Remembering Silverchair at Rock In Rio in 2001

By STEVE MASCORD

WATCHING Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou on Australian Story recently, I found myself wondering if the band’s appearance at Rock In Rio in 2001 would get a mention.

These are the days of momentous concerts, aren’t they? KISS played their final Australian show last weekend and will perform for the last time ever on December 2 at Madison Square Garden (I’m going!).

AC/DC ended a seven-year live hiatus, also over the weekend, in the California desert. The Taylor Hawkins tribute concert – in which Wolf Van Halen played a couple of his father’s best-known songs with Justin Hawkins (no relation) singing, was right here in the city in which I now live and I didn’t go – which I will forever regret,along with missing Van Halen and Aerosmith in Sydney in 2013.

I drove past Olympic Park that night, going somewhere else.

My curiosity regarding the Rio show was because I had been there. I had covered the whole multi-day festival it for Kerrang! and watched Silverchair from the side of the stage as they played to 250,000 people. I didn’t know how important the show had been to them but it was a pretty significant experience for me.

If you watched Australian Story you’ll know that it did indeed get a mention – as probably the most important show of the band’s career. For a while, it had saved Silverchair.

I’ve dug out my Kerrang! feature for our Patreon supporters but I’ve not read it back before writing this. Instead I’d like to share my organic recollections without having my memory jogged by what I wrote at the time.

I caught the bus to the festival site with the band. My girlfriend at the time, Janine, was with me and we had to find our own way to Silverchair’s hotel. From there, we stopped to pick up photographer Ross Halfin who regaled the band members with stories of other acts on the bill arriving by helicopter.

The buys were completely wide-eyed. One said he’d like to go to the dance tent after the show. It was like they were schoolkids on an excursion, there was not an ounce of conceit or ego in the way they carried themselves.

The dressing room area was actually so far away from the stage you had to travel there by golf buggy. I refused to get my photo taken in front of the multitude as we waited for the show to start because I thought doing so would be “unprofessional”. What an idiot, Chris got a camera out while was playing bass – that photo, if it existed, would be one of my prized possessions today.

The show was a blur but brilliant, girls in the crowd crying from their boyfriends’ shoulders as Daniel dazzled in his mirrored coat.

Then we stayed on the side of the stage and watched the Red Hot Chili Peppers from 10 metres away from Anthony Keidis! Their manager approached a member of The Chair’s management who was filming.

“Uh-Oh!” I thought.

“What sort of camera is that, man?” he said. “Cool!”. Everyone was relaxed and partying. There was an intense air of hedonism every night at the Jacarapagua festival site. We got a lift back to the hotel with some American flight stewards and were invited down to the pool where the band was winding down.

I did not want to intrude but we did go. I am pretty sure I wrote about this in the story so I won’t spoil it. You can read the Kerrang! feature HERE