Daniel Johns of Silverchair

Daniel Johns of Silverchair

By Erin Broadley
Aug 16, 2007

Rumor has it that back in November, 2006, Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns sparked a joint with Australian Parliament member Peter Garrett and U2’s Bono while the group lounged coolly on Bono’s bed, listening to early demos of Silverchair’s latest album, "Young Modern." Oh, the scandal. What happened next was a series of public apologies, where Johns insisted that when he’d told that story during a radio interview, he meant it purely as a joke. "I guess I felt a bit like a name-dropper mentioning them on the radio, so that's why I added a silly throwaway joke," Johns said. "I really should just shut up and stick to singing."

Regardless, it becomes clear when talking to the affable 28-year-old that he’s quite easy going, and really quite funny – despite the introverted, sensitive songwriter shroud that critics have cloaked him in over the years since Silverchair first stepped into the music scene. In the decade plus since the band’s “Frogstomp” debut, Silverchair – completed by drummer Ben Gillies and bassist Chris Joannou – has become the most successful band in Australian rock history. The band's music has long evolved from its teenage, post-grunge doldrums (the band made its debut in 1995, when each of the members was just 14-years-old) and has transitioned smoothly into a highly complex, rock exploration – flush with orchestral arrangements and truly eclectic songwriting. Silverchair is a band that has continued to take risks with its music, and become better for it.

SuicideGirls caught up with Daniel Johns while on tour in Washington state to chat about “Young Modern” (out now), insomnia, and what one should do if mugged for a Coca-Cola…

