While certainly not the first smooth-cheeked youngsters to attain stardom, silverchair are a whole lot hipper that Tiffany. Or Menudo. Their hit "Tomorrow"--four minutes of steamy grunge that could just as easily have come from Seattle as Newcastle, Australia, silverchair's home port-- marked the band as hot, fresh newcomers on the modern rock scene. Fresh is the operative term, as Johns is just 16 and his bandmates, bassist Chris Joannou and drummer Ben Gillies, are only 15. All three are in the Australian equivalent of 10th grade.
Not too long ago they were carefree surfer dudes, playing rugby on the beach and making up rap songs in their bedrooms. Eventually they got instruments--Joannou had to be cajoled into taking up bass--and became basement rock stars. "We just expected to play in the garage for the rest of our lives,"says Johns.
But all that changed when they entered a tape of three songs, including "Tomorrow," in a radio station competition. They won first prize, which included a chance to record the song professionally and film a video.
"Tomorrow" took off, spending six weeks at No.1 in Australia and netting silverchair a recording contract. Then their Frogstomp album entered the Australian charts at No.1, leading to a chance to ply their adolescent craft across the Pacific. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, the band has met with similarly spectacular success here, in the birthplace of grunge.
silverchair is managed by the musicians' mothers, but when it comes to talking guitar, Johns makes it clear that it's he who holds the axe strings.
Guitar World:What was your first guitar?
Daniel Johns:I just got a guitar about three-and-a-half years ago.
It was , like, a $70 guitar, really cheap. I learned three chords; one
of the first songs I played was "Paranoid," by Black Sabbath. Then I started
doing "Rock and Roll"by Led Zepplin and stuff like that.
GW:Those were your influences?
Johns:Yep--Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and that kind of stuff.
GW:You're a little young for those groups. Where'd you hear them?
Johns:My parents' record collection. They have all that music in there,
and I couldn't afford to buy my own CD's. They had a lot of Deep Purple,
Black Sabbath, Led Zepplin, Doors.
GW:What were you doing with your time before you picked up the guitar?
Johns:We'd just surf and chuck the football around down at the park.
It was the rugby league football. I didn't really play any positions; we used
to go around for fun and chuck the ball around.
GW:Are you much of a surfer?
Johns:We do it as much as we can. We're not really good. It's just
fun--something to do.
GW:So was it love at first sight when you got your guitar? Were
you playing all the time?
Johns:Not really. When I first got it, I didn't know how to play
anything. I'd just pick it up, never really practice it at all. Then I learned
classical guitar for a year and started practicing a lot. It was all right.
The reason I did it was I got a Deep Purple video, and Ritchie Blackmore said
he did classical training for a year, so I wanted to copy him.
GW:Did you learn much from those lessons?
Johns:Yeah, I learned quite a bit. It made me practice more. I had to get stuff
right for when the guitar guy came. He was pretty good. I only had one year
of lessons; I learned the rest from the radio and records.
GW:How did you jump from your parents' music to your own favorites?
Johns:My dad went and bought a Soundgarden record because he heard they
sounded like Black Sabbath. He turned it on, and I really liked it. Then someone
told me to sit down and listen to Pearl Jam, and I really liked that too. Then
my next door neighbor said, "If you like Sabbath, listen to Helmet," and
she had all the Helmet records. Now I'm really into that and Tool, the Rollins Band
and Quicksand--bands like that.
GW:How much does it grind you when everybody talks about how much silverchair
sounds like a Seattle band?
Johns:Not too much, really. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were really big influences
when we first got a record contract. I still like them and listen to them a bit. But
we don't like them now as much as we like Helmet and Tool; we're more into that New York
hardcore kind of sound right now.
That's more what our new stuff sounds like. It's heavy music, but it's
still with a melody, not full of screaming like Rollins.I can't do that;
it sounds dumb.
GW:What were your first songs like?
Johns:Me and Ben started writing rap songs first. They went for about
20 seconds or something. It was just something to do. Then I started learning guitar
at 12 or so and started writing proper songs. They were really bad; the first one was
"Felt Like It," and it had three or four chords in it. Probably "Tomorrow" was the
first proper song we wrote that we liked.
GW:Have you become Australia's biggest guitar hero since Angus Young?
Johns:I'm not a guitar hero! To me, it's just part of being in a band. It's not
like a main instrument. It's part of the band.
GW:You mean there isn't a wicked soloist lurking inside you?
Johns:I don't really like that kind of stuff; I never really liked it. I don't think
it sounds good if you're in a three-piece band, really. It just loses all its guts if you're
just playing this riff and all of a sudden you go into this really fast guitar solo and stuff.
GW:It's interesting you feel that way, because all of your early heros, like
Blackmore and Tony Iommi, loved to take solos.
Johns:We like that kind of stuff, but you've got to be good to be able to do that,
and I can't do it.[laughs]We used to be a four-piece, and I played quite a few solos back
then. But when the other guitarist left I just said,"Stuff this. We're just gonna keep it
sounding ballsy, fat, just cut out all the solos."
Sometimes, like in "Tomorrow," there's a little bit of a guitar solo, but that's as much as we
do. None of our new songs have any guitar solos or anything. Usually a guitar solo for me is
just a breakdown in the song or a bit of a change. Instead of putting in a guitar solo,
we'll think up a different riff and put that in, just to make a song less boring.
GW:What's your favorite solo on a record?
Johns:My favorite guitarist ever is Ritchie Blackmore, but my favorite solo is
Jimmy Page in "Heartbreaker." That's an unreal solo.
GW:Page was an influence too?
Johns:Yeah, quite a bit. We used to listen to Zepplin all the time. Ben was probably
the most influenced by Led Zepplin; he loved John Bonham. I was more into Deep Purple and
Black Sabbath. Now I like Led Zepplin a lot more than I used to.
GW:Who are your favorite guitarists from the punk and alternative rock movements?
Johns:I don't really like individual guitarists. I like guitar riffs. I don't say,
"I like the guitarist but I don't like the band." If a good guitarist is in a bad band,
I wouldn't like him any better.
GW:Do you feel like you're still improving?
Johns:As long as you're playing, I guess, you're always improving. I'm not really
keen on being the best guitarist and seeing who can play the best solos and stuff. To me
a guitarist is a part of the band. As long as I like what we're playing, as long as I can
keep good time and don't stuff up too much, I don't care if I improve too much.
GW:Do you take music class in school?
Johns: Yeah. It really sucks. You do really dumb crap you don't want to do, just
stupid old folk songs and stuff. You just sit there tapping wood sticks. It's really bad.
GW:You have a hit album, though. Don't the teachers treat you any differently?
Johns:Nah. They treat us like the other people. The say, "O.K.,sit down and shut
up," and we sit there and don't say anything. One of my friends in class really likes
punk, so when we get free time, he picks up an acoustic guitar and I get on the drums just
to muck around and we'll play a really fast song. It usually sounds really bad, but it's fun.