'silverchair' as their known now, started out in 1992 as the "Innocent Criminals" when three friends from Newcastle, came together and decided to form a band. Ben had been playing drums for the past 7 years or so, and then in Year 6 (1991) Daniel got his first guitar and started learning. Before that, Daniel and Chris had played trumpet together in the school orchestra band, and so they were already good friends by that stage. Then in Year 7 (1992) Ben and Daniel started to jam together with drums and guitar in Ben's garage. Now at Newcastle High School, word had gotten around that they had a band going, and so they were invited to perform a school concert. Quote from Daniel: At the time, we didn't have a singer, and we just said, "Someone's gotta sing" and I don't know, somehow it ended up being me, and I just sung with my face in the wall, cause I was too embarrassed to look out. At this time, they got the idea to start a band but they needed another player, so they hounded Chris to learn bass guitar to complement their jams. He did, and the band was formed, with the name "Innocent Criminals". They first practised in Ben's garage, mainly just jamming, and did so up until only last year, and probably still do occasionaly if their ever home. They always wanted to be original, and so the idea of doing covers never really occurred, hence they started to write their own songs between Daniel and Ben around Year 8/9 (1993/4).
Quote from Ben: We used to write some really shit songs - they sucked, big time - then we started getting into Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Primus and started writing more heavy, grungey songs. In coming up with their orignals, they were influenced by some big names of the present and the past. The main influences were Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Soundgarden, The Doors, Rollins Band, Tool, Radio Birdman, Primus, You Am I, Pearl Jam, and of course Helmet. Anyone who knows any Soundgarden will immediately recognise a similar style, with finishing songs prematurely and restarting them, and changes of pace midstream, which characterises a lot of silverchair's music showing their extreme talent and skill with their instruments. The lyrics for the songs were entirely written by Daniel, and his subjects were influenced by a number of things. For instance, "Tomorrow" was written after he watched a documentary on the third world, "Pure Massacre" after he watched a documentary on the East Timor Massacre and the Gulf War, "Faultline" after the Newcastle earthquake in 1993 and a similar dream that he'd had, "Suicidal Dream" after a dream he had about teenage suicide, "Stoned" being a song about drugs, and a number he's written are about the joys and despairs of a teenager growing up. All up, by about the middle of 1994, they had already written about 8-10 tracks which would later appear on the Tomorrow EP and Frogstomp.
Being in Newcastle, a town with a passion for pub rock like the Screaming Jets, the band found it hard to find places to play gigs, since they were considerably under-age. And so the headmaster of their school, always keen to encourage success, set up a P.A. system, some sound equipment, and organised lunch-time concerts for them. Here they were able to hone their songs, and also experimented with a fourth member of the band, guitarist and school friend Tobin Finnane. This lasted a few months before he moved to England for a year or so, and when he got back they were already well established and advanced playing as a three-piece, and they found Tobin's playing and style was completely different to what they were playing. They decided to stick with jus t the three of them. When Daniel was asked if Tobin was jealous in anyway, he answered in a tone surprised and laughing like it was a stupid question: Nup, he's just, he's just normal like he used to be, he's just, he's in another band which doesn't h ave a name yet, and he just plays guitar. In 1993, the word of the band had started to spread around the local newspapers in Newcastle. The owner of local studio's "Platinum" offered them some free recording time. On weekends from school that year, they often went in and this was when they recorded original demos of their songs.
