Teen Magazine
Who would have guessed five years ago, when best buds
Daniel Johns, Chris Joannou and Ben Gillies were hanging 10 on
the waves in Newcastle, Australia, that one day they'd have a
platinum album hanging in the Top 10 in America?
It all
started four summers ago when the surfmates got bored with sun 'n'
sand and opted for rock 'n' roll. Originally called Innocent
Criminals, lead singer Daniel, bassist Chris and drummer Ben (a
fourth member dropped out early, poor guy!) eventually changed
their band's name to silverchair and started jamming in Ben's
garage, doing mostly cover songs by '70s faves like Led Zeppelin
and Deep Purple.
"We thought we were good," admits
Daniel, 16. Unfortunately at their first gig, the audience didn't
agree. "This old guy said if we didn't stop playing he'd
call the cops. So we stopped playing." Luckily for us, that
didn't last long. The awesome threesome worked on writing their
own songs and in the summer of 1994, they entered an original
tune called Tomorrow in a national radio contest. Out of 800
entries, silverchair placed first and won a day in a recording
studio where they recut the song. The rest, as they say, is
history. Tomorrow went to No. 1, then they got a major
label deal and frogstomp (Epic) also
topped the charts down under.
By the time the pop-rocky record
made its way to America last summer, we were totally psyched. Here
were three hotties who looked like Nirvana and sounded like Pearl
Jam but didn't have any of the problems associated with those
bands. With the support of MTV, which played Tomorrow like
there wasn't one, frogstomp leaped up the charts to No. 9 and went
platinum here, too. You'd think with that much success
in such a short time, silverchair would be copping some major
rock-star attitude, right? No way. Even with their new single
Findaway finding its way to our hearts, Daniel, Chris and Ben
swear that nothing's changed. (OK, but how many guys do you know
who spent their summer vacation opening for the Red Hot Chili
Peppers' U.S. tour?) They still go to the same high school with
all their old mates, their moms are still their managers, and
they still practice every day in Ben's garage.
"We made a deal
with each other," Daniel says, "As soon as one of us
starts getting a big head, we're quitting!"
