Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle with the line-up of Ben Gillies on drums, Chris Joannou on bass guitar and Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo competition conducted by SBS TV show Nomad and ABC radio station, Triple J. The band were signed by Murmur, and were successful on the Australian and international rock stages.
As from 2011, Silverchair have won a record number of 21 ARIA Music Awards from 49 nominations. The band have also received six APRA Awards with Johns winning three songwriting awards at the 2008 ceremony. All five of their studio albums have peaked at number-one on the ARIA Albums Chart: Frogstomp (1995), Freak Show (1997), Neon Ballroom (1999), Diorama (2002) and Young Modern (2007). Three of the group's singles have reached number-one on the related ARIA Singles Chart: "Tomorrow" (1994), "Freak" (1997) and "Straight Lines" (2007).
Silverchair's alternate rock sound has evolved throughout their career, differing styles on specific albums steadily growing more ambitious over the years, from grunge on their debut to more recent work displaying orchestral and art rock influences. The songwriting and singing of Johns has improved steadily while the band has developed an increased element of complexity. In 2003, following the release of Diorama, the band announced a hiatus, during which time members recorded with side projects The Dissociatives, The Mess Hall, and Tambalane. Silverchair were reunited at the 2005 Wave Aid concerts, and, in 2007, they played the Across the Great Divide tour with contemporaries Powderfinger. In May 2011, Silverchair announced an indefinite hiatus. As from that month, the group have sold in excess of six million albums.
History
Formation and early releases (1992–1996)
Silverchair's founders, Ben Gillies and Daniel Johns, attended the same primary school in the Newcastle suburb of Merewether. As teenagers, singer-guitarist Johns and drummer Gillies, started playing music together – in one class they built a stage out of desks and played rap songs for their schoolmates. When they moved on to Newcastle High School, a fellow student, Chris Joannou, joined the pair on bass guitar. In 1992, they formed Innocent Criminals with Tobin Finane as a second guitarist – but he soon left.
They played numerous shows around the Hunter Valley region in their early teens, their repertoire was cover versions of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath.
In 1994 Innocent Criminals entered YouthRock, a competition for school-based bands. Early in the year they recorded demos of "Acid Rain", "Cicada", "Pure Massacre" and "Tomorrow" at Platinum Sound Studios.
In April, the band's mainstream breakthrough came when they won a national competition called Pick Me, using their demo of "Tomorrow".
The competition was conducted by the SBS TV show
Nomad and Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) alternative radio station Triple J.
As part of the prize, Triple J recorded the song and ABC filmed a video, which was aired on 16 June.
For the video's broadcast, they had changed their name to Silverchair (initially styled as
silverchair). In a 1994 interview with Melbourne magazine
Buzz, the band claimed the name derived from a radio request for "Sliver" by Nirvana and "Berlin Chair" by You Am I being mixed up as Silver Chair.
It was later revealed they were named for the C. S. Lewis-penned novel
The Silver Chair from
The Chronicles of Narnia series.
Following a bidding war between rival labels, Silverchair signed a three-album recording contract with Sony Music subsidiary Murmur Records.
Initially the group were managed by their parents.
Sony A&R manager John Watson, who was jointly responsible for signing the group, subsequently left the label to become their band manager. In September, their Triple J recording of "Tomorrow" was released as a four-track extended play.
From late October, it spent six weeks at number-one on the ARIA Singles Chart.
In 1995, a re-recorded version of "Tomorrow" (and a new video) was made for the United States market, becoming the most played song on US modern rock radio that year.
Silverchair's debut album,
Frogstomp, was recorded in nine days with production by Kevin Shirley (Lime Spiders, Peter Wells) and was released in March 1995.
At the time of recording, the band members were 15 years old, and still attending high school.
Frogstomp's lyrical concepts were fiction-based, drawing inspiration from television, hometown tragedies, and perceptions of the pain of friends. The album was well received: Allmusic and
Rolling Stone rated it in four and four-and-a-half stars respectively, praising the intensity of the album, especially "Tomorrow".
Aside from Inside Criminals, the band has used The George Costanza Trio and Short Elvis as aliases.
Frogstomp was a number-one album in Australia and New Zealand.
It reached the
Billboard 200 Top 10, making Silverchair the first Australian band to do so since INXS.
It was certified as a US double-platinum album by the RIAA, triple-platinum in Canada by the CRIA and multi-platinum in Australia.
The album sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide.
As
Frogstomp and "Tomorrow" continued to gain popularity through 1995, the group toured the US where they supported Red Hot Chili Peppers in June, The Ramones in September, and played on the roof of Radio City Music Hall at the MTV Music Awards – in between touring they continued their secondary education in Newcastle.
At the ARIA Music Awards of 1995, the band won five awards out of nine nominations. To collect their awards on the night they sent Josh Shirley, the young son of the album's producer.
