistics: Nimrod tour
Show Reviews: 0