The year of the chair
Time Off (free mag) - Jul 5 '95
Simon McKenzie
The year of the chair
When a band makes it big, you'll often find a lot of people saying 'I went to school with those guys', or something like that. With silverchair people say 'I GO to school with those guys'. The three members of the most successful new Australian band in decades, are (as you're no doubt aware courtesy of everything from Woman's Day to Rolling Stone) still completing high school. Their debut single, 'Tomorrow', sold an unprecedented 170,000+ copies, making it one of the five best-selling singles ever in Australia or by an Australian artist. Their debut album, Frogstomp, is closing in rapidly on the double-platinum mark. Not only have they had an incredible run in Australia - silverchair now look set to repeat that success in the United States.
When silverchair played the Big Day Out in January just gone, hordes of fans converged on the small tents to the side of the main stage that silverchair played, and the scenes that unfolded were almost practice run for Pearl Jam pandemonium later in the year. Needless to say, Vice-President of A&R for Epic in America, David Massey, was impressed. He immediately instigated the U.S. release of 'Tomorrow' and Frogstomp, which happened two weeks ago. Already, silverchair's impact in America has far exceeded even the wildest hopes of anybody here or in the States.
silverchair have already sold 100,000 copies of Frogstomp in the U.S. - including one rip-roaring day in Atlanta, Georgia, when ONE record store sold 155 copies in a regular business day - a copy every four minutes!
It's some story, and it seems everybody thinks it's amazing except silverchair themselves. The three Newcastle high-schoolers - Daniel Johns, Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou - almost treat their incredible success with contempt. They certainly won't let it go to their heads. They recite facts and recall incidents with disinterest or mild amusement, when most bands would be exaggerating even the whiff of U.S. success and trying to turn it to their advantage.
Ben Gillies, silverchair's drummer and co-songwriter, is sitting in a hotel room in Toronto, Canada. Though it's school holidays and the band are doing a whirlwind tour of the U.S., Canada, Britain and Europe, Gillies isn't about to exaggerate anything.
"We're not playing tonight," he says, matter-of-factly. "We're just doin' nothing. We've been out a week or so, played Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, here."
Doesn't sound particularly enthusiastic for a band making headway in the States and a kid on holidays from school and overseas, huh? He will admit that he's pretty excited, though.
"Oh yeah. It's fun, it's always fun. I HATE airports, though, catching planes and s*** like that. You get very bored of it after a while. The first few times it's really fun, but after that you get really, really bored, sitting in an airport doing nothing."
Gillies is slightly bemused by the success of 'Tomorrow' in the U.S. - already the song is being played on 80 per cent of U.S. alternative radio, and pre-tour airplay has meant that most of their shows have been sold out.
"Yeah, it's been pretty surprising," he says. "We didn't expect any of the radios to play it, that was really cool, like how the radio started playing it. Yeah."
Just because you're big in Australia doesn't mean it it's automatically going to go well in America…
"Yeah. I'm not saying we're big in Australia."
You're pretty big.
"If I said that, that sounds like I've got a big head."
Well, let's just say you've been pretty successful. Is it hard to cope with that success?
"Not really, because nothing's changed, virtually. Everything's just the same. Everyone at school doesn't say much about it. If anyone ever says anything, it's usually ripping us off. They don't usually say anything else. As I said before it doesn't feel like any different, really, just that we've got a CD out now. Yeah, everyone just acts normal. It's not as if like, we've got a disease or something."
How have the crowds responded in the States?
"Most of them have been pretty hell." 'Hell' means 'good' where Gillies comes from, by the way. "The mosh pits here are really weird. You know how in Australia, mosh pits, most people jump up and down? Here, people like run around in circles, and there was this big circle in the middle and everyone was running in and pushing each other, stuff like that. It looked pretty hell."
And are the shows themselves any different?
"We jam a lot more now. We didn't used to jam at all, we used to play the songs down pat, but now we jam a lot more on like, 'Israel's Son' and 'Pure Massacre' and a few others. We just have fun and do what comes into our heads."
What about new songs?
"We've got about four or five new songs, and we've got some new riffs that we made up. We're gonna let 'e, al build up, we're gonna try and get maybe ten songs and just go out and start playing them."
Since the conversation with Gillies in Toronto, news has kept streaming in about silverchair's exploits overseas. Last weekend, the band played Denmark's annual Rosskilde festival (where the likes of REM and Shane MacGowan played this year). Following their successful set on a side stage, they were given access to the wings of the main stage to watch Offspring pay in front of 50,000 people, and the Californian punks dedicated a song to the three Australians. They also shot a U.S. video for 'Tomorrow' with Mark Pellington (whose previous work includes Pearl Jam's 'Jeremy'). As you read this, they're playing a handful of smaller European festival dates, before final shows in Birmingham and London and a return to Australia next Friday. There's also a live concert to be screened on Rage (simulcast with JJJ) next Saturday (July 15). To air at 1:15am, it'll be the only airing of this footage from their June 7 Newcastle show at the Cambridge Hotel.
And their U.S. sales continue apace. In fact, by the time this goes to print, the figure for U.S. sales of Frogstomp will be 150,000 going on 200,000. Hoo boy. If you thought last year was the year of the chair… well, maybe we ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Added: 29 Oct '99
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