Wywiad z Johnsem dla AP Magazine

HenryLee

IDOL WORSHIP

When AP asked him, Cartel frontman Will Pugh gladly booked a plane ticket to New York City to meet one of his biggest heroes, silverchair's Daniel Johns, for this installment of AP's Idol Worship. However, the reason for the impromptu flight wasn't to reminisce about how he used to rock out to "Tomorrow" in his teenage bedroom. Nope, turns out it's the 'chair-man's orchestra-touting recent efforts that turned Pugh into a plane-hopping superfan.

WP: Truthfully, I missed a lot of your earlier stuff, all my friends caught it. But then this band from Atlanta, Copeland, played me Diorama and I was like "Who the fuck is this?" I remembered Frogstomp, but when I heard Diorama I was totally floored. I listened to "Across the Night" like, 20 times in a row. It's actually the album I warm up to.

DJ: Yeah? I've heard a couple people say they warm up to it, which is weird [laughs]. It's a weird vocal warmup.

WP: It is. Obviously, I went back and listened to the other stuff, but I'm mostly a fan of the newer stuff.

DJ: Sweet man. That's actually more appreciated. You can usually tell when someone is at our show and they look young like you. You would had to have been seriously young to be into Frogstomp. I was 14 or 15 at that time. So there are a lot of people in America who came in at the tail end. But then I still meet those old rock guys, and they'll come up to me and go "Frogstomp? Freak Show? What happened? [laughs.] You feel like you've got to apologize because you didn't keep them happy.

WP: Do you have people who love your old stuff and don't like the new stuff? Or are there people who like the new stuff and don't like the old stuff? Is there a definite seperation?

DJ: Yeah, there's not that many people who like everything, including myself. There's not that many people who like our whole career, which is understandable because it's completely different. You'll probably get that as well after your second record [laughs].

WP: Oh, we're already getting it. We have this early EP we put out and everybody at shows is like, "Play this, play that", and we're like, "Man, we got a new bass player and he doesn't even know how to play those songs".

DJ: [laughs.] Just imagine how Aerosmith feel. Imagine being in a band for 20 years and having that much music and having people still yeall, "Play something from the first record!" [laughs.] When I was 14 years old, all I wanted was to be Chris Cornell, grunge out, turn my guitar up and play riffs. But as you get older, you realize that there's more to life than tuning down to D.

WP: What started that progess for you? Was it just growing up?

DJ: It was just leaving school, I reckon. That was the biggest change. As soon as I left school, I stopped trying to write music I thought my friends would like and started writing music I liked. That was around Neon Ballroom. I don't know what happened with Diorama. That just changed things dramatically and I can't figure out why.

WP: There's a definite difference between Neon Ballroom and Diorama. Its almost like a different band.

DJ: It sounds like it to me, as well. It's bizzare. That shift really wasn't supposed to be that dramatic, and I didn't realize that it was that dramatic until after the fact.

WP: Do you think that came from Van Dyke Parks being involved? Because, for me, that was crazy. I'm a big fan of SMILE and all that. Are you a fan of SMILE?

DJ: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of that stuff. But to be honest, when I was writing Diorama, I hadn't really heard the Beach Boys. It was only when I was demoing the songs with Paul Mac that he said it reminded him of Brian Wilson. Paul said I should hear Pet Sounds. I heard it, and obviously, my mind was blown. Then someone brought up Van Dyke Parks and I heard his work on SMILE and just went, "For sure, this guy is genius".

WP: Did you have a big hand in the stuff he did for Diorama? Or did you hand him what you had and he just did his thing?

DJ: No, we talked about it quite a bit. We talked about what I was going for, and I knew what he would bring to it. We actually talked more about the stuff he did on Young Modern. We talked a year prior to even recording about what we wanted to do and about how we were going to get five people to Prauge....

WP: Yeah, I saw that in the liner notes. I was like, "Fucking Prauge? Those bastards!"

DJ: Yeah, it was pretty self-indulgent [laughs]. We funded this record ourselves, and I remember going through the budget and I was like "So how much money do we need?" Because we make Australian dollars, which is nothing compared to American dollars. So we budgeted out how much we needed and then I was like "Oh yeah, by the way, I want to record the strings in Prauge" [laughs]. My manager was just like, "You're a fucking idiot" [laughs].