Their "break" into the spotlight as it were, happened when the band wrote the note pictured above with a tape of "Tomorrow" to enter into a competition being run by the now-defunct show nomad on SBS, Australia's foreign and ethnic community TV station. It was suggested by Sarah Lawson, Daniel's neighbour, and they followed it up but they didn't think they had any chance of winning anything, and just thought they'd enter to see where they'd end up. The competition was open to any unsigned artist or band, and they had to write in 25 words or less why they should be picked. The prize was to be a film clip to be made and a professional studio recording of the song. Quote from the producer of Nomad, Tracee Hutchison, who could be credited as discovering them...silverchair - who were the Innocent Criminals back then - sent in a colourful looking entry that had a small picture of them and their message. It was just simple but succint and to the point. They sent a tape as well. "Tomorrow" was just such a stand-out song. It didn't matter how many times we heard other songs, every time we went back to theirs it stood out. And so they were chosen as finalists out of the thousand or so entries to perform on the show with the others chosen. And so the SBS camera crew trekked to Newcastle and filmed the video of "Tomorrow" and Phil McKellar and the JJJ (Australia's National Alternative Music Radio Station) sound crew recorded the track in the JJJ studios in Sydney. On Thursday 16th of June, the video and a short interview was aired for the first time on Nomad, still under the name of the "Innocent Criminals". All of the crew, especially Tracee, felt it was terrific and were really proud of the band and what they'd aired. The next day, Tracee arrived at work to find out that the Nomad show had been axed, and every major record company was on the phone trying to find out who the band that was on last night were. Everything went from there.
Tracee from Nomad, set them up with an entertainment lawyer, and they found themselves with record companies knocking on their front door. The band didn't know what the companies were talking about, so they agreed to go and play in a band competition, wh ich they ended up losing, finishing third. Rumours spread later that they didn't actually win the Nomad competition and they only came third, but they were different competitions. A Sony manager, John O'Donnell, who was starting up an Indie label, Murmur, for Sony, rang on the Friday, and ended up in Newcastle 4 days later to see the band play a gig at the local hotel, "Jules Tavern". There were only about 10 people there, the guy's fathers, John and John Watson from Sony, and about 5 bikers. They played on a tiny little stage that they could hardly move on, and they played three complete sets one after the other. Each time, they kept rattling off original song after original song and covers, and the Sony/Murmur guys were just so amazed at the whole performance musically. Quote from John O'Donnell: We drove home from there, just babbling to each other about what we had just seen. And so Murmur did all they could, and finally signed them up as the second band on their label. From the re, nothing had really changed for the band, except that now they were able to get more and more gigs around the Newcastle pubs. Tracee recalled them being a support act at a pub which holds about 200 at the most, and there were well over 500 people cram med in there, all of the security surrounding the band, and falling in their laps from overcrowding. And so the popularity of the band had begun to flourish in Newcastle and they started being toted as simply put, "A great live band".
While the band were being subjected to all forms of record company and legalities, another type of popularity was surfacing with them. That which first brought myself into the picture scope of silverchair, and first began my love of their music. In the depths of the JJJ annals, Michael Tunn, dj of the popular request fest program on weeknights, had been given the original nomad DAT tape recording of "Tomorrow". He unassumingly played it one night late in June, as you would any other debut song from a new band, without any special laurels or anything. Surprisingly enough, it was requested by a listener the next night. No-one ever or rarely mentioned the fact that this new band called Innocent Criminals were only 14/15 y.o. at the time, just the word got out that this was a really hot song. It received a few requests the next night, and a few more. As a regular listener to the program while I worked, I started to hear this song more and more often, until it was requested by someone, somewhere, virtually every night. It seemed to capture just about all of the programs audience, and nobody could quite place an exact reason for it, except it was a damn good song, it being done by 14 y.olds seemed to be add fuel to the fire. Tunny recalled recently one particular request for it, from a guy in his 30's who wanted to hear it, because it described exactly how he felt in life at that point in time. Being a big Pearl Jam and Soundgarden fan already, it only took a couple of listens before it took me totally and I couldn't help myself but listen out for every last detail about the song, and who sung it.
Around August/September of 1994, it seemed to have been played to death by then, although it was still as popular as ever. With such a national spotlight and now signed with Murmur and John Watson as their official manager, the band, who hated their name and with a likely recording and release of the song, used the request show to launch an informal competition for a new name. Tunny of course supported it all the way, even though it was a bit of a joke to start with. Hundreds of names for the band were brought forward, but the band eventually came up with their own. They were listening to the radio (JJJ of course :) and wanted to make a request, Ben wanted "Sliver" by Nirvana and Daniel wanted "Berlin Chair" by You Am I and they couldn't get through on the phone lines. While they were waiting, they thought as a joke to request as a song, "Sliver Chair". Chris wrote it down on a piece of paper, but misspelt it so it read "silverchair". They thought, hey that sounds pretty cool, and stuck with it, putting particular emphasis on the little letter 's', because they felt (and still do :) it looked stupid written with a capital 'S'.
