Before
In the beginning there were two kids. ( sophisticated kids none the less, ha!) Daniel Johns and Ben Gillies, who enjoyed playing music together. Daniel remembers " we didn't ever say : oh, let's be in a band, we said "do you wanna jam or something, like if we had no homework or the surf was shit!" They called themselves " Short Elvis" cause Ben was short and at the time he really liked Elvis. The problem was they needed a thicker sound so they needed more people. They later hooked up with Chris Joannou and formed " Innocent Criminals".

Innocent Criminals also had another member named Tobin. He moved away to England for a year and returned to find "silverchair" having signed a three man contract. Poor Tobin. I feel for you buddy!

How'd they get the name? There was a story that they were listening to the radio and Daniel wanted to request Berlin Chair and Ben wanted Sliver andl then Chris wrote down "sliverchair" as in a compromise, but silly Chris wrote " silverchair".Supposedlythis story is not true,it was made up so they would have an interesting story to tell,actually there was merely a list and they chose "silverchair".They liked it best.

silverchair was formed in 1992 in Australia and released " Frogstomp" in 1994/95, which sold 3 million copies worldwide. Their second album Freak Show came out in February,4th of 97 and sold 450, 000 copies. The name was so supposed to show how bands are similar to freak shows in the way that they travel around from town to town, and people just watch them.Their third album, called Neon Ballroom was released March 16th of '99 and has sold almost as many as frogstomp. The name is supposed to reflect the old and the new, neon is futuristic and ballroom is more classic, which represents the elements put together on the album. It is Daniel's creation pretty much, the concept and the lyrics & most of the musical elements were written by Daniel. It is a very honest album about Daniel's tough year in '98 where he suffered from pretty severedepression and Anorexia (Ana's Song). Good job boys!

After!

AFTER....AFTER

See? You're learning!

Formed in the Australian industrial town of Newcastle in 1992, silverchair
(Daniel Johns, guitars and vocals; Ben Gillies, drums; Chris Joannou, bass)
were still in high school when their first single, "Tomorrow," became the
nation's Number One song in late 1994. In April 1995, Silverchair's
Frogstomp, became the first debut album by an Australian artist to enter the
national charts at Number One.—the day before the band's
North American live debut at the Roxy Theater in Atlanta, GA. "Tomorrow"
topped the Billboard Alter-native and Rock Airplay charts; and with heavy
MTV airplay for the song's video, directed by Mark Pellington, Frogstomp was
certified gold within two months of its US release. A second radio track,
"Pure Massacre," and its accompanying Peter Christopherson video combined
with silverchair's extensive t ouring to turn the album into platinum by
November. On December 9, the band made a triumphant appearance on NBC's
"Saturday Night Live."

Over a three-week period in mid-1996, silverchair recorded their second Epic
album, Freak Show. The 13-track collection, recorded in Sydney with producer
Nick Launay and mixed in New York by Andy Wallace, was released in February
1997. With Freak Show, silverchair began to augment its basic punk-metal
sound with new and diverse elements. "It's got a punk song [the 1:20 "Lie To
Me"], it's got a song that's six minutes long ["Nobody Came"], it's got loud
and soft," noted Ben Gillies at the time. "It's even got strings and tympani
and sitar [on "Petrol & Chlorine"]."

Silverchair commenced a headlining US tour on February 3, 1997 in Atlanta,
Georgia. Three months later, Freak Show (which reached No. 12 on the
Billboard Top 200) was certified gold; the album went on to sell more than
1.5 million copies worldwide. The lead track, "Abuse Me," cracked the Top 5
of the Rock and Alternative Airplay charts. The band also filmed videos for
"Abuse Me," directed by Nick Egan; and "Freak," directed by DEVO founding
member Gerald Casale.

After graduating high school at the end of 1997, Daniel Johns, Ben Gillies
and Chris Joannou finally were able to focus full-time on making music. In
contrast to their previous albums, for which songs were written during short
breaks between educational and touring commitments, Neon Ballroom is the
product of six months spent solely on creating songs around a distinct
musical vision.

"When we finished touring the Freak Show album, I really thought we'd taken
the three-piece rock thing as far we could," Daniel admits, "I was just
getting a bit bored with it. I decided that I wanted to make an album that
combined lots of different sounds and instruments that you don't usually
hear being played together. Basically, I just wanted to put an end to all
the same old comparisons and carve out our own little piece of turf."

For Daniel, new working conditions led to a new writing process. "In the
past I usually wrote the riffs first and then sort of added in melodies and
words. But when I first started writing songs for this album, I wasn't
coming up with much music. I just started writing lots of poems, so most of
the new songs actually started out as lyrics which I set to music later on."

"These songs are definitely a lot more personal. On the first album, we were
only 14 or 15 so we hadn't had many experiences to inspire songs. With the
second one, it was really about the aggression and hate that I was feeling
toward cer-tain people at the time. On this album, there's probably a wider
range of moods and themes in the lyrics—they're more based on direct
experiences."

Thus the songs of Neon Ballroom juxtapose spacey guitars and unearthly
keyboard sounds with semi-classical touches of cello and harp, sometimes all
within the one track. This sonic variety also extends to the guest players
on the album: pianist David Helfgott (the inspiration for the Oscar winning
film Shine) and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on "Emotion Sickness"; "found
sounds" from Australian groove guru Paul Mac and backing vox from the New
South Wales Public School choir on "Anthem for the Year 2000." Other tracks
feature keyboard contributions from Midnight Oil's Jim Moginie and from
renowned jazz pianist Chris Abrahams. Even Daniel's dog Sweep makes a brief
cameo appearance, on "Steam Will Rise."