Daniel Johns accused his former Silverchair bandmate of lying about a reunion in a new ‘In The Mind of Daniel Johns’ podcast.
Host Megan Holiday asked, “While you were in this recovery process, there was quite a stir online and Ben [Gillies] made some comments about your genius status that fans often say about you. And he said he reserves the term genius for Einstein and Mozart and without orchestration from other people that your songs are simple.”
Johns shot back, “To be honest, I’ve tried to mend that bridge. I’ve tried and I’ve gone out of my way to speak positively about him, even when I did my podcast. I didn’t want to do any harm to our legacy, so I don’t know. If he wants to be like that, it doesn’t affect me. I’m not going to be offended and say ‘but I AM a genius.’ The entire White Album is pretty simple and I would consider that genius. Every Clash album, particularly London Calling is simple, so that shit’s hard. Who the fuck knows what genius is? I don’t consider myself a genius”
He added, “I was really clear with everyone when I left silverchair that we weren’t getting back together. I had in the past thought that I wanted to leave silverchair and changed my mind, so my manager at the time quite intelligently suggested we say we’re on an indefinite hiatus. I made it very clear to the other two that it’s over but that I didn’t want to close that door or break anyone’s heart in case I changed my mind. But I made it very clear to Ben and Chris.
And then Ben actually went out of his way to say we were definitely getting back together while I was in the middle of a promotional tour for my first record ‘Talk’, which I thought was really unfair to silverchair fans. I was caught in this ‘who am i supposed to appease?’. I was in a situation where I was really trying to protect our legacy because that’s really important to me.
I pretty much gave up my childhood for that and I thought it was really unfair to keep dangling a carrot in front of people who had supported us, knowing full well that I was never going back. So me being me, I said I wouldn’t get silverchair back together for a million dollars with a gun to my head.”
