Nearly one year ago, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong went on his now-famous rant at the 2012 iHeartRadio Music Festival. Two days after the rant, Armstrong revealed that he would enter rehab for substance abuse. Now that Green Day have returned to the stage and played a solid chunk of gigs, bassist Mike Dirnt has offered some inside info on the state of the band a year later in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.

Billie Joe Armstrong's iHeartRadio Music Festival tangent went viral shortly after the frontman's onstage meltdown. The profanity-laced tirade was at first thought to stem simply from Armstrong's frustration from getting the red light while performing, but his alcohol and prescription pill abuse was made apparent shortly after.

"From a personal point of view, there were doubts [about our future, but] my friends' lives come before the band," Mike Dirnt tells the Sydney Morning Herald. "As much as the band is part of our lives … we have to be healthy – mentally and physically – and what we do on stage is not easy, it carries a lot of responsibility, and it carries a lot of physical stress and mental stress. At this point, [Green Day] is held to a higher bar than we would have been a long time ago. We hadn't taken a vacation, hadn't looked up, hadn't done anything that wasn't writing music and touring."

As for the current state of Green Day, Dirnt is optimistic about the band's future. "It's pretty awesome right now," Dirnt shares. "Before it was tense … it was chaos [touring the world after] coming right out of recording ['Uno,' 'Dos' and 'Tre']. Now we've had time to let the dust settle and get our s--t together, we're ready to tour and play."

Check out the full article on Mike Dirnt's thoughts at TheAge.com.au.

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