How straight lines of communication rebuilt Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou's friendship post Silverchair

The mature-aged clientele and genteel harbourside setting is hardly one you'd associate with two former rock stars, who at one time performed in front of 250,000 screaming people at Brazil's Rock in Rio III.

Gillies, a recovering alcoholic, is nursing a Pepsi.

Relations between the rhythm section of Silverchair have been frayed since the Newcastle three-piece went into "indefinite hibernation" in 2011.

While there wasn't any open hostility between Gillies and Joannou, the pair have rarely spoken.

Joannou, then owner of Newcastle West bar and restaurant The Edwards, has given Gillies "a wide berth" over the past six years.

Gillies' drunken outbursts at Joannou about supposedly needing to "be better" during the recording of Silverchair's ill-fated, and never finished, sixth album were the source of that frostiness.

But when Joannou began planning the guest list for his upcoming wedding to Karissa Beaton, he reached out to his childhood buddy who grew up only 40 metres away from him in Smith Street, Merewether.

When the pair meet at the yacht club the frostiness instantly thaws. Gillies apologises. Joannou accepts.

The "alchemy" - as the pair describe it - which was essential to the sound of iconic Silverchair songs like Israel's Son and The Door, had returned.

Maybe not in a musical sense, but as a friendship.

The rekindling of that friendship is at the heart of the memoir Love & Pain, written by Gillies and Joannou with journalist Alley Pascoe, about their lives together inside and outside of Silverchair.

"I guess what I hope people get from that moment, was that it really came down to substance abuse," Gillies tells the Newcastle Herald six years on, while seated next to Joannou.

"I am an alcoholic, I can't drink, and I said some horrible things to Chris which I didn't really mean. If anything like that goes unspoken it does fester and it can create voids between people.

"Chris has always been an important part of my life and it was important for me to try and mend that bridge and I was thankful that Chris was able to forgive me."

It's obvious forgiving Gillies has meant the world to Joannou, too.

"I valued the relationship up until that point [the break-up of Silverchair], I guess everything was on pause essentially," Joannou says.

"To be able to work through it and have what we have today in terms of a friendship [is special]. I have other mates and fantastic friendships, but nothing to the depth of this one."

Since 2018 Joannou has endured a succession of personal challenges.

First there was the fire that gutted The Edwards, a business he built as an outlet to recover from the disappointment of Silverchair's dissolution.

Then just as the The Edwards was reopening in 2019, Joannou was forced to undergo chemotherapy for soft tissue sarcoma, a rare form of cancer which had spread to his pelvis, spine and lungs.

At the time Karissa was pregnant with the couple's second child, Spence. Their daughter Odette, 7, was born in 2016.

Every fortnight Joannou would travel from Newcastle to Sydney for rounds of chemotherapy. Gillies and his wife, psychic and reality television personality, Jackie, were a constant support, ordering takeaway food or just providing a friendly face.

Joannou was later declared cancer free, but was rocked by another health drama in August 2022 when he suffered a major heart attack at his home near Coffs Harbour.

In the middle of the night Joannou was airlifted to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle to undergo surgery to have two stents inserted into his heart.

Earlier this year Joannou underwent further heart surgery at the John Hunter to have a third stent inserted after feeling unwell following a meeting with Gillies to discuss their book.

When Joannou was discharged from hospital, it was Gillies who picked him up.

The warmth of Gillies and Joannou's friendship is obvious throughout their Zoom interview with Weekender.

There's the in-jokes and the playful ribbing of each other's answers that you only find between long-term friends.

Anyone that's watched old Silverchair interviews, from when they were teenagers, will recognise the banter. The pair, both 43, might have matured (Gillies has a sprinkling of grey through his black goatee and long locks and Joannou's hair has thinned), but the cheeky Merewether boys are still there.

Of course, there's a gigantic elephant that continues stomping around the room by the name of Daniel Johns.

There's been an never-ending fascination in the relationships within Silverchair since the band meekly announced its implosion with a press release in May, 2011.

Unfortunately for Silverchair fans, 12 years later the divide within the band has become a gulf.

Both Gillies and Joannou write in Love & Pain about their various attempts to reforge a friendship with Johns.

There was even an impromptu Silverchair Christmas party at Johns' home in 2019. Gillies writes, "we fell back into being old mates. For the first forty minutes, anyway."

Old wounds have been further exacerbated with the release of Johns' podcast in 2021 where the frontman and songwriter claimed he felt like he was treated like a "cash cow" when his reactive arthritis caused the cancellation of their initial Diorama tour in 2002.

Then when promoting his Past, Present & FutureNever Exhibition in Melbourne last year Johns accused Gillies of bitterness and jealousy.

Just this week Johns wrote a lengthy post on Instagram explaining that he'd blocked ABC's Australian Story from using Silverchair music for the streaming version of the program about Gillies and Joannou due to his former bandmates' refusal to give him an advance copy of Love & Pain.

When asked if Love & Pain was written to reclaim their place in the Silverchair narrative in response to Johns' podcast and exhibition and Australian music writer Jeff Apter's 2018 biography The Book Of Daniel, Gillies is adamant.

"The motivation behind the book had nothing to do with anything else that's been in the media," he says.

"Chris and I chatted about it a couple of years ago, but Chris was like, 'if we're gonna do anything, I'd prefer to do it as a united front with all three of us'.

"I dabbled with the possibility of writing a book, but the real trigger point was when my twins [Bonham and Rocco] were born [in October 2021].

"That was the moment I decided I was going to write a book because I want my boys to read my story from my perspective.

"I didn't want them to go onto Google and read a bunch of click-baity stories and piece together whatever they piece together. I wanted them to hear it from me."

Besides re-telling the many incredible stories which happened in Silverchair, beginning from their childhood as the Innocent Criminals to becoming global rock stars only a few short years later, you get the sense that Love & Pain has been a healing process.

It's given Gillies a platform to publicly discuss his battle with alcoholism and anxiety, plus his drug-induced "acute psychotic break" that occurred at the height of Silverchair's success in 2002.

The book has also helped Joannou reconcile his relationship with the band, which he often felt powerless to control. For several years following the demise of Silverchair, he admits, he wasn't comfortable publicly discussing the band.

"Time is definitely a great healer," Joannou says. "I'm more comfortable with where things are at.

"There was a rawness to it a few years ago. Working through it with a slightly older head on your shoulders and better perspective on what life's all about, you can find a whole new appreciation and understanding for what it was and is."

Whether time can heal Gillies and Joannou's relationship with Johns is a far more difficult question to answer.

"I don't know if I've really got the answer for you on that one," Joannou says, when asked what's preventing a reconciliation with Johns.

"I think everyone is on different trajectories and busy doing their lives, and that's OK just accepting that."

Gillies gives a similar answer, but says Love & Pain isn't the final act in the Silverchair story.

"Silverchair isn't going away," Gillies says. "That's the great thing about the fans. We really do have incredible fans that keep the legacy alive.

"We have 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify and we're not doing anything, that's amazing.

"I can't see the legacy or the light of the band dimming too much over the next few years. If anything, the book will hopefully reinvigorate the excitement around the band and the incredible story it is."

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