Thus the Tomorrow EP was recorded in early September with the JJJ's Phil McKellar producing it in the JJJ studios in Sydney. The 4 track EP was put out into the shops on Monday 26 September, 1994 and was circulated only among independent and alternative music stores and even then these stores only carried limited copies. For the first 4 weeks, they even carried a sticker on them, saying "By silverchair, formerly known as 'Innocent Criminals'". Having well and truly outplayed "Tomorrow", JJJ started to play the second track from the EP, "Acid Rain", and it too became very popular, being more up-tempo and a great hard rock track, ideal for moshing. With the only publicity for the release being on the JJJ request program, there was virtually no hype and virtually no-one had heard of "silverchair". I recall first buying the tape in a record store, in the second week of release with the sticker and all. (Unfortunately, I peeled the sticker off, because I don't like stickers covering the artwork ;) At the time, I had walked around all of the stores in Brisbane city to see if they had it, and only saw it in a couple of them. Settling on a shop, I picked it up and went to pay. The assistant who served me queried my selection and mentioned that they'd been selling really well over the 2 weeks, but nobody who worked there had ever heard of them before. I told her they'd been played on JJJ for ages, and she nodded an "Oh I see" and mentioned they were lined up for a couple of shows that weekend. I hadn't heard of that so I was shocked again by a lack of publicity again. Despite that, I was startled to discover that the devoted JJJ listeners had bought enough copies of the EP to send it rocketing to #9 on the national singles charts after only the first 2 weeks of release. Within the next fortnight it had moved up to #3 on the charts, and the band had played a number of promotional shows in Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane and Melbourne. It took about this long before it first caught the eye of the commercial stations around the country.
By now, they were no longer the innocent JJJ secret discovery and being hyped and hyped and hyped. Speak to any fan of alternative music because its alternative music, and you'd be sickened by the commercial method of music. That's what happened to silverchair as time and again they were promoted as the next big thing to happen to Australian music, and the Tomorrow EP spent the next 6 weeks as #1 on the Australian Singles chart. By now, their second release and first single was ready to be released, th e "Pure Massacre" single, as a preview for their debut album to follow. It became another hit as a single of pure power for moshing and the underlying theme of violence and war and its horrors. Here was an awesome song, and included on the single was another tempter for the new album, a live version of "Faultline". Both of these tracks became popular with the JJJ fan base, and by the time it was released on Monday January 16, they had already lined up a number of gigs at various venues around Australia and a spot on the Big Day Out Festival tour of the nation. The popularity showed, as fans voted "Tomorrow" into the #3 spot on the Hottest 100 poll of new songs for 1994, behind the Cranberries 'Zombie' and Nine Inch Nails 'Closer'. The "Pure Massacre" single raced up the charts as fast as Tomorrow had done, and finally landed in the #2 spot where it stayed for a long time. For the show in Melbourne, record company executives were brought out from the US and watched the performance. There was excitement in the camp, and they felt they had something which they could put straight out, without changing the artwork or anything else to do with the album.
By this stage, the media attention and spotlight was intense, but Murmur and the band were doing their best to avoid it. A lot of resentment grew among fans of similar music styles, saying they were too young, and should pay their respects, and they look ed like Nirvana-in-Pyjamas. People everywhere were frenzying over them, and they did their best to avoid it (and still do ;). The band lives by the alternative philosophy of commercial success means nothing. They don't want media attention and refuse interviews because they dont' want any pressure and want the music to speak for them. As long as its fun for the band to play, they'll keep playing and writing songs. Anyone who has seen them live will know, they resent all the "teenage hype" and just want the people to come to the shows, enjoy the music, have a good time, and most of all, mosh! In case you didn't realise, I agree completely with the band, and these pages try to reflect the alternativeness of the band in every possible way. Basically, with all the pressure on them for the album, and great attention in the press and among the music industry, it is a credit to the band and Murmur to keep them at bay from it all, and keep playing great rock music.