Erin Broadley: Hey, Daniel. How’s your voice? I heard you had laryngitis.
Daniel Johns: I'm good. It’s still not a hundred percent but it’s all right now. It’s really inconvenient.
EB:
I bet. Well, let's start by talking about songwriting. You've said that, with Young Modern, your goal was to put together really complex music but make it appear and sound simple, as opposed to with Diorama where you really wanted to indulge and expose the complexities of the music. Do you feel that you were able to accomplish that?
DJ:
Yeah. It’s hard to have an honest perspective on that when you write the songs. I feel that I got kind of close at least. That’s definitely what I was trying to do. I was trying to write lots of notes and make it appear very simple. But, you know, whether or not I do that is not really up to me to decide, I’d be lying because I don’t know.
EB:
As a songwriter, do melodies and sounds come before the lyrics or vice versa?
DJ:
Lyrics usually come last for me. Usually, to be honest, that’s one of the parts I dread when I’m writing songs.
EB:
You dread writing lyrics?
DJ:
Yeah. I always leave it to the very, very, very last minute. I think for about five of the songs on Young Modern the lyrics were written just prior to going in and doing the vocals. I still hadn’t done the lyrics. I was like, “No it’ll be there. It’ll be there. It’ll come. There’ll be a moment of just divine inspiration, and it’ll all be there." [Laughs] But there wasn’t so I just had to hurry up and finish it.
EB:
[Laughs] Have you ever considered just doing an instrumental album?
DJ:
Yeah, I’d love to actually. I think that would be a really fun thing to do. We actually thought about doing a couple of instrumentals for this record [because] I love some music that I’ve written but I don’t want to ignore my [other] skills. It’s like it’s selling it short a lot of the time if you don’t put a lyric or a vocal with it. Not as many people really pay attention to instrumental music.
EB:
You work with orchestral selections on a lot of your records, and work with Van Dyke Parks a lot. Where did your interest in orchestration begin?
DJ:
It really started when I left school in 1999.
EB:
High school, you mean?
DJ:
Yeah, I left high school and I just started really getting interested in film music and cinematic textures and all that kind of stuff, and I stopped listening to rock and roll music for a while and I was just listening to that stuff to try and broaden my palette and try and be a better songwriter. Then the more that I learned about it and the more that I started listening to more of that music, then I started incorporating a lot of it into my music and then you just become aware of certain people and then I met Van Dyke Parks which was after I had written Diorama and I was looking for someone to arrange some orchestration with me. He was definitely someone I wanted to work with. Then since meeting him we’ve been friends and worked on a lot of stuff and it’s been a real pleasure.
EB:
Well, your music is definitely cinematic and very colorful and textured, as you mentioned...Is your music ever inspired or affected by other art forms? Sometimes I run into musicians who describe the music making process or their songs in terms similar to painting or writing or sculpture and things like that.
DJ:
Yeah, I actually do. It’s always weird, whenever I talk about this kind of stuff, [people] act like I’m pretentious. It’s awkward to talk about it like that. It is true. With Diorama, I don’t know if you know this but there’s an artist in Australia, Brett Whitely, who is an idol of mine and is really amazing. He’s like an '80s Australian underground art icon. I was just studying his paintings and writing songs like "Tuna in the Brine" and "Across the Night" as a result.
EB:
Yeah, very surrealist. I studied surrealist photography and surrealist painting when I was in school.
DJ:
Yeah. I think that’s probably a bigger inspiration to music than music, if you know what I mean. When you’re writing you want to reinterpret something as opposed to recreate something. It’s better to look at something that’s different. We began looking at things thinking more in terms of sculpting instead of painting big lush landscapes or just building shapes and putting them on top of each other and just making big bits and small bits and somehow piecing it together. That’s the good thing about being a musician. You can basically be inspired by everything. You can be inspired by seeing a guy going to the office every day and being completely uninspired.
EB:
Right, you can be inspired by uninspired people.
DJ:
Yeah, exactly, I find myself being inspired by some of that kind of stuff all the time as well. When I see someone working nine-to-five sometimes I think about my Dad and others who have been doing the same job for the last 40 years, getting up and doing the same thing over and over again, I feel blessed and fortunate and lucky and then I know whenever I feel lucky I like writing music [laughs].
EB:
I heard that you dealt with a fair amount of insomnia when writing and recording this record, hence the song "Insomnia." Is that true?
DJ:
Yeah, actually there was a moment when I was writing this record, I wrote about 52 tracks for it and there were about 12 of that not sleeping. I could see a pattern developing and I had a slight fixation with it for about four weeks and I decided I couldn’t just write an album about not sleeping [laughs].
EB:
Right. That would be quite the concept record [laughs].
DJ:
