In a quick summation of his enduring ambivalence, and active resentment, towards his Silverchair fame, Daniel Johns outlines the stakes early on in the new Spotify podcast Who Is Daniel Johns?.

“I won’t even get Silverchair back together for a million dollars with a gun to my head,” the 42-year-old says in the five-part series’ first episode.

If that sounds exceedingly blunt, the podcast – produced by Kaitlyn Sawrey and Frank Lopez, and told through intimate interviews with Johns and those close to him including ex-wife Natalie Imbruglia and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan – offers a sensitive survey of Johns’ perspective.

Daniel Johns pictured at the 2015 APRA Music Awards.Credit:Getty

Considering the extent of Johns’ aversion to media publicity over the past decade, it’s also surprising.

At this point, landing eight months’ worth of intimate daily conversations with the enigmatic Silverchair frontman is more or less the holy grail of Australian music journalism. How did they convince him?

Spotify’s new podcast, Who is Daniel Johns?Credit:Spotify

It was a “lucky break”, says Sawrey.

A former executive producer for Triple J’s Hack, Sawrey moved to the States in mid-2016 when Science Vs, the successful ABC podcast she co-founded with Wendy Zukerman, earned the attention of podcast powerhouse Gimlet Media, which was purchased by Spotify in 2019.

After enduring the early months of the pandemic in New York, Sawrey – with her American producing partner Lopez – relocated to Australia in 2020. At the same time, a network of former Triple J alumni now at Spotify had been privately chatting with Johns’ brother/manager Heath about launching a podcast as a vehicle to release Johns’ new music.

Now on the Sunshine Coast, Sawrey and Lopez got the call that Spotify needed “boots on the ground” for the project. By March this year they found themselves traipsing through Johns’ home in Newcastle.

While Spotify said unspecified “commercial arrangements” were part of the final process, Sawrey says for Johns the motivation has “always been about the art”. (In a press release, Johns said he was happy to be involved in the podcast as “the only way to get people to hear my art is through vessels like this because I don’t want to perform on stage”.)

“He tells us he’s got three albums banked, ready for release, so you’re getting a little bit of a preview with the music that’s in the podcast,” says Sawrey. “That’s his motivation, he wants to get his music out. He wants people to hear it and connect with it.”

The intimate medium, so removed from the processes of traditional press which have burned him in the past, also likely offered Johns some convincing comfort.

“Podcasting is a much less combative medium than TV,” says Sawrey. “With TV, you can see the person, you can judge them. But with audio you tend to hear someone like they’re sitting next to you, so it’s a much more emotive medium.”

The podcast’s second episode, released on Wednesday, highlights the incredible access Johns afforded the pair, with scenes spent in his childhood bedroom flicking through his teenage diaries (the only moment that gives Johns pause is when he comes across an old love letter from Imbruglia).

Podcaster Kaitlyn Sawrey.

“We were looking at that era where he was really hiding out in his bedroom, because the fame was so intense and he was going through a lot with his mental health and his battle with anorexia,” Sawrey explains.

“[The bedroom] was a time capsule, his mum hasn’t changed anything. We spent a fair bit of time in there, and he really opened up to Frank and I because it brought him back into that headspace of the stuff he was experiencing at that time.”

In its first two episodes, the podcast has already produced some striking emotional moments. A chat with longtime friend, musician Paul Mac, in which the pair recall the public bullying, catcalls and “tall poppy” treatment Johns copped at Silverchair’s peak finds the singer audibly choking up, a physical reaction to the trauma recalled.

“Having some of his closest friends around for this stuff was really helpful with processing it,” says Sawrey.

“A lot of it was overwhelming – he’s been through a lot of therapy – but I think it’s helped him process what happened in a way, like to actually go through it step-by-step and have people go, ‘And then what happened?’”

The visits also unearthed some surprises.

“He’s really funny,” says Sawrey. “Very disarming. He uses humour to diffuse tension. He makes jokes a lot actually, and that’s mainly ’cause he’s kind of anxious. But he watches a lot of comedy. He loves Dave Chappelle.”

In the wake of the #FreeBritney movement, there’s been a cultural re-examination of the way the media and tabloid onlookers responded to celebrity scandal during the online dawn of the early 2000s. Who is Daniel Johns?, with its subject’s raw discussion of his fame-induced alienation and mental health struggles at the time, feels part of the same conversation.

“That’s something that Frank actually brought up really early on, like Daniel Johns is Australia’s Britney,” says Sawrey.

“We do want people to feel that experience, because we’re trying to take them on this rollercoaster of like, you’re plucked from obscurity and suddenly you’re opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers at Madison Square Garden. Like, that’s insane.”

Sawrey suggests the rise of social media, where “we’ve all had a little taste of what it’s like to put yourself on a platform”, has created more empathy for what the reality of fame looks like.

“Back then it was like, ‘Oh, they’re on TV, they’re famous, they’re killing it, they’re fine’ – you didn’t see the negative, seething undercurrent that accompanies that wave. And so it’s understandable that Dan doesn’t really like being in public anymore, it makes sense.”

Sawrey says, even with the newfound sensitivity around his struggle, it’s unlikely Johns – who appeared both comfortable and playful during an interview with The Project’s Carrie Bickmore earlier this week – will be suddenly welcoming the media glare.

“We’ve talked to him about that a little bit. Frank has kind of said to him, you know, ‘I think this is gonna be easier than it was before,’” says Sawrey about Johns’ public return. “But he’s not necessarily online a whole bunch, so it’s been hard for him to wrap his head around the fact that times have changed a bit.

“I mean, he can feel it when he’s in Newcastle, he can feel that people are more chill and nicer to him now. But I think it’s possibly going to take him some time.”

Considering the decade spent in relative solitude, Johns’ story feels prematurely like a pop culture tragedy, the sort of weighty fable that evokes the struggles of stars like Britney, Michael, Whitney and so on. But is there a happy ending to the podcast?

“I think he’s in a really good place, he’s told us he’s in the best place he’s ever been,” says Sawrey.

“I think he had to work through a lot of his stuff to figure out who he was after Silverchair and what kind of music he wants to make and how he wants to move forward, and I think that took a little bit of time. But I think he’s in a really good place, and I think Australia is ready to hear some of his new music.”

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