Insane
Clown Posse v. Silverchair
Battle of the Bands
Circus Magazine
silverchair
And in this corner weighing in at...Bah, why do I even bother?
Daniel
Johns, Ben Gillies, and Chris Joannou were rock stars before
they were old enough to drive automobiles. And this band who
was once ridiculed and scoffed at as just another trend has
recently proven themselves by inviting us into their Neon
Ballroom.
It all started down under, in the outback, Australia. But forget about dingos
and kangaroos, we're talking Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin
here. In 1992 Daniel Johns, Ben Gillies, and Chris Joannou
formed silverchair (originally called Innocent Criminals),
starting out in their native Newcastle city, often meeting
in Gillies' garage and banging out Zeppelin and Sabbath tunes.
When a neighbor of Johns told him about an amateur music contest
which was being sponsored by a local television show, Johns
submitted a four song demo, including a six minute version
of Tomorrow, which won the band first place. From
there a re-recorded version of Tomorrow was released
as an EP and went on to become the fifth most successful Australian
single of all time. silverchair followed up with the Pure
Massacre EP (which also went gold in Australia). After
making waves by touring extensively through Europe the trio
could no longer be ignored, and the imminent release of their
debut album, Frogstomp, insured silverchair their
first fifteen minutes of fame in the global spotlight.
Frogstomp was released in April of 1995, and became the first debut
album by an Australian artist to enter the national charts
at number one. The record was released in America by Epic
on June 20, 1995, and the following day silverchair played
their first American concert at the Roxy Theatre in Atlanta,
GA.
For a long while it seemed that every teenager in America was going nuts for
the album's first single, Tomorrow, and with relentless
MTV airplay of the Mark Pellington directed video for the
first single, Frogstomp went gold in the U.S. after
only two months. The second single and video off of Frogstomp
was for Pure Massacre, and by this time, silverchair
had received so much exposure through their extensive touring
and the phenomenal amount of airplay and media coverage that
the band had warranted that their fan-base grew exponentially,
and their debut album Frogstomp soon went double
platinum (That's over two million records sold!!!) in the
U.S. and Canada, and went triple platinum in silverchair's
native Australia. For the most part, it seemed that silverchair
was enjoying the ride, but being in the public eye is not
without it's own set of headaches...
While
silverchair was not abused by the media as badly as the Insane
Clown Posse has been, silverchair also took their fair share
of crap, dealing with constant ridicule over their ages (they
were only in high school when their debut album was released,
and didn't graduate until well after their second record),
and sarcastic comparisons to a junior Nirvana. At times they
were flat out accused of riding the grunge trend, producing
nothing more than an unworthy imitation of Kurt Cobain's style
of song-writing.
Through it all silverchair stuck it out, wrapping up the tour and returning
to the studio for a rushed three weeks of recording sessions
which would eventually be manufactured into CDs and titled
Freak Show.
Although Johns has always maintained that he feels privilaged to be in the
spotlight and appreciative of his stardom, the effects of
his fame were painfully obvious throughout the lyrics of Freak
Show. The album also marked what many thought to be the
demise of the band's popularity, and for all intensive purposes
it seemed that silverchair's fifteen minutes of fame were
up. Freak Show went gold, and sold more than 1.5
million copies worldwide...But when you've had an album like
Frogstomp which goes double platinum in the U.S.
and Canada, and triple platinum in Australia, and have a follow-up
album which only goes gold it's a defeat rather than a triumph.
People started to treat silverchair like a trio of has-beens
(which really sucks when you haven't even graduated from high
school yet).
silverchair tried to maintain their focus, February of 1997 the trio kicked
off an American tour which they headlined in support of Freak
Show. As they had done with Frogstomp, silverchair
released four videos off of Freak Show (for Abuse
Me, Cemetery, The Door, and Freak,
the latter having been directed by Devo's founding member
Gerald Casale!), and continued touring. But eventually silverchair
seemed to disappear off of the face of the earth completely.
The media attention and airplay that silverchair had always
had on their side went from alot, to a little, to silver-who?
Their true fans stuck with them, listening to their albums
and wondering if there would ever be a third one.
Johns, Gillies and Joannou graduated high school in 1997, and for the first
time, they could focus on making music full time, unlike the
first two silverchair albums which had been written and recorded
during the short breaks that the band had between touring
and schooling.
Daniel
Johns moved out of his parent's place, bought his own house,
and spent six months before anyone heard anything new about
silverchair. For the most part Johns spent his time alone
writing, watching TV, and thinking about new songs. He also
spent a lot of time with his family. Ben and Chris spent a
lot of time just partying on the beach, which Daniel Johns
admits he tried to do but just couldn't get into. Instead
Johns felt the need to work, and he put his creative energies
to work thinking about the direction he wanted to go in with
silverchair's next album.
In the past, Johns had written riffs and added lyrics later, but now he was
just writing words, poems, lyrics, and he wasn't too concerned
about setting them to music for the time being. Johns gelt
as if silverchair had taken the three-piece rock thing as
far as it could go, and wanted to try something a little more
original. "I think our first two albums were OK, they were
kinda solid, well done hard rock, not really original but
solid," Johns told Circus Magazine, "I always knew that I
wanted to do more with the new album, that I wanted a different
angle...." Johns began pondering something a bit more experimental,
combining sounds and instruments which you don't usually hear
being played together. With his aspirations to create something
unique, came the maturation of silverchair. The album which
would eventually be titled Neon Ballroom may be many
things to many people, but one statement is clear...silverchair
is to be taken seriously, as a group of musicians, artists,
and most importantly adults.
And the winner is......
silverchair, the much scrawmier youngsters from Aussie managed to dance right
around the two big bully clowns from Detroit, pounding their
Dark Carnival right back up where it came from.