SXSW Music: After a Hiatus, Green Day Returns

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong said little about his recent stint in rehab during a two-hour concert at Austin City Limits Live on Friday night, but he made it clear that he was in a celebratory mood, whipping the crowded theater into a frenzy with exhortations to “get crazy.”

The concert at the South by Southwest Music Festival was the highest profile event Mr. Armstrong and his Grammy-winning band have done since he went into treatment for drug addiction last fall, postponing a tour of arenas. The band did three less-publicized shows last week at theaters in Pomona, Calif., Tempe, Ariz., and El Paso.

Mr. Armstrong, 41, made only one oblique reference to his problems with substance abuse. When a technician ran onstage to change a microphone during a sudden stop in the middle of a song, switching it just before Mr. Armstrong started to sing, he broke character and started giggling. “And I wasn’t even on drugs,” he said, when he regained his composure. At other ties during the 25-song marathon, he sat down on the drum platform and placed his face in his hands for a moment, as if trying to regain composure.

But over all he was energetic and jubilant, giving a big kiss to a teenage boy he invited on stage to sing with him and yelling repeatedly that he loved Texas. He let the crowd handle some of the verses on his best known songs, including the first verse of American Idiot, which was an encore.

Mr. Armstrong’s genial performance was a far cry from his profane temper tantrum at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas in September, when he complained that the band’s time was being cut short and smashed his guitar. Two days later, Green Day announced that Mr. Armstrong was headed to treatment for substance abuse.

Green Day is one of the big-name acts at the festival this year, along w! ith Justin Timberlake, Dave Grohl and Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dog). Prince is scheduled to play an intimate finale on Saturday, the last official night of the event, at a small Austin club.

Green Day’s delayed tour will begin March 28 in Chicago. Band members also appeared at a showing here earlier Friday of the documentary “Broadway Idiot,” which is about their project to turn their 2004 album “American Idiot” into a musical.