Daniel Johns Quotes

When we were first playing, even though it was derivative, playing music was the best, there was nothing better. And then by the second album (Freak Show) we were like, playing music makes me angry, and by the third album (Neon Ballroom) I was like, I need to play music cos life sucks. And now all of a sudden there's this really youthful enthusiasm in the band, everyone around us, there's this real positivity and everyone's vibing off the music.

I'm aware that if you keep shifting there are going to be people who really respect you for it and just as many who go: 'There's no stability with that dude. I'm going to buy Nickelback's new album.'

There's hopeless smiles better than mine

All the bridges in the world won't save you if there is no other side to cross to

The water out of the tap is very hard to drink

This next song is about... fish... just one singular fish... he was a lonely fish, but he died happy.

If I were a fisherman, i would catch fish. If i were an octagon, I'd have many sides and if I were a prostitute, I would fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck!

With 'Abuse Me', I just wanted to get all the feelings off my chest, the feelings I'd had when I read all the negative commentary. The song is basically saying, 'Say what you like. We don't give a fuck what you think. We're just playing our music.

The whole thing is about youth rebelling against people who are supposedly more important. It's about youth having total control over their own minds. They do not need overweight people in suits telling them what to do and how to act. It is all about just being yourself. The chorus is very sarcastic. It is not supposed to be taken seriously.

Lost my soul, lost my confidence in me

It's influenced a lot by Led Zeppelin and anything from that era really. Before the album, when I actually wrote it and showed Ben and Chris, Ben and Chris liked it and they wanted to continue working on it and write a bit more, and I didn't really like the song. And they were like, 'oh, come on, we'll just use it' and so I said, 'yeah all right,' just to see how it would turn out. And it ended up changed a little bit and now I'm really happy with it.

That was on a TV show. There was this poor guy taking a rich guy through a hotel to experience the losses of the less fortunate than him. The rich guy is just complaining because he just wants to get out and the poor guy is saying you have to wait till tomorrow to get out. That's one of our least serious songs but it still has meaning to it.

We are the youth! We'll take your fascism away

"The Greatest View" is a song that really focuses on people's perceptions of the same problem or the same scenario. Basically what was going on in my mind was that I had a lot of people who were watching over me and watching my every move making sure that I didn't fall back in to the heap that I fell in to whilst writing Neon Ballroom. Because I was aware of that I felt like I had the greatest view from where I was from because I could see what was going on. I was aware of the situation, I was in control of my own destiny really.

It actually went like this: we were at school and Ben said he didn’t like Nirvana so much. Then one of our friends said: You should listen to Sliver. So he wanted to request Sliver for himself on the radio. And I wanted to request a song of an Australian group(You Am I), Berlin Chair. We told Chris to write Sliver Chair, but he wrote it as Silver Chair. Then we thought: That’s a good name. That’s how it went.