The History Of Silverchair

Silverchair is Australias most succesful rock band to date, they have had numerous top 20 hits over the past 10 years and they have sold over 6 million albums worldwide. All three of Silverchair (Daniel Johns - singer/guitarist, Ben Gillies - drummer and Chris Joannou - bassist) were born in Newcastle in 1979.


In Silverchair's early days they called themselves The Innocent Criminals, they played songs from Led Zepplin and Deep Purple. They changed their name from innocent criminals to Silverchair after they won a contest on SBS called "pick me", which won them a recording contract. The name came from a song by Smashing Pumpkins called Silverf**k and Berlin Chair by You Am I.

In 1994 Silverchair released their smash hit Tommorow, it had great success in Australia spending 6 weeks at the top of the charts and also having great success in America.

Early 1995 they released Frogstomp their 1st album. As well as Tommorow it had 2 other smash hits with "Pure Massacre" and "Israels Son", worldwide Frogstomp sold 2.5 million copies, and it was recorded in less than 2 weeks! Later that year Silverchair toured the USA with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

In 1997 they released their second album Freak Show, it had 3 hit: Freak, Cemetery and Abuse Me. This time they didn't exceed 2 million albums sold worldwide only 1.5 million.

By now Silverchair had been labelled as Nirvana or Pearl Jam copycats. In 1999 Silverchair showed their critics they werent, with their 3rd album Noen Ballroom a mixing heavy metal rock and an orchestra. Silverchair had 4 hits from this album: Anthem For The Year 2000, Ana's Song, Miss You Love and Emotional Sickness. They toured the world again, this time performing at the reading festival, and touring with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Blink 182.

After these tours Silverchair announced they were taking a 12 month break from the music buissness. They changed labels as their 3 album deal with Sony had ended and joined Eleven.

In 2001 Silverchair performed alongside Red Hot Chilli Peppers for the 3rd time at Rock in Rio, in front of 250,000 people.

Later that year they went back to the studio to record their 4th album Diorama, which had critics raving, it finally prooved that Silverchair weren't just some punk kids copying their heros. Diorama shows much brighter lyrics and music from there preceding ablbums. It was a big step for them to release an album like this.

Later in 2002 lead singer and guitarist Daniel Johns was diagnosed with arthiritis and Silverchair had to cancel shows. But when he got better they toured the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and finally Australia.