February 23, 1996
With school out for the summer in Australia, the teen band
silverchair is back on tour here, opening for the Red Hot Chili
Peppers. Are they jaded yet? Let's find out.
MTV: Life on the road for any musician is tough but how many rock
groups have their pesky fathers tagging along nagging them to call home
to mom?
DAN: My dad rings my mum up, but I take that opportunity to
go to the toilet.
MTV: Perhaps the less mom knows about touring the better. Daniel
Johns plans on wearing this white shirt, without washing it for the full
length of the tour. He was knocked out during one performance when
he dove into the audience and last fall he was hit in the head with a beer
bottle.
DAN: Some dude in the crowd decided it would be pretty fun to make a
guy's head bleed, so he pegged a bottle at my head. It was pretty good.
It was fun. There would have been some good pictures, but mum's
camera got stolen.
MTV: Yes it's been a hell of a six months for silverchair. In that time
they played on top of the marquee of New York's Radio City Music
Hall before the Video Music Awards. Their album frogstomp went
top 10 and they scored an opening slot on the Red Hot Chili Peppers
tour which, to the delight of the group, they got to watch.
BEN: I thought they were good. Flea was a bit of a psycho. The first
show that I watched he like pulled his pants down and his butt
was hanging out. So that was pretty funny.
MTV: Since all the band members of silverchair are 16, school, back in
their native Australia, is the final stop on their travel itinerary. But don't
look for any text books packed in with their tour equipment.
CHRIS: We just do a lot of catch up work, school work when we get
back.
MTV: While silverchair is busy catching up on blown off homework,
American audiences are being kept satiated with a new video for
Israel's Son which had to be re-cut when the record company thought
the original video was too violent.
DAN: I thought it was good.
BEN: I thought it was reasonable.
DAN: I was very happy with it. I thought that is a good film clip for us.
That's all right. But then someone had to go and have a winge about it
now I've got to change it all just because a stupid thing.
CHRIS: In the end it just had a noose, just hanging off a beam of wood.
DAN: ...And a dog in a cage. They said it was too violent. We're like,
"yeah, he's bad."
silverchair and the Chili Peppers resume their tour March 6th in Chicago.
