Green Day’s headlining set atOutside Landsover the weekend was a milestone for the beloved East Bay pop punk trio. But the band’s first time performing at the San Francisco summer festival was also life changing for another boy from across the Bay Bridge.
One of the mostmemorable momentsfrom the three-day festival happened Saturday, Aug. 6, when frontman Billie Joe Armstrong plucked a 10-year-old named Montgomery out of the crowd to join him onstage to play a cover of “Knowledge,” the 1989 hit by fellow East Bay rockers Operation Ivy. Armstrong has a member of the crowd join the band at every show, so Montgomery knew it was coming — and he was prepared.
蒙哥马利的父亲在一次独家采访他and his son did with The Chronicle, said the fifth-grader made a sign two weeks before the festival — his first ever live concert — that read: “I’m 10. I came here to play with you.”
“Since we got the tickets, he told me, ‘I’m going to play with them.’ I know it sounds crazy, but he said that for weeks,” said Kevin, who requested that his family’s last name not be used to protect their privacy. “I told him it was a long shot.”
So how did a long shot turn into a reality? Pure luck, Kevin said.
The music-loving father brought Montgomery and his 6-year-old sister to Golden Gate Park just as the festival gates opened at 11 a.m. Saturday, wearing their one-day general admission wristbands. They didn’t camp out in front of the Lands End Stage all day, but as Green Day’s 8:20 p.m. set approached, they decided to hang out near the stage. That’s when someone with the band spotted them and “asked the kids if they wanted a better view,” Kevin said. The trio soon found themselves in a special section at the foot of center stage, along with fewer than a dozen other fans.
“The show starts and we’re 9 feet from the bass player (Mike Dirnt) and, like, 5 feet from Billie Joe,” Kevin said.
更多的than halfway throughGreen Day’s set, after performing an extended rendition of 2000’s “Minority,” Armstrong scanned the crowd.
“All right, who knows how to play the guitar? I need a guitarist. I need a guitar-ish,” Armstrong announced. “It’s only three f—ing chords.”
That’s when the small group of VIPs began to point to Montgomery, who was sporting a red 49ers cap.
“This little guy knows how to play?” Armstrong asked, pointing offstage. “You’re 10 years old and you know how to play? You swear to God?”
As seen in videos that have since gone viral, Armstrong gives Montgomery a hug and fumbles with a twisted guitar strap to set him up to play. Asked what Armstrong was saying to him at the time, Montgomery recalled matter-of-factly: “He said the strap is f—ed up.”
What happened next was a rush of adrenaline.
“I was really just focusing on playing the guitar and focused on Billie Joe Armstrong and all of that — just looking out on the crowd with all the big lights and stuff,” Montgomery said Monday, after his first day back at school, where, he admitted, he was treated like a rock star. “I wasn’t really nervous. I just fell right in. … I just got on the guitar and started rocking out.”
After wrapping up the song and doing a little jump onstage, Montgomery was gifted the guitar he’d played: a white Epiphone Les Paul, with Armstrong’s autograph on its neck, and a leopard print-lined guitar case.
Then Armstrong led the crowd in a chant of “Monty! Monty! Monty!”
What a great memory for 10-year-old Montgomery#outsidelandspic.twitter.com/73FIQs2Y3L
- Mariecar门多萨(@SFMarMendoza)8月ust 7, 2022
“The touching part for me, as a parent, really wasn’t so much the performance — even though it was spectacular — it came afterwards when the concert was over and we walked through that crowd and thousands of people were screaming ‘Monty!’ ” Kevin said. “People wanted his autograph … and it was just hours of people telling him he crushed it.”
And Montgomery managed to crush it after just nine months of teaching himself how to play via YouTube videos, shortly after his dad got him into listening to Green Day.
Montgomery’s favorite song is “When I Come Around” — released nearly two decades before he was born — that he said he taught himself to play in two days. Now he said he wants to grow up to be a musician (or maybe a construction worker) and once again play on the Lands End Stage for Outside Lands someday.
Until then, he vows to keep practicing. While he said he hasn’t played his new guitar again since Saturday (he’s afraid of scraping it up too much), he’s got two other guitars and the piano to keep him busy. In fact, after seeingthe Linda Lindasat Outside Lands, an all-girl band whose members are much closer to his age, he’s already taught himself how to play their song “Nina.”
With the pair of drumsticks he got from Green Day drummer Tre Cool, who handed out a bucket full of autographed sticks to the festival crowd, he’s also thinking about picking up the drums.
For the record, Montgomery doesn’t have a band right now, but said, “I’m looking for one.” And he already has his sights set on performing with another one of his favorite bands: Smashing Pumpkins.
Your move, Billy Corgan.