Yeah. I didn’t mean to. That’s just what every song was about for about three weeks. I had to pull myself up and go, “Um, even if you’re not sleeping you really should look elsewhere for something to write about. [Laughs] Don’t stay caught in that rut."
EB:
Well, I hope you’re getting more rest these days.
DJ:
Yeah, I’m sleeping better now.
EB:
Good. Young Modern is your first record in about five or six years. Does the band feel any common sense of relief, now that you’re in a position where people trust you and you’ve established yourself in the music industry? Is there a sense of calm now that you have the ability to take your time and work on other things in between albums as opposed to feeling rushed and forced with the turnaround like other young bands?
DJ:
Yeah, I do. I’ve never really felt that pressure to keep [rushing through records] to maintain the level of success that we’ve achieved or whatever. I’ve never really felt like that. I’ve felt like you know whenever you release a record, that’s kind of it. There it is forever and if you rush it to get commercial results to exploit a commercial appeal at a certain time it’s still going to last forever and it’s going to be a rushed record and not going to be as good as it could be. I’d rather take two or three years to write and wait. Usually it doesn’t take two or three years to make a record although it usually takes us a few months to write all the songs and then it’s good to have a couple of months of rehearsing.
EB:
Sometimes you have to take a few years to do other things so you can make a record about fresh ideas.
DJ:
Yeah.
EB:
Like, if you just do back-to-back records, you stop learning because if you don’t go out there and explore and then you have nothing to write about.
DJ:
I think that’s right, definitely. I mean, I think that’s why Young Modern sounds the way that it does from being a band that's just on the road all the time. I felt very inspired by the world instead of just inspired by my own boring personality.
EB:
[Laughs] I have a quote from an interview that Ben did recently where he's asked whether or not he looked back at the early days of being a struggling musician as simple or romantic. He said that because it was over 10 years ago that you guys have moved a long way forward and really evolved musically. To me, that evolution is pretty obvious to anyone that’s been listening to your music or followed your career. But, on that note, do you feel that there’s a void in the music industry when it comes to young bands being too afraid to take risks for the sake of evolving their music?
DJ:
I think it’s, I don’t know...I think there are a lot of really good minds in the world and a lot of great art and a lot of great artists and a lot of great music. I think the music industry is just in a chokehold at the moment. Everyone is being strangled and no one is really allowed to do anything. You just have to look at music history and you know, if Kid A by Radiohead (or the equivalent) was released in 1960 it'd be a cultural phenomenon but now it just doesn’t have that impact on people. It still has that impact on people but it doesn’t have the impact on culture anymore. There’s no one really that’s making it happen within the music industry. I think there’s a lot of great music being made but it’s all just money now. Everything is just about money; they just want to make money instead of just do it because it makes people feel good or because music can change the way people think. It’s not treated like that anymore because rock and roll is really old now. I think it’s not treated the way it was in the '60s and the '70s because it’s not this brand new thing that keeps evolving and changing and you know, into different things. Now, kind of everything that’s being done it’s all being reinterpreted, even electronic stuff and rock and roll, which is not bad but it’s not new anymore. So that’s not having that affect on the industry or anything like that. It’s still affecting people but I don’t really understand why but I don’t think it’s due to any lack of ambition on the musicians’ part.
EB:
Right, right. In an ideal world, what would be some of the things you wish music had the ability to change?
DJ:
I wish music had the ability to change everything.
EB:
Yeah [laughs].
DJ:
You know, the good thing about music is it’s always going to affect people if it’s good. It’s always going to have resonance with people and its always going to have that impact. I don’t really know why it doesn’t seem to have that cultural impact anymore because there’s so much of it and it’s so cluttered and everyone’s got their own twist to everything all the time and it’s just less special.
EB:
Well the thing that always kills me is when a person isn't taken seriously if they say they want to become a musician. Especially kids who say, “Hey, I want to grow up and be a musician.” And then adults are like, “Yeah, right. Well, have fun being poor.”
DJ:
I think kids should be inspired to be musicians. That’s probably the most rewarding thing you could do.
EB:
I think everybody should be a musician, even if they’re not in a full-on band. I think it would be amazing if everybody had a guitar in their house or a drum kit in their garage.
DJ:
Yeah, I think it's getting close actually. That’s what I mean about everyone having access to everything. You can literally learn how to play the guitar in six months. Then you can get Pro-Tools and you can have an album done within a year of picking up the guitar. You don’t really need to know how to play the guitar to make a really good record. In fact a lot of the best records are made by people that aren't actual producers, they're just painting with sound and creating little miniature masterpieces and you don’t need the right chords to do that.
