Daniel Johns discusses Silverchair shooting tragedy
In 1995, a 16-year-old boy in the state of Washington, aided by his friend, opened fire and killed both his parents and brother.
When the shooter was apprehended, they were allegedly playing Silverchair’s Israel’s Son, which was released the same year and boasts controversial and hateful lyrics.
Now, 27 years on, Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns has opened up about the tragedy.
“It’s pretty devastating to write a song when you’re a teenager and then have lives taken because apparently it influenced the people to murder someone — that’s too much,” Johns told American radio personality Megan Holiday on In The Mind of Daniel Johns docuseries.
An in-depth report on the murders published by Spin magazine in their September 1996 issue cited evidence that the shooter pulled a blood-spattered cassette out of his father’s hand, shrieking “That’s my f***ing tape!” It was Silverchair’s debut album Frogstomp.
The shooter’s friend alleged that he put the tape in the stereo and rewound it to the track Israel’s Son.
The witness’s version of events, which unfolded at his trial in January 1996, had his friend kicking the deceased bodies of his parents as the song played.
The shooter’s lawyer Tom Copland would cite the lyrics of Israel's Son at an evidentiary hearing: “Hate is what I feel for you/I want you to know that I want you dead’.
They petitioned the court to be allowed to play the song in his opening statement, as he claimed the song’s lyrics were “almost a script” for the killings.
Johns, who was just 16 at the time, said he internalised his trauma after hearing the horrific news.
“It affected me, but I had to act like it didn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t acknowledge it, I guess that was part of the patterns.”
The Aussie rocker said he didn’t want fans to look to him for meanings or “guidance”.
“I don’t like that people look to me for guidance in the songs. I don’t like it,” he said.
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