They’re greatest identified for his or her rockstar standing in Silverchair, but Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou seldom converse publicly about their time with the long-lasting band.
That’s, till now. The as soon as larrikin drummer and fiercely loyal bass participant have laid their private lives naked in a joint memoir, Love & Ache.
The 352-page tome, written with journalist Alley Pasco, particulars their shared and separate reminiscences in regards to the band’s meteoric rise and the brutal actuality of fame.
The 2 children from Newcastle, who have been born three weeks aside and lived simply 40 metres from one another rising up, promise to inform their story with brutal honesty.
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From movie star encounters and breaking unstated guidelines to Daniel Johns and listening to in regards to the band’s break up on the radio, they cowl all of it. Learn on for each main bombshell in Gillies and Joannou’s Love & Ache.
All of it begins with their beginnings as childhood pals.
‘Sliding doorways’ second that sparked a friendship
One in all Gillies’s earliest reminiscences of Silverchair is assembly its future lead singer in Johns. He describes it as a sliding-doors second.
The pair have been at college collectively within the Eighties and, as Gillies writes, Johns was carrying a watch the primary time they met. The white face and black leather-based band timepiece was nothing particular, but Johns was happy with it. It was a gift from his mum to melt the blow of getting to repeat Yr 3.
Gillies says the pair immediately clicked and have been each alike – a bit bizarre, beloved cricket and have been each born musicians. As children do, they’d sleepovers and rooster schnitzel evening. They have been inseparable and greatest mates.
“I do not know the way it began, however sooner or later when Dan used to sleep over at my home, we’d tickle one another’s backs. It sounds a bit bizarre now, however perhaps it isn’t that bizarre for younger boys. We wouldnt’ve been eight or 9,” Gillies wrote.
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“As a child I beloved it when mum tickled my again, so someway I satisfied Dan to tickle my again, and everyone knows the rule: You tickle mine, I will tickle yours.”
Of their early days, Gillies says he and Dan used to muck round with just a little keyboard he had enjoying random keys and arising with band names. At one level they known as themselves 9.9 on the Richter Scale.
Not lengthy after, in December 1989, Newcastle skilled a 5.6 magnitude earthquake.
The fourth member
When Joannou joined his future Silverchair bandmates, they have been a four-piece referred to as the Harmless Criminals. The fourth member was Tobin Finnane.
“I used to be the final member to affix the band, and I wasn’t even their first alternative,” Joannou writes.
“Ben, Dan and Tobin had been jamming after faculty at some point when an area muso somebody’s dad and mom should have identified jumped in and began enjoying the bass. They misplaced their shit at how cool it sounded. It was a lightbulb second for them.”
However nobody wished to be a bass participant at age 12. It helped that Joannou’s dad was a bass participant again within the day. He’d given his bass to a neighbour, who fortunately returned it.
Finnane then moved away for a 12 months, by which time Gillies, Joannou and Johns agreed to change into a three-piece. They needed to break the information to Finnane.
The parable of the Silverchair identify
After they have been the Harmless Criminals, the band turned Silverchair.
There are lots of variations of how the band received its identify. There’s the story that it is from one in all C.S Lewis’s Narnia books, The Silver Chair.
The second story is that Gillies, Joannou and Johns have been sitting round Gillies’ home calling in to Triple J’s request line. One wished You Am I’s Berlin Chair, whereas one other wished to listen to Nirvana’s Sliver, and Gillies made a mix-up writing them down resulting from dyslexia.
Inside the most important band feuds of all time
Each of those tales, exterior of Gillies having dyslexia, are unfaithful. The identify Silverchair was amongst a dozen shortlisted on a whiteboard whereas they recorded their EP.
Different strategies included Symmetry, Driving Silo, Thoughts Riot and Pod, to call a couple of.
Bets and pranks
Gillies and Joannou say pranks have been excessive on the record of amusements within the band’s early days. They might conduct end-of-tour pranks, as soon as flipping each single merchandise in a lodge room, together with work, seats, desk and mattress.
Gillies says he would additionally depart “wall tattoos” in lodge rooms, which might contain eradicating any paintings or mirror. He would then draw a field on the wall and fill it together with his personal paintings earlier than rehanging what he eliminated.