Murmur also pulled another master stroke, as they got in Kevin Shirley from the US, who has worked with many well known bands to produce the new album for them. The album was recorded again in the JJJ studios over just 10 days in February of 1995, although they had already been playing most of the songs live since they first became popular. The artwork was generally conceived by Daniel, particularly the Llama joke, since he likes to draw and is quite good. The name of the album, "Frogstomp" came from an old song title from the '60s. Daniel described it as: We were invited over to one of the record company guy's house for dinner one night, and we were just flicking through some vinyl's from the '60's and someone saw the name 'Frogstomp' as one of the tracks, and thought 'Cool, lets call it that', and we all agreed so that's how it happened. The actual artist and album the track appears on is unknown, but fairly obscure. The album shocked all of the cynics who heard it, as they discovered the band really could play, and the album to be released contained 11 tracks, without a single weak track among them. They had also gathered quite a reputation among the fan base as being an awesome live band, with the ability to get people to mosh instantly. Despite the band's wishes, the "Frogstomp" album was released on Monday March 27, 1995 and ended up straight at #1 on the Australian Albums Chart. Quote from the band on JJJ the week before it was released: Oh well, we don't want it to do well, like maybe just hang around for a bit and then drop out...maybe just get in the top 10 or 20 on the alternative charts then disappear altogether. It wasn't what they wanted in terms of success, they didn't want to be labelled a mainstream band, they wanted to be alternative, and for the focus to be on the music, not the sales or popularity. To coincide with this release, the band headed off to Europe to play shows in London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam on April 1, 3 and 4. This was followed soon after by the release of the first and most powerful track on the album, "Israel's Son" in a special limited edition Tour EP, containing 3 live tracks from the BDO show in Melbourne in January. They also conducted a national tour of the major capitals , over the next 3 weekends. (At this stage, they were still at school and could only play shows on weekends and school holidays ;) The "Israel's Son" tour was to be in conjunction with the limited edition CD release only being available for the duration of the tour, from Thursday April 13, to Friday May 5. Unfortunately this was all of the major suppliers, and the tour was done at sellout venues, larger than those they h ad played in on previous tours (In fact the CD is still available now :). To supplement the fact that they didn't like the commercial success they were receiving, they also put out a special release free Post Card with the CD to be distributed only in Independent and Alternative music stores. To complement the limited time release for the Israel's Son, the band intended to release a next single, "Shade" in the second week of May, but this ended up being put off until the Friday May 26.
They first arrived in the US to play at the KROQ Atlanta Big Day Out festival on June 21, after having been invited by the radio station. However, the US executives had decided to release the Frogstomp album internationally, a week early on June 20, and they found themselves playing gigs at the Metro in Chicago on June 23, and in Detroit on June 24. This was their first experience in the US and the shows proved to be a huge success, selling out almost straight after ticket sales began, and over 1500 wer e turned away at the door in Chicago. To quote an Atlanta organiser of the BDO They started playing and I turned around and just 30 seconds into their set, 10 000 heads were moshing away. That was no exaggeration.To cap it off, sales of the album were also going through the roof, particularly in Atlanta, where in one day, over 1000 copies of the album were sold, and over 150 in one store alone, close to one every 3 seconds. About 6 weeks later, the album made it into the US charts, making it the first Australian album to do so for seven years. This was followed by a number of shows around Europe at various festivals and small club venues.
By the time they were ready to tour the US again in September, the album had reached #9 and the US success brought about even more media hype and frenzy among the Americans for anything "silverchair". There was also the similar kickback from the groups who resented their age, their looks and felt they copied Nirvana and other such bands. Ben has been quoted as saying: We don't hate Nirvana but we don't listen to them and we're not influenced by them one bit. It's not our fault Daniel's got blond hair. If you put 'Pure Massacre' against any Nirvana song, their song would be a lot better, but 'Pure Massacre' wouldn't sound like any of them, nor would "Tomorrow' or any of our others. The negativity was unfortunate and the September tour became quite an eventful one in terms of performances and media attention. It lead to Daniel being hit by someone throwing a bottle from the crowd at one show, and many other strange events.
