Drone alarm during concert: Green Day storm off the stage in the middle of a song

Drone alarm during concert
Green Day storm off the stage in the middle of the song

06.09.2024, 18:34

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The fear of attacks is omnipresent. In this day and age, even of drone attacks. Green Day can now tell a story about this. Because a flying object approached the group during a concert in Detroit, the band members stormed off the stage in the middle of a song.

We have known for a long time that concerts where many people come together in a small space can be a potential target for attacks. Whether it was the devastating attack during an Eagles of Death Metal show in 2015 at the Bataclan club in Paris, the bloody act at an Ariana Grande performance in Manchester in 2017 or the mass murder in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall at a concert by the Russian band Piknik in March – they have all tragically demonstrated the vulnerability of such events.

In the age of drones, there is also a potential danger from the air. In July, for example, Britain’s King Charles III and his wife Camilla were evacuated to safety as a precaution during a visit to the Channel Islands. The reason, it was later rumored, was a drone that was visible in the air very close to the couple and whose origin could not be determined.

Video footage from a Green Day concert at Comercia Park in Detroit on Wednesday shows how volatile the situation can be when everything suddenly comes together. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and his bandmates are in the middle of the song “Longview” when they are told to leave the stage immediately. Green Day abruptly end their performance and rush towards the backstage area. Meanwhile, the fans continue singing the song undeterred.

“No motherfucker will stop us”

After about ten minutes, the band members returned to the stage and continued their concert. “No motherfucker is going to stop us,” Armstrong shouted to the crowd, without going into any more detail about the background of the incident. Green Day later commented in an Instagram story: “Detroit! Sorry for the delay during tonight’s show. Stadium security asked us to vacate the stage while they dealt with a possible security issue.” The police then quickly resolved the situation so that the show could continue.

The Detroit police were the ones who went into more detail about the events. “There was an individual who flew a drone into Comercia Park, which is why Green Day had to leave the stage,” explained a spokesman for the investigators. The person was identified and arrested in the course of further investigations.