They might additionally make bets with members of their entourage. They as soon as guess a rep with their then-label $100 to drink no matter liquid got here out of a rubbish bag of their sweaty post-gig garments. He did it.
Their pranks would additionally backfire. As soon as the band rushed the stage in Germany whereas pop-rock band Reamonn have been enjoying.
Silverchair, whereas drunk, ran on with the lead singer of US band the Dandy Warhols and others. Because the story goes, the Dandy Warhols singer bit the ear of the singer of Reamonn and all hell broke unfastened.
Gillies recollects letting off “fart bombs” throughout US rock band Everclear’s set. As payback, the band rushed the stage and doused Silverchair and their gear with talcum powder. It proved attention-grabbing when Silverchair have been stopped by customs in America over suspicious white powder.
Superstar encounters
Gillies and Joannou each recall a fleeting assembly with Janet Jackson on the 1995 ARIAs and Gillies introducing himself to US actor Kevin Spacey after bottles of Cristal.
The time after they watched on as Britney Spears’ bodyguard, totally clothed, adopted her into the Sheraton Lodge pool in Rio as a result of she wished a swim.
In 1995 the band have been backstage in Los Angeles. It was their final present within the States for his or her then-tour and have been billed alongside Bush, Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth and a brand new British band on the scene known as Oasis.
Silverchair and Oasis shared a label, so Silverchair’s supervisor makes introductions.
“He is taking behind-the-scenes images on a polaroid digital camera for a function within the Triple J journal on our US tour, and he suggests Liam Gallagher leap right into a shot,” they write.
“[The manager] is doing him a favour, he thinks. Oasis are nonetheless on their method up. Wonderwall has simply come out and although they’re huge within the UK, we’re larger within the US and Australia.”
As Gallagher walks into the room, Silverchair’s supervisor makes small speak. Gallagher is not eager. He provides a “yeah, yeah, yeah, fast photograph” in reply. Silverchair quickly undertake it as a catchphrase.
Nevertheless, after they labored with pianist David Helfgott on their Neon Ballroom album he excused himself and went to the toilet the place he brushed his tooth utilizing Silverchair’s supervisor’s toothbrush.
And the remorse of turning down Baz Luhrmann’s movie soundtrack for Romeo and Juliet.
The toll of fame
The 12 months 1996 was when Gillies and Joannou first seen modifications in Johns. He appeared frail and skinny and the lyrics of his songwriting, Joannou writes, appeared darkish.
“I did not know the place Dan’s anger got here from – solely he did,” he writes.
“From the surface, it appeared like we have been residing the dream, and in some ways we have been. We have been travelling the world doing what we beloved with our greatest mates, and we had some nice individuals in our nook. However – because the saying goes – seems to be might be deceiving. Psychological well being points do not discriminate.”
Three years later, in 1999, the band would launch Ana’s Tune (Open Hearth) about Johns’ wrestle with anorexia nervosa.
The large drink
Gillies would not shrink back from his boozy years. Near his worst, he projectile vomited into the chest of Blink 182’s supervisor. By the point of the band’s Younger Fashionable tour issues have been getting out of hand.
“I drank to chase the frenzy, and I drank to drown my sorrows when it slipped between my fingers. I drank and I drank. I drank sufficient for a couple of lifetimes,” he writes.
He reached one in all his rock bottoms between the band’s Neon Ballroom and Diorama years. He had skilled a psychotic episode and his mum put him on home arrest.
“She did not know what else to do. She confiscated my telephone and banned me from having unapproved guests,” he writes.
”I coudn’t hang around out with anybody if consuming or medicine have been concerned.”
“He by no means mentioned the phrases, ‘I do not wish to be within the band anymore'”
In 2010 after performing the Groovin the Moo tour, Gillies recollects getting a complicated telephone name from Johns. He claims Johns used the phrases “it is inevitable”.
When Gillies requested Johns what he meant, Gillies claims Johns did not elaborate.
“As a substitute of answering, Dan modified the topic. He by no means mentioned the phrases, ‘I do not wish to be within the band anymore’,” Gillies writes.
In Could 2011 a press launch went out stating Silverchair have been on a “indefinite hiatus”.