The negativity rode with them back to Australia, and they played a number of shows in various spots around the place. In particular a show in their home town Newcastle was cancelled midway, after Daniel became concussed stage diving into a crowd which wouldn't catch him. They then had a quiet period leading up to the ARIA Awards, (Australian Record Industry Association) the major industry awards in Australia. They had received 8 nominations for their work, and ended up winning 5 awards for Best New Tal ent, Best Single, Best New Single, Highest Selling Single, and Best New Album. In keeping with their low profile, they chose not to take the stage and accept the awards. Instead they had Kevin Shirley's son accept them with a short thank you speech, and then they appeared on stage to close the awards with Tim Rogers from You Am I, performing an explosive cover of Radio Birdman's "New Race". Following this show, the band lay low for a while, doing a few gigs at venues in Australia, and enjoying some time off while recording a new video for Pure Massacre for the US market and some other events.
During this time, negotiations were under way, and it soon became clear that they had been chosen as the support act for a US national tour by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This could only be seen as a reward and an honour for the band, given their level of talent and brilliant music. The tour was scheduled for December, but disaster struck. The drummer for the RHCP, Chad Smith broke his hand in November and was unable to play. Not to be discouraged, and not to disapoint the American fans, they quickly set up and undertook their own tour of smaller venues across the US and parts of Canada. This tour was a huge success and they returned home rejuvenated for Christmas. After Christmas, the band played a few festivals in Australia, in Fremantle on New Years Eve and in Byron Bay a few days later. These shows gave the band a place to showcase some of the newer songs which they had in the pipeline for the Australian audience. In particular on January 4 in Byron Bay, at the Homebake Festival on the Belongil Fields, the band played an awesome set battling through the weather of being rained on all day, and equipment starting to fail and completely pack up. Fortunately for all the show was recorded by JJJ and played on Live-at-the-Wireless about two weeks later. It seemed however that resentment was still present with the JJJ audience who wanted the original silverchair back. They were completely snubbed by the JJJ audience in not being placed at all in the annual Hottest 100 countdown of new songs for 1995, with the fans favouring Spiderbait, Tumbleweed, Custard and Ammonia as the best Australian talents. There popularity wasn't aided with them not doing many Australian shows, and then only bit shows over the previous 6 months while being in the US and Europe.
Even so, come the end of January stopped in Sydney and recorded a song to contribute to a new compilation for the Surfriders Foundation benefit album. They did a cover of an old classic by the Trashmen called "Surfin' Bird", and it will be released later this year and feature artists such as Pearl Jam, Everclear, Pennywise and Sprung Monkey. Then they were jetting off again, as the RHCP tour was back on, and rescheduled for the end of January/February. The shows were amazing and a great experience for the band, playing many new songs, and generally wowing the crowds especially in Madison Square Garden, New York. For the final show, the RHCP sent dancing girls out on stage during the band's last song Israel's Son and invited them back during the RHCP's last song for a jam. Following this they set off to Europe for a few weeks, and toured with Everclear, and generally having fun in small clubs again. On March 30 1996, Daniel Johns appeared on JJJ's Request fest for a guest dj spot with Tunny. He got to spin a few of the records that he listens to, and tracks he chose included Helmet, You Am I, and Magic Dirt. Later on that night, the results of a competition on the request show for Vote for your favourite album of all time, placed "Frogstomp" at third place, behind Pearl Jam's "Ten" at #2 and Nirvana's "Nevermind" at #1. So it looks like they have fallen back into favour of late with the very picky JJJ audience.
The tour horizon for the band continued as they played their first shows in Japan at the start of April. Following this, they culminated touring for the Frogstomp album, with a headlining show to close the Royal Easter Show in Sydney on April 9, 1996. This was probably their best show ever, performing most of Frogstomp, and a number of new tracks, in front of over 25,000 fans - their biggest audience in Australia. The show even made news headlines around the country and overseas. In the pipeline, the band are looking to sit down and record a new album, of which they already have about 8-10 tracks all ready to go. This probably won't be done until June though, and hopefully a proper Australian tour will come soon after.

Okay!After all that we have the albums 'Freakshow' and 'neon ballroom!'(hey don't fuck with the bio man..no one reads it anyways...i just don't have anything to add other then that they have 3 kick ass albums!)