BORN SKIPPY
In this -silverchair
(from Kerrang magazine March '97)
It's your ultimate dream - one day you're at school,
the next you're touring America with the Red Hot Chilli Pepers.
And it happend to SILVERCHAIR.
Paul Elliott files across Australia with the teen sensations to find out
just how much fun sellinh millions of records and meeting loads of 'chicks' can be...
"WANKER!" Spits silverchair singer Daniel Johns
"Fuck off!" replies drummer Ben Gillies, who has Daniel squirming in a headlock.
Daniel's face is turning from pink to blue when Ben finally relazes his grip.
The band's manager John Watson looks on and shrugs like an exasperated father.
Welcome to the strange world of silverchai, where scenes like this happen every day.
The trio might be multi-million-selling rock superstars, but anyopne let them forget - they are still just 17.
So as the band sit bored in a deserted airport lounge in Sydney, it's no surprise when Daniel and Ben start bitching at each other
and end up grappling oh the floor, WWF style.
On the day that their 'Freak' single enters the Australian charts at Number One,
Sydney's 'Morning Herald' sarkily refers to silverchair as 'Nirvana in Pyjamas'.
Certinly, there is a little of Kurt Cobain in Daniel Johns, but there is just as much of Beavis.
You don't see a world famous rock singer hopping along the sides of a moving walkway
so that his feet don't touch the bit you're supposed to walk on everyday,
but that's the refershing thing about silverchair:
They're neither 'Viz'-style brats, nor are they prematurely aged, angst-ridden Eddie Vedder types.
Having sold millions of records around the world while still too young to buy a beer,
Daniel, Ben and bassist Chris Joannou are just about as normal as it's possible to be.
Amazingly, they still go to the same school in their hometown of
Newcastle, Australia's steel city, as they always have.
It's a legal requirement, like the presence of a parent or guardian
when the band play licenced venues, but if also helps to keep the boys' feet on the ground.
It's bizarre life that takes you from a schoolroom in Austraila
to an American tour with those notorious party animals the Red Hot Chilli Pepers.
But that's life for silverchair - and they love it.
The flight from sydney on this grey summer morning takes silverchair to Albury,
a nothing town whose tiny airpost makes Tenerife's look like Heathrow.
The band's entourage includes Chris' girlfriend (Daniel and Ben are single)
and the lads' fathers - Greg, Dave and, er, Dave.
The three Dads are clasic ecamples of the Australian male: deep tans, casual sportswear,
and lots of friendly pombashing bander about the upcoming Ashes criket series between Australia and England.
For the hour's drive to Cobram and the Peaches 'N' cream festival, the band and the Dads pile into a transit
while Kerrang! follows in a decidedly un-rock 'n' roll familey saloon.
Within two minutes of leaving the airport, the van pulls in at a garage so the boys can grab some food.
Most of it, inveritably, is junk.
Ben emerges from the garage shop carrying three bags of crisps and an ice cream.
"And an orange juice!" he says apoligeticly
"I'm not usually that bad. We do try to keep away from the burgers
and chips. Well chips are alright - in moderation."
As we move off again. Daniel leans out of a van window and, with perfect accuacy,
lobs a banana skin onto the Kerrang! car windscreen.
He gives us the 'wanker' sign as the van speeds off.
And as the journey winds on through the flat heart of Australia,
past dusty smallholdings and truckstops towns that you'd miss in the blink of an eye,
so little bits of silverchair's lunch keep flying out of the van windows and bouncing down the road at us.
The little shits.
When their van overtakes a car carrying a normal Aussie family,
it's Ben's turn to lean precariously out of the window to do his crap Superman impression.
The other car almost ends up crashing into a ditch.
Ben Gillies, it appears, is silverchair's chief troublemaker.
"I'm probably the most sensible one in the band" he argures later. He convinces no one.
If Ben and Daniel are silverchair's Beavis and Butt-Head,
Chris Joannou probably apperes to be a little more sensible then useual on this trip
because he has his girlfriend by his side.
You don't really want to be rolling around on the deck trying to get your mate in a half-nelson
when your girlfriend is around do you?
As we get to within a few miles of the Peaches 'N' Cream festival site, we see something truely astonishing.
A gigantic man made lake has been formed by flooding and damming a valley,
thus swamping a forest and leaving thousands of tall, bare, dead trees spiking up out of the water.
We stop to take photos and Daniel immediately spots a scruffy little dog tied up in some old geezer's back yard.
Tickling the dog's belly, Daniel announces that he prefers dogs to girls.
"I haven't had a girlfriend since I was 14" he shrugs
"I dont want a girlfriend. We don't have any time, and it's hard now
to meet people and wonder if they like me or they like my money.
It's too much of a hassle, so I just got a fucking dog.
I have some great pornographic pictures of my dog. Actually" he laughs
"I better clear that up. She's laying on her stomach with her legs wide open
and you can see everything. She's just looking at the camera. It's heaps funny."
Despite his reticence, Daniel is clearly silverchair's sex symbol.
The fact that he looks uncannily like a young Kurt obviously has something to do with it.
But when it comes to pulling the birds, Ben Gillies is The Man.
Or so he says. "I try," he winks "I did have a girlfriend but, well, you know...
Chris has got a girlfriend, but he's 17. You should be having fun when you're 17,
that's what I think. The girlfriend I had, it got to the point where it was useless.
We'd always be on tour."
What kind of girls get backstage at a silverchair show?
