One of the most sage pieces of advice Ben Gillies ever received came from his father: “All it takes is a song. One song.”
Gillies was barely into his teens when he learned how true that was. Tomorrow, a mature and complicated rock epic written over two jam sessions in his childhood bedroom, propelled the unprepared children of Australian band Silverchair into the global spotlight in 1995, raking in millions of dollars in royalties and providing the foundations upon which one of the most successful and impressive catalogues in Australian musical history was built.
The genesis of their most popular song is detailed in Love & Pain, the revealing new memoir from the band’s former drummer Ben Gillies and bass player Chris Joannou. In the book, the two musicians get a chance to tell their version of a story that’s been dominated by frontman Daniel Johns, who remained a media obsession – often to his detriment – even after the band’s acrimonious split.
The animosity was fuelled further late last month, when a two-part Australian Story documentary, A Silver Lining, aired on the ABC ahead of the book’s release.
After the first part aired, Johns facilitated its removal from ABC iView, saying he hadn’t cleared the musical rights to his compositions. On Instagram, he clarified his position: “I’ve asked on many occasions to read the book but haven’t been sent a copy … I said to Sony and ABC I would be open to approving all songs provided I receive a copy of the book … I was told again that Ben and Chris would not give me a copy to read.”
Speaking with Guardian Australia, Gillies and Joannou deny this chain of events, saying they weren’t involved in the decision not to provide Johns an early copy. In a statement, their publisher Hachette said they “[do] not comment on or disclose its pre-publication processes”. (The first episode of A Silver Lining is still unavailable on iView; the second will be removed next week, a month after broadcast.)
In the book, co-authored by Alley Pascoe, Gillies and Joannou wrestle with some heady topics for the first time. Gillies outlines his struggles with mental health, including what he describes as “an acute psychotic break”; addiction issues around alcohol and cocaine; a tragic miscarriage and seven failed IVF attempts; and the death of his mother, with whom he was estranged for a long period. For his part, Joannou reveals he suffered an aggressive form of cancer that required months of chemotherapy, and a heart attack – neither of which had been public knowledge.
“A lot of my health stuff, I deliberately kept very quiet and personal,” Joannau says from the Sydney offices of their book publisher, Hachette. “But wholeheartedly committing to doing the book, I had to be open and honest.”
The book, told in alternating chapters authored by the pair, was pieced together through a series of conversations with Pascoe which acted as a sort of emotional excavation.
“You are a bit more open and less guarded,” Joannou explains. “It’s not like you’re in front of an audience – you’re just in conversation, talking, building it up.”
Gillies recalls being hit by long-buried memories while falling to sleep: he would force himself awake to quickly jot it down to explore in the next conversation.
“We really did make an effort to be … open and raw and brutally honest.”
The book also provides a space for the airing of grievances about songwriting credits, which Gillies believes were unfairly distributed. In the book, he reveals how, in the early days, his father pushed for royalties to be split three ways between the teenagers, only to be rebuffed.
Twice during the memoir, Gillies brings into contention the true authorship of Tomorrow – which is officially credited to Johns and Gillies – claiming that Joannou co-wrote the song too.
This is no small claim. Tomorrow has generated millions of dollars in royalties for the songwriters; it was the most-played track on US modern rock radio in 1995, a year in which Wonderwall by Oasis, Better Man by Pearl Jam and When I Come Around by Green Day were all jostling for high rotation. The single sold over a quarter of a million copies in Australia before the label removed it from sale, for fear of overexposure; it has since been licensed to video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Suffice to say: it has been a nice little earner.
When Tomorrow was written, Gillies and Johns had already co-written a number of songs together, which they would generally bring, complete, to the other two members (the band was a four-piece at this early stage).
But when their second guitarist Tobin Finnane left, the band became a trio and changed the way they wrote.
“We decided, ‘Let’s just start to jam,’” Gillies explains.
“Let’s just start to get in a room, not talk about what we’re going to play, not have any kind of rehearsed or practised parts … Let’s just start jamming, and just feed off each other.
“And that’s where [Tomorrow] came from. We’re literally in my bedroom and we were just jamming. Who the hell knows what we’re playing? Like, just fucking around.”
A liquid jam morphed into what would become the chorus riff from Tomorrow, in what Gillies and Joannou both remember as a moment of alchemy.
“We didn’t discuss anything, it just happened out of thin air,” Gillies continues. “And then Dan started singing that melody over the top.” The trio played that same section for around 20 minutes – “because we were so stoked on how cool it sounded” – but a few days later, Gillies says, Johns had cooled on the idea. Gillies says he rang Johns from his father’s office, the 14-year-old planted at an old-fashioned concertina desk and a Telecom handset, and pleaded the song’s case.
Gillies and Johns finished the song off a few days later, in the same bedroom it was birthed in, both shaping the verses and structures on acoustic guitars.
“I mean, why Chris didn’t get a credit on it, I don’t know,” Gillies says. “Maybe it’s something we need to right, we need to fix.” (For his part, Joannou simply shrugs, and declines an offer to elaborate after the interview.)
Any official revision of the credits is likely to be a costly and lengthy affair, particularly given the pair only communicate with Johns via a third party.
The rift started early in the band’s career. Gillies pinpoints a 1997 show at Luna Park as the moment Johns started to pull away from the group. The trio and a bunch of friends had booked a bus to drive them back to Newcastle; he says Johns opted for a lift with his father. That same year, Johns turned 18 and moved out of home; Joannou recalls feeling he and Gillies were unwelcome, particularly after one interview Johns did in which he said he wanted to be left alone in his new weatherboard shack.
The following year, the pair didn’t see Johns for a couple of months, despite living in the same suburb. Soon after, Johns declared he needed to be the sole songwriter in the band in order to continue, effectively cutting Gillies out of the process. Gillies recalls that during the recording of Neon Ballroom, Johns started referring to Silverchair as “work” – a notable mental shift.
By 2011, the band were at such odds that the announcement of their breakup was written and released without their input.
“Technically, we’re still in ‘indefinite hibernation’,” Gillies laughs, referring to the clunky language in the press release. Joannau first heard about Silverchair’s hibernation on the radio, while driving from Newcastle to Sydney.
It’s clear that being excluded from the songwriting process, at least officially, still stings Gillies, who had co-writing credits on 13 of the 24 tracks on their first two albums.
“Mostly on Diorama, Daniel had a clear vision of what that album would be,” Gillies concedes of the new arrangement. “But even with every other album that Dan ‘wrote on his own’,” he says, doing large, aggressive air quotes to drive the point home, “I guess there was still a Silverchair filter that it went through.
“He might have an idea for a song. But once Chris and I play on it, it changes. And then we have to adapt the song for the band. So I guess it felt like we were still contributing. We just weren’t getting the credits for it.”
All three Silverchair members have moved on with their lives: Johns released the critically acclaimed and commercially successful FutureNever album last year, Gillies has put out a string of solo recordings under his own name and this year competed on The Amazing Race Australia, while Joannou co-founded the Lovells Lager beer company and opened a pub, The Edwards, now a Newcastle institution. But there remains an unfinished air to the band.
“For myself, there was definitely a bit of a struggle to bookend that part of my life,” admits Joannou. “Working through the book, with a bit more hindsight, and age, and a bit of reflection, you can just sort of be a bit more accepting, and just be OK with it.”
Gillies agrees. “Hopefully, the book gives us some kind of closure.”
• Love & Pain: The Epic Times and Crooked Lines of Life Inside and Outside Silverchair is out now through Hachette ($45)
