“He looked at me and he goes, ‘You’re the only one that understands me. People think I’m an alien because of the way I play’”: Why Eddie Van Halen cried when he met Billie Joe Armstrong

Eddie Van Halen and Billie Joe Armstrong.

When Billie Joe Armstrong went to watch Van Halen as an aspiring 12-year-old and started crying because of the sheer majesty of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing, he probably had no idea he’d be the one reducing his hero to tears decades later.

But that’s exactly what happened: during a recent interview with Howard Stern, the Green Day frontman recalled how the late electric guitar great literally cried when he met Armstrong backstage.