WP: I actually got my hands on Young Modern a little early. But it never left my CD player, I promise.

DJ: Oh, I don't give a shit [laughs].

WP: Well, some people would be like "What the fuck?" I have the demos, too, if that doesn't piss you off.

DJ: Wow, I didn't know anyone had those! [laughs]. I would have spent more time on those bad boys had I know people were going to hear them.

WP: No, I make a lot of demos myself. So it was cool to hear someone else's demos and hear the record not too long after.

DH: The reason those demos were recorded were to get dropped from Atlantic. We had just done Diorama and they were good and everything, but I don't think they really liked where the band was going. So they were like "What are doing on the next record?" and I said "Ughh, you're not going to like it". Then I went into the studio and we recorded those in a week and a half and most of the time I was on ecstacy. I didn't have any lyrics or anything. I just made them up. Yeah, so, that's the story [laughs].

WP: My iPod is currently in fritz mode, but I was trying to listen to some of those today on the plane to try and get questions together. But I still couldn't beleive that I was actually going to fly up here and do this.

DJ: I actually had about 52 songs written for this record. But it wasn't until after we played a tsumani benefit show in Australia that we were ready to record them. That was the first show that silverchair played in like, three years. We just loved it so much, and I think it was the next day that I called Ben and Chris and said, "Let'd do another record".

WP: They might as well say in the interview, "So the tsunami was the reason silverchair got back together....."

DJ: Yeah, in a lot of ways it was. If it wasn't for that show, I don't know if it would have happened. We were really enjoying not playing together. I think we took playing in the same band for granted, and it was only then that we had the opportunity to play again. So, we got together to play that show, and everyone was feeling the love. Then after us were Midnight Oil. Do you know Midnight Oil?

WP: No, I don't.

DJ: They're this phenomenal Australian band. They've been together for over 20 years and they went on after us. We were just watching them and....You know when you see a band like U2 or Midnight Oil and they just have this collection of songs? That's the kind of band I want to be in. I'm sure you feel similarly as well. That's the goal. You just want to have this catalog of stuff where every show you play you have trump cards you can lay down.

WP: Do you have any songs that you just hate playing? Not neccessarily because you don't like the song, but because what it represents about the band?

DJ: Oh yeah. I remeber that by the end of our second albume I was like, "The next time I play Tomorrow, I am literally shooting myself in the face [laughs]". I hated it that much. But that's the thing, you got to keep plowing on through and, eventually, if you keep playing good music, people will start paying attention. Then if you play long enough, a whole new generation will appear - just like you.

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Johns w Vogue (0_o)

"Daniel Johns managed to squeeze in a secret photo shoot during his time in Adelaide.
The Silverchair singer was whisked off to a secret location on Thursday where he was photographed for Vogue.
A photographic crew was flown in for the shoot, with the exception of make-up artist, Jodie Nash, who is from Adelaide. She was tight- lipped about it all but did reveal that the action took place at a historic site in the eastern suburbs. And she could barely hide her excitemnet about painting Johns' face.
"He was just lovely," she said. "Really friendly and laid-back." As far as make-up goes, Daniel likes his eyes done dark and often wears make-up. "His skin is really good," Jodie said.
Jodie, who runs Paint make-up school, said the Vogue photos should be pit in a few months."(Sunday Mail, 30/9/07)

jackiebrown

bardzo fajny wywiad i znowu się pojawia:,,Daniel, maaan, Frogstomp, what happened?!" Smile

masz może skany w oryginalnym rozmiarze?
A na Vogue' a będę polowac:P

HenryLee

Nie, nie mam niestety (ten mały snan pochodzi z profilu myspace Johnsa i Mac'a).

Johns w Vogue. Ciekawe jak go wystylizują?

jackiebrown

Różowy to zdecydowanie jego kolor:P
w/g mnie ubiorą go w: biała koszula Armani, spodnie w zielono-żółto-czerwoną kratę (tweedowe oczywiście ostatni krzyk mody:), czerwona kamizelka i trzewiczki z białymi noskami , a w ręku smycz z ogarem , w drugiej palcat , a i kaszkiet is a must!

HenryLee

jackiebrown

Ciekawa sesja...Daniel wygląda jak żywcem wyjęty z klipów disso...

HenryLee

Pewnie już się przygotowuje. Praca nad nowym albumem Disso trwa.