EB:
Right, right, just like you don’t need to know how to do figure studies to pick up a paintbrush and make something that’s pleasing to the eye or that you really enjoy or gets some sort of emotional release for you.
DJ:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree.
EB:
In your lovely little press release, your albums are associated with and described in terms of emotions -- like naïveté for Frog Stomp, anger for Freak Show, then depression for Neon Ballroom, escapism for Diorama and then Young Modern is acceptance.
DJ:
Yeah, it’s acceptance. I feel that it’s the first record I’ve made for Silverchair where I haven’t been running away from people’s perception of Silverchair. I haven’t been really trying to challenge people’s perception of Silverchair. It’s the first time I’ve just kind of gone, “Fuck off, I’m doing whatever I want. It’s going to be good.”
EB:
[Laughs]
DJ:
[Laughs] I haven’t really sat and thought about it. You know, with Diorama I really over thought a lot of it. But this one was really natural and I was just writing exactly what I wanted to write and doing what I wanted to do and really embracing what I feel is Silverchair’s strength. We feel really blessed that we’re still doing it and people even care.
EB:
I was reading the stats on this record and it’s been out for a bit now and doing excellent. Plus, you guys just received the lifetime achievement award at the Australian MTV Video Music Awards. Was that a surreal experience?
DJ:
Yeah, it really was [laughs]. None of us really knew how to take that. I mean here we are 28 and 27 and we’re getting a lifetime achievement award. I don’t know, it kind of feels like the end of the world. It was thrilling but it was like maybe they were giving us a hint [laughs] like, "Maybe you guys should move over and let someone else have a go." [Laughs] I don’t have any awards in my house. I don’t think, it doesn’t feel very homely to go home and start writing and look at your achievements hanging on the wall.
EB:
Right [laughs].
DJ:
That’s another thing, I don't think you'd get much good work done.
EB:
Yeah, you'd just sit there and polish them all day long.
DJ:
Yeah, just sit there and look and go, “Yeah, I am amazing." [Laughs]
EB:
Just hire somebody whose full-time job is just to polish your trophies.
DJ:
Yeah, now that would be the ultimate and then just have a person on a tiny little stage constantly playing wah-wah guitar solos even when you’re not home. You just walk in and the house is full of awards and guitar solos.
EB:
[Laughs] So what’s next for the band? Just finish touring for the rest of the year?
DJ:
Yeah, we’re pretty much just on the road for the rest of our lives.
EB:
[Laughs] For all eternity.
DJ:
Yeah, it looks pretty intense and if you look at our planners, I don’t know, by the end of next year we’re done touring this record and hopefully I’ll have some songs and I’m going to work on a film, I know someone who’s doing a musical.
EB:
Yeah, I was going to ask you if you ever considered working in film based on our conversation earlier.
DJ:
Yeah. I’d love to and me and Van Dyke talked about doing something together and this guy, this really amazing filmmaker, and is interested in getting a good bit of music to do this musical. So hopefully that’ll be something to do for a while.
EB:
Who are your favorite film composers? I’m a Basil Paledouris and Danny Elfman girl myself.
DJ:
I like John Bryon stuff a lot. I don’t really know anyone’s names to tell you the truth. I don't know anyone’s that I like. I just like the music.
EB:
Basil Paledouris was the guy that did the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack.
DJ:
Oh right, the big epic.
EB:
Right, it’s fantastic and I grew up with that movie and I always know if there are people I don’t want in my house the quickest way to get them to leave is to put on the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. They think I’m crazy and they leave.
DJ:
[Laughs] That’s a really good idea actually. I think it’s funny. I’ll put it on in the dressing room before I shower [laughs]. I think it’s quite inspiring too. You go to battle and there’s tympani and cymbals crashing and bombastic music and then you just walk on stage and play your moderate rock.
EB:
Right, exactly, you know, you just kind of get that out of your system and it makes you feel glorious.
DJ:
[Laughs] Yeah, exactly.

[Pause]

I just saw somebody get mugged actually right there on the stairs. That was pretty weird.
EB:
What happened?
DJ:
I just saw someone get mugged.
EB:
You just saw someone get mugged?
DJ:
Yeah.
EB:
Well, get out of there. What are you doing? Don’t stand there watching! [Laughs]
DJ:
I’m standing here outside of my bus. As soon as they come close I’ll run inside.
EB:
[Laughs]
DJ:
It seems all right. No one seems hurt but someone lost something because the person ran off.
EB:
Oh my God.
DJ:
I think it was a wallet, but it might have been a Coke. I’m not sure.
EB:
A can of Coke, somebody holds you up for a soda...
DJ:
They really, really wanted to quench their thirst.
EB:
They’re not mean, just really thirsty [laughs]. Well don’t let anybody steal your wallet while you’re on tour.
DJ:
No, definitely not, it’s looked after by my tour manager because I can’t be trusted.


Silverchair is on tour now. For more information go to www.chairpage.com
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