Press
01-04-1996
Access All Areas, On Tour with Silverchair
By Robyn Doreian (Metal Hammer)
In London it's been snowing like a bastard, and areas of the city have
been cordoned off as a result of yet more bomb scares. But tonight
silverchair are playing miles away, so who gives a shit!
The backstage area of the gig at Manchester University is tiny,
consisting of two rooms the size of wardrobes. silverchair are lucky
enough to have a radiator in theirs, but American support band
Everclear got a real bum deal. As well as their shoe box-sized dressing
room simulating the Antarctic regions in temperature, it also acts as a
walk-through passage for anyone wanting to get out front to the stage.
No privacy and no heat -- welcome to England!
silverchair have just flown in from Chicago, where they've been the
support act for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the past two weeks.
The Aussie trio are jet-lagged to hell and barely know what day it is.
"We've only been here for sixteen hours, so I don't really know what's
going on," comments frontman Daniel Johns. "I know that the last time
we were in England we were totally unknown, which was good. We like
coming to Europe as no one knows who we aree, so we could do what we
wanted, and the gigs were really small club shows, which were fun."
In America it was pretty much the same story, the only difference being that they've sold over a million records Stateside.
But there was one fan who sent in a letter detailing 267 things she
would do in order to meet silverchair. They included such perilous acts
as listening to the Hootie and the Blowfish album and saying that she
actually liked it, and cutting her dad's toenails and eating one of
them. Surprisingly, only two out of the list were of a sexual nature.
Unfortunately she failed to meer the band. But nonetheless, silverchair
loved the USA.
"I really liked Los Angeles," states Daniel. "I wanted to go to
Huntington Beach, where KoRn come from, to see what it was like, but we
didn't get there. They are unreal! They were playing with Ozzy but we
didn't get to see them. We met them a few times and they were really
cool. KoRn are on the same label as us, and we went out to dinner with
them and they were nice people."
But silverchair have no such anonymity in their home country. Daniel
relates the story of how his picture made the front page of a daily
tabloid newspaper with rhe heading: "How the billion-dollar boy spends
his day."
"Yeah, that was pretty shit," recalls the guitarist. "These
photographers hung around outside my house the afternoon before it
happened for about four hours. I couldn't go anywhere, so I was just
waiting in my room for them to fuck off.
"Then the next morning I was going to school and they were outside in
the same car and I recognised them, so I just bolted around the corner
on my bike. They stopped and ran out with cameras and shit, and I was
like... Fuck!
"I went to Ben's house, and then they appeared at the school gate
taking photos as I was riding in, and I was really pissed off about it.
I made a promise to everyone that next time -- if there is a next time
-- I'll go and smash their cameras! I'll stack my bike straight into
them and claim it was an accident!"
Smoke wafts from a cluster of patchouli incense on the table in
silverchair's Manchester HQ. Their rider consists of what you would
expect 16-year-olds to drink: copious amounts of mineral water, Coke
7-Up, V-8 and Lucozade NRG -- or as Daniel refers to the latter
beverage, "a fruit energy explosion" (mainly because every time he
opens a can it explodes all over him!)
In the comfort of their backstage shoe box, Daniel knocks out a few
Slayer and Sepultura tunes to both amuse himself and bolster his sadly
lacking metal credentials.
"Chaos AD is the only Sepultura record I've heard," quips Daniel. "I
don't mind that stuff, but it's a bit heavy for me. I'm a bit old for
that kind of thing. I did my death and thrash metal thing when I was
eleven. I used to love Metallica and all that, but I am kind of out of
that phase."
The Aussie trio take the stage for an hour's worth of soundchecking. At
5 p.m., there's already a handful of student fans in the hall, armed
with frogstomp CDs for autographs.
Both guitarist Daniel Johns and bass player Chris Joannou should be
getting a commission from LA noise monsters KoRn for advertising: Chris
sports a KoRn beanie over his newly shorn locks, and Daniel has a
rather large sticker on his guitar (which he acquired from hero Page
Hamilton from Helmet). It becomes more than apparent that they are one
of silverchair's favorite bands.
Ben Gillies spends an inordinate amount of time tuning his drums.
Daniel reckons that he has the loudest cymbals in the world, and goes
on to say that when they play live, they "should be called Ben's
Cymbals and silverchair!"
Gig time arrives, and Daniel changes into a crumpled white shirt and
Pierre Cardin tie. Ben is determined to put on his heavily autographed
T-shirt, much to the objection of Daniel who claims it stinks! The
drummer does in fact put it on, and does in fact stink!
Tonight's show goes down a storm. England is finally taking to what
some would term a trio of 16-year-old upstarts from Australia. But the
truth is that they've been slogging it out in Ben's garage since they
were 12.
There's no sex, drugs or, for that matter, terribly much rock'n'roll after the show.
"When I come off stage, I don't really feel much like talking to anyone
for about half an hour," explains Daniel. "I just want to sit and calm
down for a bit. When you are on stage, particularly at the end of the
gig, you get really hyped up. I get really pissed off when you've
finished a gig and all these people walk in.
"We'll just go back to the hotel, hang out for a while, watch a movie
and go to bed. Tonight I think I'll be staying up for a while, because
I work up at 12:30 because I'm jet-lagged.
"After this set of gigs it's over to Japan and then back to school for
about 10 weeks, but we'll be doing a gig at Easter time at the Sydney
Showgrounds to about 15,000 people with a couple of other Australian
bands.
"I was reading this book last night for school, and have read about 107
pages in about two weeks, so it's kind of going all right. It's about
430 pages long. I don't even like reading. I just hate it!"
Such is the life of the world's youngest rock stars...