Edmonton Journal
By Shawn Ohler
August 29, 1997
silverchair bassist Chris Joannou, like the majority of
people who'll see his band rip it up at Edgefest today,
goes back to high school next week.
His buddies, drummer Ben Gillies and singer Daniel Johns, do too. In
fact, they're all in the same grade -- 12 -- at the same school in Newcastle, Australia, a
coastal city just down the road from Bulahdelah and a
stone's throw from Budgewoi and Kurri-Kurri
Weston. (North of Sydney, in other words.)
So, will they be mobbed on their return by
starry-eyed classmates? Begged for autographs?
Pressed for lurid details about the band's world tour?
"Nah, mate," Joannou said on the phone from
Vancouver's Edgefest earlier this week, drawling his
reply like an adenoidal Crocodile Dundee.
"It's nothing like that at all. We get treated the same as
everyone else. It's cool. We've had the same friends
for so long. They ask us how the tour was and we say
it was great, and that's about that.
"We could act like rock stars, but whether people
would like you or want to have a conversation with
you is another thing. We decided when we were
really young that the rock star thing didn't really work
for us."
No kidding, really young.
silverchair recorded their first album, 1995's
frogstomp, when the boys were barely 15. On the
group's early tours, some of the band members'
parents came along as chaperones.
But nothing on frogstomp betrayed the trio's tender
ages, not the air-tight musicianship, not the efficiently
derivative Seattle-sound song structures and certainly
not Johns' Eddie Vedder-esque vocal growl.
Still, silverchair was mercilessly hassled about its youth
immediately after frogstomp's release. The band was saddled
with jeering nicknames -- silverhighchair, Soundkindergarden, Nirvana-in-Diapers -- and
decried as little more than a novelty act.
But once hit singles started piling up - Tomorrow,
Pure Massacre, Israel's Son - cynics quickly forgot
about the band's ages.
"We knew we were going to get slagged for being
young. It was just a matter of how long it was going to
last. Luckily, it died pretty quickly," said Joannou,
now a couple months shy of 18. (Johns and Gillies
are both legal.)
"People started to judge us more on our music, and
we'd just ignore it if someone asked us about it in
interviews."
Once silverchair's second album Freak Show was
released last year, the age thing was history.
Even the band's most vociferous critics recognized it
as a solid hard rock record, just as intense, complex
and varied as albums released by silverchair's older
contemporaries.
"All that playing and experience we had when we
were touring for frogstomp made Freak Show more
refined and more heavy. More us," he said.
"We did frogstomp in 12 days and it was really
simple. Freak Show's more what we want to sound
like on album. frogstomp was a great starting point
but it takes everyone one or two records to find out
what they want to sound like."
After Joannou and his mates finish school, they'll tour
Australia for the umpteenth time and then take two
months off to do "absolutely nothing."
The band will start recording a third album in the
new year, though Joannou says he hasn't a clue which
direction it'll take.
"I don't really know. It could be reggae, it could be
classical pop, it could have a 50-piece orchestra on it."
But it'll still be heavy, right?
"Oh, yeah. Of course."
