Daniel Johns opens up about the car crash that sent him to rehab

Daniel Johns walked off during an interview on The Project on Wednesday, before opening up about his struggles with mental health and the drink driving crash that would ultimately send him to rehab. 

Speaking to host Carrie Bickmore, the rock star, 43, recalled he ‘thought he was going to die’ in the crash which saw him plead guilty to high-range drink-driving charges in March followed by a stint in rehab.

He also revealed he ‘can’t play or listen to music’ at the moment since coming out of rehab and that he would have ‘killed himself’ if he’d hurt anyone in the crash. 

But he added ‘great thing that came out of it’ was that ‘no one was hurt’ because on paper ‘people should have got hurt’.

When asked how much he could remember from the crash he responded:  ‘Everything. Everything. I remember every detail,’ before becoming overwhelmed with emotion.  

‘I remember being lost. I remember being petrified. I remember being in the dark. I remember the colours. I remember – I even remember thinking, “This is how I’m going to die.”

‘Is it cool if I take a break for just one sec?’ Johns then asked before walking out of the room.

On returning, he explained:  ‘I always struggle with my mental health when I’m entrenched in making a record. That’s just something that happens. I tend to spiral in to self-doubt and with Future Never if it was the last thing people were ever going to hear, it needed to be a masterpiece in my head and I’m not sure if a masterpiece exists.

‘And it is not by design, but a lot of my favourite artists have in some way or another been self-destructive and I’m not trying to mimic that, I’m not trying to mirror that.’

He added that he’s ‘reached out’ to other people involved in the crash, but if he’d hurt them he ‘would have killed himself’.   

‘I wasn’t suicidal. It was just. like, “This is how I’m going to die.” It was only when the penny dropped that I was putting other people in danger that I went what the f**.

‘Because I like chaos, that fuels me as an artist. I like chaos. I love it, but I hate it when I can’t get out, when that chaos impacts on other people.

Johns was pulled over on the Pacific Highway at North Arm Cove, NSW, on March 23 and recorded a blood-alcohol reading of more than three times the legal limit.

Police said he had crossed into the wrong side of the road and collided with a van.

The van driver, 51, and his female passenger, 55, were treated at the scene and the woman was taken to hospital.

Johns revealed on March 29 that he had checked himself into a rehab facility after using alcohol to help deal with his anxiety, depression and PTSD. 

The star was handed a 10-month intensive corrections order to be served in the community by the court.

Johns then checked into rehab in April to address his drinking and mental health issues.

His lawyer entered a guilty plea on Johns’ behalf at the same court on April 11, where the magistrate warned the singer could face jail time.

But Johns dodged a jail sentence for high-range drink driving after a magistrate ruled time behind bars would be of little benefit to the ‘deeply troubled’ rock star.

Leading up to the drink-driving incident, Johns was set to release his new album that triggered the mental health issues he has faced since his meteoric rise to fame as a teenager, the court was told. 

John also said he ‘tried to reach out to’ the other people involved in the crash and apologised.  

‘I tried to reach out to them and make amends and say sorry, but I said more than sorry, but I was just so grateful because if someone had been hurt, I think I probably would have killed myself because I can’t live with that. 

‘I am a good person. I couldn’t live with that. If I was hurt, I would be like, “I’d take that on the chin” but if I hurt someone else, I would not be able to live with myself.’

 ‘I went to rehab because I need helpment my brain is crazy. I couldn’t tell what was real. I couldn’t even hear music correctly and for me, music is the truth,’ he added.

‘So  if I can’t hear music correctly and if I can’t hear sound correctly, I lose my compass of what is real. I haven’t written a note of music since I got back. I don’t know if that’s a nail in the coffin. I don’t know what that is, but I can’t even play music at the moment. I’m so scared that it will start again.  

‘Music is my God. That’s the equivalent of God to me, music. I feel connected to the universe when I write music and sometimes the universe is cruel. So I don’t want to be connected to that.’

Elsewhere in the show he said that memories ‘f*** you up ‘ and that he can look at old photos and at Silverchair memorabilia with an ‘element of pride’ and ‘legacy’.

Looking over old photos from his heyday, he said: ‘ I’m always happy to revisit memories, but I don’t want to live in it. It almost makes me teary.

‘Memories f** you up.  I remember that being like f*** I’m one of the Beatles.  It is really confronting, but it is really beautiful. It also shows I’ve grown so much. . All of this stuff, I can see that I’m really uncomfortable,’ he added.

He also said he ‘doesn’t want to be Silverchair’ but did reach out to his former bandmates to appear on his new album despite them showing ‘jealousy’ and ‘disrespect’ towards him. 

‘That wasn’t under the guise of Silver Chair. It wasn’t under that banner. I don’t like being identified as the guy from Silver Chair and that’s probably from childhood trauma like some kind – that was like a diss when I was a kid, Silver Chair f*** I was beaten up because I was Silverchair.

‘It is not to say I wasn’t proud of it. I really wanted to play with them again. I don’t want to be Silver Chair. I don’t want to be. That was a hard thing to walk away from because that was my entire identity, if I didn’t do it, I was going to end up like some of those other people that, you know, you can read between the lines. I didn’t want to end up like that,’ he went on. 

However, he said his bandmates would ‘never come and see him’ due to ‘bitterness and jealousy’.

‘When I was doing Future Never, I was like, “This is it. This is the last thing you’re ever going to hear.”  

‘Bitterness, jealousy, me. anger, like anything. I don’t have any bad feelings, but I know – I know bitterness and I know jealousy when I see it because I have seen it my whole life. 

‘That’s what it is. One of the guys in particular has taken a real shining to kicking me while I was down and while I was in rehab and stuff. Saying I was exploiting mental health to sell records or something along those lines in commas. If this is exposing mental health to sell records then it is the most genius marketing plan ever because I have been doing it since I was 17,’ he said. 

When asked what his relationship was like now, he added: ‘They’ve not shown me any respect. 

‘I always say, “They” me and Chris have a very passive relationship. Ben, for some reason has a real issue with me being successful without him. That’s sad. Because I wish him all the best honestly, but unfortunately he doesn’t want me to branch out. 

He then joked: ‘We’ll cut that out!

Johns has been open about his mental health and personal life and recently opened up about a notorious triple-murder in America that was supposedly inspired by his music.

In 1995, a 16-year-old boy from Washington, D.C., and his friend killed his parents and brother in a crime that shocked the capital.

When the police arrived to arrest the teenagers, the pair were allegedly playing the song Israel’s Son, from Silverchair’s debut album Frogstomp, which features the lyrics: ‘Hate is what I feel for you/I want you to know that I want you dead.’

Johns said during an episode of his docuseries In The Mind of Daniel Johns: ‘It’s pretty devastating to write a song when you’re a teenager and then have someone’s lives taken because apparently it influenced the people to murder someone.’

The singer and guitarist admitted he doesn’t ‘like that people look to me for guidance in the songs’.

‘I don’t even know where this ship is going. I know where it’s been, and I write about it, and then I make predictions. A lot of the time they happen, but I don’t know I’m making a prediction,’ he said.

‘I didn’t realise it at the time. At the time, I was still, I guess… it affected me, but I had to act like it didn’t,’ Johns said.

‘I couldn’t acknowledge it. I guess that was part of the pattern.’

It comes after Johns claimed his former band members refused to appear on his new album.

In a preview for his new docuseries, Johns revealed he asked Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou to play on his recent chart-topping solo album FutureNever.

‘I asked them not out of necessity, I asked them because I wanted to make it clear that I don’t have an issue with them as people,’ he said.

‘I just didn’t want to play under the banner of Silverchair.’