In a January 1996 murder case, the defendant counsel for Brian Bassett, 16, and Nicholaus McDonald, 18, claimed that the pair listened to "Israel's Son", from
Frogstomp, which contributed to the murder of Bassett's parents and a younger brother. McDonald's lawyer cited the lyrics "'Hate is what I feel for you/I want you to know that I want you dead'" which were "almost a script. They're relevant to everything that happened".
The band's manager, Watson, issued a statement that they did not condone nor intend any such acts of violence, "The band is appalled by this horrific crime, and they hope that justice will prevail".
Prosecutors rejected the defence case and convinced the jury that the murder was committed to "steal money and belongings and run off to California."
Musical style
Silverchair are generally classified as an alternative rock and post-grunge band, although their loyalty to specific genres has changed as they have matured.
Much of the band's early grunge and post-grunge work was inspired by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Black Sabbath.
According to Australian rock music historian, Ian McFarlane, "frogstomp captured the tempo of the times with its mix of Soundgarden/Pearl Jam/Bush post-grunge noise and teenage lyrical angst."
In their early years the perceived stylistic similarities led to Silverchair being derisively dubbed as 'silverhighchair', 'not Soundgarden but Kindergarden' or 'Nirvana in Pyjamas' by the Australian media.
The latter is a sarcastic conflated reference to the band's youth and the popular Australian children's TV series
Bananas in Pyjamas. McFarlane stated "Freak Show and tracks like 'Freak' were firmly in Nirvana territory with a hint of Led Zeppelin's Eastern mysticism."
Gillies noted that the band were inspired by the Seattle Sound, as well as The Beatles and The Doors, and were highly impressionable in their youth.
Johns admitted that "We were always influenced a lot by Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin it just so happened that we weren't very good at playing that style of music. So we were put in the whole grunge category because it was such a garage-y, heavy music term."
Australian rock music journalist, Ed Nimmervoll, felt that Johns "had never intended to use his problems for inspiration, but in the end the music was the best way to unburden himself. 'Neon Ballroom' took six months to record. The album's passion and musical sophistication proved to the world that silverchair were a force to be reckoned with". According to
100 Best Australian Albums, by three fellow journalists, John O'Donnell, Toby Creswell and Craig Mathieson,
Neon Ballroom's lead-in track, "Emotion Sickness", described Johns' life in the 1990s and "addressed [his] desire to move beyond the imitative sounds of Silverchair's first two albums ... and create something new and original".
"Ana's Song (Open Fire)" directly focussed on his eating disorder, "[it] became a hit all over the world and opened up for discussion the fact that males could also be affected by anorexia."
Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine felt
Diorama, "was a shockingly creative and impressive step forward that showed the band shedding its grunge past and adding horns, strings, and mature lyrics to its arsenal." Fellow Allmusic reviewer, Bradley Torreano noted that "they somehow kept going and kept improving ... Silverchair has grown up and put together a fine mix of orchestral pop and rock on Diorama."
Sydney Morning Herald's reviewer, Bernard Zuel, described how the
Diorama concert tour marked a move from hard rock towards art rock, "they stepped out of the arenas and barns and 'got classy' ... finally having admitted to harbouring artistic ambition (a very un-Australian band thing to do), they've proved they have the ability".
In writing
Young Modern, Johns tried to make the music sound very simple, in spite of a complex musical structure. The lyrics were written after the music was created, sometimes as late as the day of recording. As Johns dreads writing lyrics, he suggested that the band could produce an instrumental album at some stage in the future.
Johns is the band's primary songwriter, and notes that while Joannou and Gillies do not have significant influence on what he writes, they are key to the band's overall sound. For that album, Hamilton co-wrote four songs with Johns including the APRA Award winning "Straight Lines".
Joannou believed that
Young Modern was simpler than
Diorama but "still as complex underneath with simple pop song elements". He said that much of the band's success resulted from trying to push themselves harder in recording and writing. Self-producing has allowed the band to do so without the pressures of a record label.
Gillies notes that Silverchair will often "run the risk of losing fans" with their work, and this was evident in the changes in musical direction in
Diorama and
Young Modern.
However, he described this as a good thing, describing the fact "that we haven’t been pigeonholed, and people really don’t know what to expect" as one of the attractive elements of the band. Despite the ups and downs of success at a young age, Gillies says the band "appreciate what we’ve achieved and what we’ve got" in their careers.
The band have received six APRA Awards with Johns winning three songwriting awards at the 2008 ceremony.
Members
- Tobin Finane – rhythm guitar (1992, only in Innocent Criminals)
- Ben Gillies – drums, percussion (1992–2011)
- Chris Joannou – bass guitar (1992–2011)
- Daniel Johns – vocals, guitar, piano, harpsichord, orchestral arrangements (1992–2011)
Discography
- Frogstomp (1995)
- Freak Show (1997)
- Neon Ballroom (1999)
- Diorama (2002)
- Young Modern (2007)
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