A teenage boy had the time of his life at Green Day 's Glasgow gig after being invited on stage to play guitar alongside his idols in front of thousands of screaming fans. Ren Paterson, 17, was picked out of the crowd by punk frontman Billie Joe Armstrong after the singer spotted his sign asking: "Can I play Basket Case?".
The youngster, a music student at New College Lanarkshire, was brought on stage at Bellahouston Park and strapped up with a guitar to play live alongside Billie Joe, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool on Tuesday night. Speaking to the Record, the teenager says the experience still doesn't feel real.
Ren, from Chapelhall near Airdrie, said: "When Billie Joe came down the catwalk he saw my sign and asked if I can play Basket Case but I wasn't expecting him to actually let me. It was all a bit of a blur and it didn't feel real. It still doesn't.
"I can't really remember what it was like being up on stage. I was keeping my head down because there was a bright light in front of me. I didn't want to look up!
"I struggled at first because of the tuning of the guitar but I've been playing for about seven or eight years and I figured out what he was playing and went with it."
Ren got the tickets to the Hella Mega Tour show - a triple-whammy headliner gig featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer - for Christmas in 2019. The show was delayed several times over because of the coronavirus pandemic - but the wait paid off for fan Ren, his astonished brother Ollie and auntie Karen.
Billie Joe picked out Ren after spotting his sign, asking him: "Can you play guitar? And Basket Case? Okay kid, get your ass up here, let's go!"
Footage from the concert shows a grinning Ren on stage with Billie joe as he strums out the chords to the hit tune - one of Green Day's earliest big hits from 1994's breakout album Dookie.
He even gets the seal of approval from the legendary punk singer, who shouts to the crowd: "This is f****** beautiful, man!" As the teenager prepared to hand the guitar back, the punk icons told him: "You get to keep the guitar. That's yours."
He was then applauded off stage by the thousands-strong crowd as he returned to his beaming family. After the gig at Glasgow's Bellahouston Park, he hung back to pick up the white Epiphone Les Paul, which was presented to him in a case and signed on the headstock by Billie Joe himself.
He's the pride of parents Lisa and Martin, who say they're "awestruck and dumbfounded" by their son's lucky break - and his on-stage confidence. And Ren says the invitation is open to Billie Joe anytime he's in Airdrie if he's up for another jam session.
He added: "There were people stopping me asking if it was me up on the stage, and I've had friends from college who were at the gig messaging me and sending me videos of the reaction.
"I'm not sure whether I want to keep the guitar nice or play it - I'll decide that later."
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