"You get some older girls - 20, 21 maybe, sometimes even older - but we don't really get that many chicks
coming backstage. A normal band on the road - without their parents - would have heaps of chicks,
but usually after a gig we just go back to the hotel and sleep."
In Cobram, the backstage set-up is informal and relaxed.
Sadly for Ben, there are no chicks for him to chat up,
but looking on the bright side, there are boxes and boxes of free peaches and nectarines,
as Cobram is the hub of the Aussise soft fruit business. Ben consoles himself with a nectarine.
Bizarrely, the Peaches 'N' Cream festival is staged oh a flat ricerbank,
so both the fans and the bands can enjoy a dip in the cool Murray River during the day.
Boats patrol the water to ensure that nobody drowns or tires to swim around to the backstage enclosure.
Chris and his girlfriend dive in, but Daniel is happier lazing in the shade and scoffing veggie burgers off the barbie.
Hey this is Australia, after all.
And in Austrailia, silverchair are just about as huge as a rock band can be.
The trio's first album 'Frogstomp'(the title was nicked off the back of a 60's blues album),
is certified triple platinum here, and every day the Aussie tabloids are digging up another bit of silverchair gossip.
One paparazzi photographer even hid on Daniel's route to school to snap the singer on his bike.
"There's a lot of crap written about us," Daniel frowns, "But we can handle it."
He seems so cool, you can believe him.
But what is like really like for silverchair?
"Sometimes it's pretty weird getting back from a big tour and then sitting at a desk to do school work," Says Daniel
"We're still normal people. We don't think we're anything speacial. Just like any teenage, we hate school.
Everyone at our school has known us for six years, they know we're just the same normal people, so it's cool.
Some people just don't even talk to us - not because they hate us,
it's just that they don't want us to think that they're talking to us just because we're in a band.
I'd do the same thing in their position."
"Our friends couldn't give a rats arse if we we're in a band," Ben chuckels.
"If you start getting a big head and start loving yourself, people will let you know
about it sooner or later."
"We still do the same things," adds Danel.
"We go and hang out at our friends' houses, and listen to Led Zeppelin records
and play pool and do nothng."
Seeng as you're already loaded, Daniel, it doesn't really matter,
but what school subjects are you good at?
"I'm only good at English," he admits. "i'm bad at everything else. Pathetic.
I don't try at school at all. I just go there cos all my friends are there.
Ever since I was eight years old, I knew I wanted to be in a band.
That's been my only interest for a long time,
so I'm not going to focus on being a rocket scientist."
Academically-speaking, Chris describes himself as "kind of an all rounder".
"I'm not the brains of all the classes," he explanes "but I'm not really the scum either."
Ben, on the other hand, is a drummer "I'm totally shit at English," he nods.
"Hate it. Can't stand the crap. Proabably because I don't enjoy reading.
But I'm pretty good at Maths. I used to be in Advanced Maths, but now I'm in
the second easiest class cos I'm not there all the time and I miss heaps of the work.
On this tour we've got a tutor for the first time. Probably because it's our last year of study,
which is ment to be the hardist."
What happens when you turn 18 - in a few months - and you can leave the Dads at home?
"A lot of people have said that I'll probably kill myself," Ben laughs.
"I don't blame them, actually. I probaly will. think everything will get a bit wilder."
Surely, though, life can't get much wilder then touring America with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers -
which silverchair did when they were just 16!
Did you begin that tour as boys and come back men?
"NO, it wasn't as cheesy as that," Daniel grins.
"They were really cool people. We just learned a lot on that tour."
"We were Chilli Peppers fans, which made it pretty fucking weird to tour with them," says Ben.
"When we were 12 and just starting the band, there was no way we thought were going to get anywhere -
and a few years later we're playing with the Chilli Peppers. It's a joke. It really freaks you out sometimes."
With so much happining so fast to silverchair, it's no wonder they feel a little freaked out now and again.
'Frogstomp' was the first debut album ever to the Austrailian chart at Number One,
and went on to sell over two million copys in the US.
With the trio's second album, 'Freak Show', set to repeat the success of 'Frogstomp',
this is looking lke another big year for the 'Chair.
"In the last two years we've done a lot of travelling and met a lot of people," says Daniel.
"Everyone grows up a lot in two years anyway, but it felt like we grew up even more
because of all the experiences we've had. The most important thing we learnt on the first tour
is that it's not all fun like you think it's going to be.
We thought it would all be heaps of fun. We didn't realize there's a lot of crap that goes with touring,
although we still enjoyed it because the gig is the best feeling you can have."
"My outlook on life is a lot broader," adds Chris.
"You come back to Australia and realise how lucky you are to live here
and not somewhere like South America. When you get home you're kinda kissing the ground."
"Before I went round the world I used to take Newcastel for granted," Says Ben.
"but now I realised how speacial it is, and how special Australia is.
I've also learnt how to treat different kinds of people."
And how are you treated now?
"When we first started, a lot of people treated us like little babbies," Daniel snorts.
"We just sat there and thought 'Fuck!' But now we're 17. You're still, like, a kid,
but you're not a little dickhead. You're at a reasonable age where you can be treated
as a normal person."
Daniel and Ben and Chris might be normal people.
But silverchair - as the new album proves - reall are an extraodinary band.
NEXT WEEK: Slavery... Abuse... Murder... the full 'Freak Show' story.
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Email: schubert@uic.edu