“Chris did not get a name from Dan; as an alternative Watto (Silverchair’s supervisor) contacted him concerning the imminent press launch,” Gillies writes.
“We wished to scream. It should not have ended like that. Even when the three of us weren’t aligned on the way in which to go ahead collectively, we deserved to exit in a method that celebrated our achievements as a band.”
The letters
By 2017 Silverchair momentarily reformed for a present in Rio. It wasn’t deliberate, however proved to tug the band from the brink.
It additionally led, Gillies and Joannou, say to Johns writing them each letters. The three met at Johns’ home overlooking the ocean at Merewether in Newcastle. The letters, learn aloud by the band’s supervisor, detailed how Johns noticed Silverchair going ahead.
“It isn’t exhausting for me now, wanting again, to see how this will likely have been associated to the brand new improvement within the band. To ensure that him to really feel secure, the band might have been the obvious factor in his life to attempt to management,” Gillies writes.
“However that does not imply that on the time I did not discover it exhausting to take.”
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An ‘uncomfortable’ fortieth party
Gillies turned 40 in 2019. His spouse, Jackie, a businesswoman and Actual Housewives of Melbourne star, phoned Johns to ask him to the get together at a restaurant. Johns arrives, Gillies says, carrying a cape. He is additionally introduced his supervisor.
When the as soon as greatest mates sit down collectively, the silence returns.
“Ben feels uncomfortable. He would not know what to say. This is not the time, place or state for a real dialog to occur. It is a good gesture that Dan got here to the get together, Ben thinks,” Gillies and Joannou write in the e book.
“He has wished to talk to Dan for therefore lengthy, however now that they are nose to nose, there’s nothing to say. Dan is not actually right here, he is some place else. He is another person. Dan tells Jackie that he has ‘developed’.”
Bandmates ‘damage’ by Johns’ remark in podcast
Johns is not quoted for the e book exterior of snippets from previous band interviews. In 2021, the singer and songwriter did partake in a five-part podcast about his life.
In that podcast Johns was quoted as saying he would not get Silverchair again along with ‘a gun to his head for one million {dollars}’. The phrases minimize Gillies and Joannou deeply.
“Nobody’s holding a gun to anybody’s head,” they wrote.
“There is a vitriol to Dan’s phrases. They sting. We’re damage, however we will not present it. We do not wish to fan the flames, do not wish to stir the pot, do not wish to tarnish the legacy of the band all of us love.
“However for the reason that finish of our Neon Ballroom tour in 1999, Dan has damaged up the band a number of instances. Solely to vary his thoughts. We have by no means believed that it was maliciously meant however for us it was an emotional rollercoaster.”
‘Silverchair broke my coronary heart’
Joannou says he first heard the information of Silverchair’s 2011 break up on the radio.
“I used to be by no means going to begin one other band or play bass with anybody else. When Silverchair ended, my profession as a musician did too, in a way,” he writes.
“Silverchair broke my coronary heart. I had a lot love for the band that the ache of the top was immense.”
Joannou recollects there have been moments in the direction of the top of the band the place he felt like he was caught in the course of a messy divorce between Gillies and Johns.
He says he noticed each his pals wrestle, noticed the miscommunication, the substances and outsiders “muddy the waters”.
“I noticed the downfall occur slowly over a few years, however I am nonetheless confused by the way it occurred,” he writes.
Joannou, 43, has skilled his personal well being battles in recent times. He has overcome most cancers and two coronary heart assaults. The daddy-of-two has had a number of coronary heart surgical procedures.
Gillies, additionally a father-of-two, has battled his personal demons and lived with the lack of his mom. After falling out with Joannou he has repaired the friendship.
Gillies and Joannou hope to at some point mend the damage with Johns.
Johns says he hasn’t been concerned in Gillies and Joannou’s e book and isn’t conscious of its contents.
“I’ve requested on many events to learn the e book however have not been despatched a duplicate,” he wrote in an announcement to his official Instagram account.
“As all the time, I want Ben and Chris nothing however success and happiness. I’ve by no means sought to dam their e book, I merely requested to obtain a duplicate prematurely to reality test it. I used to be involved about my private well being data being mentioned, I do not suppose that is unreasonable.”
Love & Ache is out right this moment.
