"It's 12 o'clock, and it's a wonderful day. I know you hate me, but I'll ask anyway."
IF you grew up in Newcastle in the early to mid-1990s there's a handful of moments, or news stories, from that period that are probably seared into your memory.
There's the rebuild and aftermath of the Newcastle Earthquake that tragically shook the city's foundations on December 28, 1989, and the shocking Leigh Leigh murder trial, both of which created national headlines.
While on the sporting field, the still relatively-new Newcastle Knights had swiftly built a fanatical fan base and were promising future glory through a host of emerging homegrown products like Matthew and Andrew Johns, Paul Harragon and Adam Muir.
That promise culminated in the Knights' miraculous 1997 ARL grand final victory over Manly. A few days later 100,000 people would cram into Civic Park to salute their heroes.
But in terms of global prominence, nothing put Newcastle on the international map like Silverchair, and it all began on September 16, 1994, when the band's first EP Tomorrow was released.
Over the spring of 1994 the Australian music scene's focus was fixed on Newcastle and three long-haired high school kids from Merewether - frontman and guitarist Daniel Johns, 15, and drummer Ben Gillies and bassist Chris Joannou, who both turned 15 while the song was storming up the charts.
By November Silverchair's explosive take on grunge's Seattle sound had topped the ARIA singles chart, a position it would maintain for six weeks as it sold more than 180,000 copies.
An amazing return on a recording that Johns says "cost about $75".
Tomorrow would become the ninth-highest-selling single of 1994. It made a strange bedfellow next to commercial pap like Wet Wet Wet's Love Is All Around, Ace Of Base's The Sign and Celine Dion's Power Of Love.
While Dion's mezzo-soprano was belting out an over-produced power ballad, here was a teenage Johns growling an ominous "Fat boy, wait 'til tomorrow" over crunching raw guitar distortion and booming drums.
The dimly-lit music video, predominantly shot at the Old Newcastle Police Station, now The Lock-Up art space, also proved memorable. What it lacked in production value, it more than compensated through youthful energy.
The vision of Johns, clad in a striped t-shirt, singing while a light bulb oscillates around his head, has become an iconic Australian rock image.
Tomorrow kick-started Silverchair hysteria. It spread across the Pacific Ocean in 1995 with the release of the debut album Frogstomp, which became the first debut Australian album to enter the charts at No.1.
There were performances on Saturday Night Live, support tours with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers that included a show at Madison Square Garden, and a growing legion of passionate fans.
The track also won ARIA Awards in 1995 for Single of the Year, Highest Selling Single and Breakthrough Artist.
An impressive level of success for any band, but a simply mind-blowing accomplishment for a group of teens still too young to drive.
"Won't you come with me to a place in a little town? The only way to get there's to go straight down."
In last year's memoir, Love & Pain, Gillies describes the moment Tomorrow was written by himself and Johns in his childhood bedroom.
Just mates jamming away. Having fun. But on this occasion magic was made.
"We were all there - in the zone, jamming - and we just started playing what sounded like a chorus when Dan opened his mouth and sang, 'You wait 'til tomorrow'," Gillies writes.
"Man, that line sounded good. But it was more than the sound, it was the feeling."
"There's no bathroom, and there is no sink. The water out of the tap is very hard to drink."
Maitland singer-songwriter and teacher, Dave Wells, was himself an aspiring teenage musician when Tomorrow was released.
"Being a practising, adventurous, and determined songwriter myself at the time, hearing Tomorrow was a mix of excitement and envy, to be honest," Wells says.
"Such a fitting and influential song for teenagers then, and still today. It really energised the local music scene here and blew people's minds with how young they were."
Sue Carson, the associate lecturer and coordinator at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music, is a veteran of the local scene and was performing with contemporary bands when Tomorrow exploded.
"All the musos who were playing around that time in bands were in awe of how good Silverchair were at that age," Carson says.
"It gave the whole town and whole scene more confidence. It made us feel good about ourselves and think we could have more amazing acts come out of Newcastle."
Three decades later Silverchair and Tomorrow continue to resonate. The band might have acrimoniously split in 2011 after five legendary albums, a record 21 ARIA Awards and 6 million records sold, but they remain revered.
Carson says her students - the majority who were children when Silverchair's last album Young Modern (2007) was released - remain influenced by the band.
"Because of the age group, a lot of the students' parents would have listened to Silverchair and there's definitely an ongoing love and respect for Silverchair," she says.
Just like Silverchair, Newcastle's Piper Butcher, 20, began performing and songwriting in her early teens. She says Tomorrow breaks through generational barriers.
"Johns once mentioned that Tomorrow was one of their least serious songs from Frogstomp, which sparked a creative fire in me," Butcher says.
"How can one song, that connected with everyone worldwide, been written by a band at such a young age? It has to be their literal lyricism, and honest musicianship that flows straight from emotion."
"You say that money, isn't everything. But I'd like to see you live without it."
So what makes Tomorrow such a powerful song? The lyrics, while impressive for a teenager, feature a few clunky lines about water quality and schoolyard taunts.
The soft-and-heavy arrangement and Johns' deep and growling voice were heavily derivative of grunge, and especially of Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder.
While Tomorrow wears its influences firmly on its sleeve and sounds very rooted in the '90s, there's an intangible x-factor and youthful vigour which remains exciting 30 years later.
"I love the chorus of Tomorrow," Carson says. "It's just a soaring note and it's a clashy note because he's singing G against D suspended and C suspended chords.
"It just hangs there over the chord progression and it's just so effective."
"You think you can keep on going living like a king. Ooh babe, but I strongly doubt it."
Newcastle singer-songwriter Demi Mitchell says the overriding legacy of Tomorrow is of possibility.
"I remember that palpable feeling of possibility that came with knowing some 15-year-old kids from Newcastle could be where they were," Mitchell says.
"It was both encouraging and comforting to us as teenagers when we felt stuck in the middle of nowhere, out past Maitland. I love that the energetic punch of Tomorrow still well and truly holds up today - it's got that particular kind of raw emotion and grit that are a testament to what makes a great song."
The most internationally-successful Newcastle band since Silverchair has been indie-rockers Vacations, who boast a monthly Spotify audience of 10.4 million people. The majority of that audience is based in the US.
Vacations drummer Joey van Lier spent his teens performing Tomorrow and other Silverchair songs Israel's Son and Freak at former all-ages venue The Loft with his old band The Patriots.
"Silverchair were a huge influence on me in my formative years as a young musician cutting my teeth in Newcastle," van Lier says.
"For such a fantastic and influential Aussie band to have come from the same place as me, always served as an inspiration and point of reference for what my fellow young musos and I could achieve. Their massive success gave us a road map for crafting a genuine global career."
