Silverchair Frontman Reveals Battle with Anorexia

Daniel Johns has a secret he's only now telling -- and anyone's free to hear it. The Silverchair frontman has used his music, rather than the Ricki Lake show, to reveal his on-going battle with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that primarily affects women.| "Ana's Song (Open Fire)," the new single from the trio's Neon Ballroom, is a frank assessment of Johns' life with the disease, an addiction to starvation that, he says, made him "eat what he needed...to stay awake."

"I've been told that it's when you feel like you've lost control of your life and you start really controlling anything you can control," says Johns, "and it just so happens to be the one thing no one can tell you what to do."

The lyrics to "Ana's Song" can't be misinterpreted: "And you're my obsession/I love you to the bones/And Ana wrecks your life/Like an anorexia life." Johns explains, "I wasn't eating and it went on for about six months to a year."

Today, Johns still appears quite thin and confesses, "I don't think you can ever be totally cured from something like that until you go and get professional help, but it's definitely better than it was before." Johns says he'll seek more diligent treatment once this tour is out of the way.

"I'll do it once we've done all this album stuff, when I've got more time to focus on myself and not just the music."

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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