Billie Joe Armstrong visits Liverpool Cavern Club, watches singer play Green Day song

A musician at Liverpool’s Cavern Club got a surprise this week when he found himself performing a Green Day song in front of Billie Joe Armstrong.

Callum McMorran was playing a set at the legendary former Beatles haunt on Tuesday night (January 7) when he realised that his performance of ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’ was being watched by the song’s original composer.

McMorran played the classic 1997 song solo on acoustic guitar, with footage taken from the crowd revealing that Armstrong, who just happened to be visiting the Cavern at the time, was also filming the performance on his phone.

“Cool moment tonight,” McMorran wrote on his Instagram after the show. Check out the video below.

A post shared by The Cavern Club (@cavernliverpool)

A post shared by Callum Mac (@callummcmorran)

A post shared by The Cavern Club (@cavernliverpool)

‘Good Riddance’ was included on Green Day’s fifth album ‘Nimrod’, with Armstrong writing it several years earlier, inspired by his resentment over a former girlfriend named Amanda who left for Ecuador. Its slower pace and string arrangement made it an immediate outlier in the band’s catalogue, and it quickly became a fan favourite, even charting in the UK at Number 11.

The Cavern Club, located on Liverpool’s Matthew Street, was fundamentally important to the early career of The Beatles, with the band playing the venue almost 300 times between 1961 and 1963, the period during which they became the most successful band in the country. It continues to host live music seven nights a week, having reopened its doors in 1991.

McMorran is a resident musician at the Cavern and also appeared on The Voice UK in 2015.

Armstrong is no stranger to playing covers himself – last month his band The Coverups, which also features Green Day’s Mike Dirnt, announced they will play an intimate show at London’s O2 Islington Academy on January 15. Find any remaining tickets for that show here.

The Coverups played in London last year, where they invited Courtney Love on stage with them. NME spoke with Green Day at the 2024 BRIT Awards about the shows, with Armstrong saying: “I was texting with [Courtney Love] and I said come on out and do a song, and she did. She did ‘Suffragette City’, she did ‘Surrender’, and we got to do ‘Celebrity Skin’ – the Hole song. But she definitely brought the rock and roll back…you’ll probably be hearing more from her.”

In other Armstrong news, he was recently spotted at a Wrexham FC game with actor Channing Tatum. The singer has previously professed his love of lower-league football and has made a habit of going to watch games when Green Day are in the UK.

“I went to a lot of football games: Arsenal, Leyton Orient, Fulham. I went to The Den to see Millwall. That was amazing. Man, if you really want to experience British culture that’s what you should do,” he said in 2023.

“Football is like a fucking religion. It’s like being at a big rock concert. You practically need earplugs! I’ve always wanted to check out all the different divisions, not just the world-class teams like Arsenal and Man City.”

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