At a Green Day con­cert in Chica­go, a fan held up a sign, “I can play every song on Dook­ie.” So Bil­lie Joe Arm­strong let him pop on stage to play “When I Come Around.” And the fan did­n’t dis­ap­point, from the moment he climbed on the amp and kicked things off, to his stage dive back into the crowd. The footage was record­ed on Octo­ber 23rd. Enjoy.

h/t Robin — via SFGate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kei­th Moon, Drum­mer of The Who, Pass­es Out at 1973 Con­cert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

Blind Gui­tarist Lives Out Dream at U2 Show

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

A Paul Simon Feelin’-Very-Groovy Moment

Update on Novem­ber 10: We just got news that Leonard Cohen has passed, only a short few weeks after releas­ing his final album, avail­able below. The sad news comes from his Face­book page. 

Leonard Cohen’s new album You Want It Dark­er is stream­ing free online for a lim­it­ed time, thanks to NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Now 82 years old, and sens­ing that time is run­ning short, Cohen offers, writes Rolling Stone, a “gift to music lovers: a real­is­ti­cal­ly grim, spir­i­tu­al­ly radi­ant and deeply poet­ic world­view, gen­er­al­ly spiked with a roman­tic thrum and an exis­ten­tial wink.”

Hear the title track above. And stream the com­plete album right below. You can pur­chase your own copy of Cohen’s album on Ama­zon and iTunes. We’d also encour­age you to read this new pro­file of Cohen, writ­ten by The New York­er’s long-time edi­tor David Rem­nick. It’s quite poignant.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young Leonard Cohen Reads His Poet­ry in 1966 (Before His Days as a Musi­cian Began)

A Day in the Life of Zen Monk Leonard Cohen: A 1996 Doc­u­men­tary

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Reads The Great World War I Poem, “In Flan­ders Fields”

There are many ways to cel­e­brate a new album from a band you admire. You can have a lis­ten­ing par­ty alone. You can have a lis­ten­ing par­ty with friends. You can learn the title track in a cou­ple days and play it onstage while the band you admire sits in the audi­ence. That last one might be overkill. Unless you’re Jimi Hen­drix. Hen­drix was so excit­ed after the UK release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band in 1967 that he opened a set at London’s Sav­ille The­ater with his own, Hen­drix-ified ren­di­tion of the album’s McCart­ney-penned title song. In the audi­ence: McCart­ney and George Har­ri­son.

It’s a loose, good-natured trib­ute that, as you might imag­ine, made quite an impres­sion on the Bea­t­les in atten­dance. “It’s still obvi­ous­ly a shin­ing mem­o­ry for me,” McCart­ney recalled many years lat­er, “because I admired him so much any­way, he was so accom­plished.”

To think that that album had meant so much to him as to actu­al­ly do it by the Sun­day night, three days after the release. He must have been so into it, because nor­mal­ly it might take a day for rehearsal and then you might won­der whether you’d put it in, but he just opened with it. It’s a pret­ty major com­pli­ment in any­one’s book. I put that down as one of the great hon­ours of my career.

McCart­ney fre­quent­ly rem­i­nisces about that night. See him do so in the clip above from an August, 2010 con­cert. Mac­ca gush­es over Hendrix’s solo, then tells the audi­ence how Jimi—having thrown his gui­tar out of tune dur­ing the solo with his wham­my bar dive-bombing—asked Eric Clap­ton to come onstage and retune for him.

Clap­ton, who McCart­ney says was actu­al­ly in the audi­ence, demurred. It’s a sto­ry he con­tin­ues to tell–in fact, as recent­ly as this week­end at Old­chel­la.

One lin­ger­ing ques­tion is whether or not Hen­drix knew there were Bea­t­les present that night. NME and the BBC both say he did not. In a recre­ation of the moment, above, from the 2013 fic­tion­al­ized biopic Jimi: All is by My Side, Hen­drix (played by André Ben­jamin) knows. Not only that, but he decides to open with “Sgt. Pepper’s” right before the gig, with no rehearsal, over the stren­u­ous objec­tions of Noel Red­ding, who thinks the Bea­t­les might be insult­ed. It’s high­ly doubt­ful things went down that way at all. (The scene takes oth­er licenses—note the Fly­ing V instead of the white Stra­to­cast­er Hen­drix actu­al­ly played). But it makes for some inter­est­ing back­stage dra­ma in the film.

In any case, I’d guess that Hendrix—“the coolest guy in the world,” as Ben­jamin called him—would have pulled off the cov­er with panache, whether he knew McCart­ney was watch­ing or not. There may be lit­tle left to say about Hen­drix’s bril­liant gui­tar the­atrics, com­plete­ly inno­v­a­tive play­ing style, onstage swag­ger, and pow­er­ful song­writ­ing. But his “Sgt. Pepper’s” cov­er is an exam­ple of one of his less-dis­cussed, but high­ly admirable qual­i­ties: his gen­uine­ly awe­some rock and roll col­le­gial­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From BBC (1969)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image via iTunes

John Cage’s 4’33” is one of the most infa­mous works of the 20th cen­tu­ry and which still has the abil­i­ty to divide peo­ple. Three move­ments of silence, where the per­former does noth­ing, it forces the audi­ence to lis­ten to its sur­round­ings and be present, a dis­til­la­tion of zen thought if there ever was one. In an increas­ing­ly dis­tract­ed age, being silent and present is very dif­fi­cult for most peo­ple. A Men­tal Floss arti­cle on the piece’s lega­cy ref­er­enced a 2014 Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia study where hun­dreds of peo­ple sat in silence for a total of 15 min­utes. “25 per­cent of women and 67 per­cent of men opt­ed to endure painful elec­tric shocks rather than pass the time with­out any stim­u­la­tion,” says the arti­cle.

Two years ago, the John Cage Trust launched the 4’33” app, which sounds coun­ter­in­tu­itive. How can a phone app make one present?

Well, it doesn’t exact­ly do that. Instead, it offers a chance for mem­bers to record and share their own “per­for­mances” of Cage’s famous piece, once again demon­strat­ing Cage’s result-—there is no real silence. (Even in 1951, one year before 4’33”’s com­po­si­tion, when Cage sat in a sound dead­en­ing ane­choic cham­ber in Har­vard, he could still hear the blood rush­ing in his veins.)

The iPhone app, which costs 99 cents, is sim­ple and comes with a record­ing of the piece from John Cage’s New York apart­ment, which high­lights the traf­fic sounds and police sirens. Tap on the “World of 4’33”” but­ton at the bot­tom and a world map opens, show­ing green push­pins in var­i­ous loca­tions where users record­ed their own moments of silence. (The project is sim­i­lar to the 2008 inter­net project of field record­ings, “One Minute Vaca­tion”).

One user’s Kaloli, Hawaii record­ing is all trop­i­cal insects and birds busy com­pos­ing their own music. The one some­body record­ed down­town in my home city is of our shop­ping mall at Christ­mas, with pedes­tri­ans, far off car­ols, and the sounds of com­merce. In Japan, there’s a love­ly record­ing of Chi­tose air­port, espe­cial­ly if you find echoey tan­noy announce­ments roman­tic (I do). From urban to sub­ur­ban to coun­try­side, this is a por­trait of a world that is nev­er silent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4’33” Gets Cov­ered by a Death Met­al Band

John Cage Per­forms His Avant-Garde Piano Piece 4’33” … in 1’22” (Har­vard Square, 1973)

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.