“Daniel Johns In Conversation: What If The Future Never Happened?”
State Theatre, Sydney
Saturday, November 1st
Daniel Johns promised a night of sitting on the couch and telling stories and sharing songs no one had heard before. The first clue that this would be exactly what was delivered was from the set – a stage decked out with a massive couch, coffee table, lamps and plant; definitely a lounge room vibe on display.
There was a bit of a preamble first explaining the show. Double J’s Dylan Lewis was the host (well, Recovery’s Dylan Lewis seeing as there was a big ‘90s vibe to the evening), saying it would be a real experience and there would be a whole lot of love in the room. He said it would be loose (“Dylan Loose” he mused, before hastily withdrawing his new self-given moniker) and it turned out to be the case.
Photographer and videographer Luke Eblen, who has collaborated with Johns for nearly a decade, also joined the stage to be a part of the night’s conversation. There was a brief interaction between them covering his history of working with Johns.
Finally it was time for the subject of the conversation to make an appearance. To a rapturous response, Johns appeared nervous when he came out. In his first appearance on stage in about five years, he shuffled on awkwardly. “I’m nervous as fuck,” he declared at the start.
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After some early back and forth, during which Lewis did an excellent job calming Johns’ nerves, we went into the crux of the night, which Johns hoped the fans would “get an insight into the creative process that makes me an absolute 100% psycho.”
First up was a look at his guest appearance with What So Not at Laneway 2019. It was their take on “Freak”, with Johns on guest vocals. It was almost concert-like for a moment, as Johns was directing the crowd to sing the refrain from the couch, to which they duly obliged. Lewis was inferring it was a Lazarus-like performance of reinvention, seeing as Johns emerged from a coffin, while Johns said it was more him playing a character, which he found much more comfortable than being on stage as himself, as he was now.
The event promised unheard material and delivered it in the form of “All the Time in the World”, an unreleased demo from sessions for Silverchair’s 1999 album Neon Ballroom. Being just a demo, it featured raw vocals and acoustic guitar with a hint of keyboard in it. While it was a treat to hear an unreleased track, there wasn’t much insight as to why it didn’t see the light of day on Neon Ballroom, with Johns unsure and offering that “he wasn’t ready for people to hear it.”
But people — the crowd tonight — did hear it, and it marked a major turning point for Johns. From going from remarking how he was assured he wouldn’t be able to see the audience from the stage, he asked for the house lights to be turned up so he could see the crowd in its entirety. The aforementioned love in the room probably relaxed him further. He even had a cheeky vape on stage a couple of times.
Another unreleased Silverchair track, “Machina Collecta”, got an airing, one destined for a sixth Silverchair album that never was. While the band performed it live in their final few outings, and recordings exist on YouTube so it’s not completely unknown (Johns seemed surprised when a crowd member commented “it slaps”), this was a studio demo version, enhancing its art-punk and funky vibes. It was one of multiple times Johns yelled a “shoutout to Ben and Chris” during the night, acknowledging his former Silverchair bandmates, to an enthusiastic response from the crowd.
Some more demos made an appearance, but more familiar to fans with embryonic versions of “Luv Your Life” and “Across the Night” from Silverchair’s 2002 album Diorama (and from what this writer could tell, the same as featured on the “Across the Night” single).
The latter track was accompanied by another guest on the couch, frequent Johns collaborator Paul Mac. They discussed their journey, from figuring each other out musically for the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Rock project, to their work together on what Johns viewed as a trilogy of albums, Silverchair’s Diorama and 2007’s Young Modern, with The Dissociatives’ 2004 self-titled album in between. Mac said his role was to “realise my buddy’s dreams.”
A final unreleased demo was aired, this time a Johns solo track titled “Melody”. It was a powerful vocal and piano-driven track, which moved Lewis to tears, something he predicted would happen at the start of the night. (Some fans may have heard this previously on the soundtrack to short film My Mind’s Own Melody.) Lewis tried to tease some news about an upcoming release, but Johns had no idea what might happen with it in the future.
The night finished with a world premiere screening of the featurette What If the Future Never Happened?, a semi-autobiographic piece mixing reality and fantasy which Johns described as a “love letter to Newcastle in the ‘90s.” It’s for a future that never happened in an alternative universe, with an older, wiser Johns tells his younger self everything will be okay, with a few sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure.
The crowd was enthusiastic for the unreleased material and engaged with the conversation. Johns described it as “my enormous family” in an enormous lounge room. Lewis possessed his usual loose interviewing style, injecting his offbeat humour into the conversation, while both he and Eblen acted as almost hype men throughout the evening, supportive of Johns with plenty of hugs throughout.
There were multiple interactions with the crowd, numerous occasions where a member would shout out something and Johns would respond. The loose vibe suited the night, truly feeling like the audience were participants in a massive hang on the couch, just having a chat, and things got stronger as the night progressed.
At the start Lewis explained each night would be different and no two shows would be the same, with different guests and music explored, and what the audience would be getting is a special, one-off experience. In the end it delivered what was promised – a chilled living room vibe chatting about the past, present and future. That never happened. Or will it?
More information about Daniel Johns’ “In Conversation” series is available here.
