The Vines: Whatever Happened To the Band Behind 'Get Free' & 'Ride?'

The Vines: Whatever happened to the Australian band who were hailed as the saviours of rock?

0:00 - Introduction
0:51 - Early Years
4:11 - Debut Album
5:23 - Infamous Late Show Appearance
6:44 - The Vines Decline

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Today were going to talk about the australian band The Vines. Rolling Stone magazine hailed the rock band as the saviors of rock n’ roll in 2002, while many in the British Press claimed they were the best band to come out since Nirvana. But 6 years later NME Magazine issued an apology about how wrong they were about the Vines. But whatever happened to the band? Stay tuned for the full story.

The Vines shocked the rock world in 2002 with their debut album Highly Evolved. Along with bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes and the Hives, they were hailed as the next generation of rock bands.

The band’s influences included a mix of British and American rock including the Beatles, Oasis, Blur, The Kinks and Nirvana.; Even though the band wouldn’t break big until 2002, their origins dated back to 1994 in Sydney, Australia.
Frontman and guitarist Craig Nichols would grow up in a suburb of Sydney. He would drop out of school after the 10th grade and enrolled in art school, but dropped out after half a year and started working at mcdonalds. It was at that mcdonalds he met Patrick Matthews who also worked there and they quickly bonded over their similar taste of music including Pavement, Beck, and Nirvana. Soon enough, the pair started a band with dummer David Olliffe and started working on writing their own songs, while also doing live gigs where they covered Nirvana and a handful of other artists.
Originally called Rishikesh, the band named themselves after the Indian City where the Beatles visited a local ashram in 1968. They originally started out as a trio, but. the band soon grew frustrated of local newspapers misprinting their name so they changed their name to The Vines, which paid homage to Nicholls father who played in a different band named The Vynes, that was spelled with a y instead of an i
The band would head into the studio to record a demo for a few hundred dollars. Nicholls would tell Rolling Stone when he heard the demo, he quit his job at McDonalds.
The Vines would be discovered in the winter of 1999 when two of their future managers, Andy Kelly and Andy Cassell, saw them playing a show at a tiny sydney club to a group of about 20 people in a tiny club in Sydney. The managers shopped the tape to labels and producers with it coming across LA producer Rob Schnapf, who had worked with both Beck and Foo Fighters. He was so excited at what he heard, he told the LA Times he simply sent an e-mail to the band’s representative repeating the name of the band over and over again. By the summer of 2001 the band found themselves in Los Angeles in the studio with Shnapf. The sessions though, were tense as Nicholls was protective of his music ad Shnapf had to show the frontman he was there to help and not dilute their sound. It was around this time that NME Magazine featured the Vines, listing their song Factory as the single of the week in november of 2001. It was also around this time that Nichols had a chance encounter the President of Capitol records Andy Slaters. Slater was so surprised by Nichols persona that he made it a point to listen to the band’s music. And it was shortly after he signed the band to a worldwide distribution deal.
Without even having released their first album or video, the band made MTV2’s list of 22 artists to watch in 2002 while at the same time NME Magazine hailed them as the 2002’s “new batch” of artists.
Original drummer David Olliffe would leave the group complaining about internal pressures within the band and was replaced by Hamish Rosser, while Nichols childhood friend Ryan Griffith’s joined the group as the band’s second guitarist. The Vines played their first-ever headlining show in February of 2002,at a small bar in Sydney. An excited crowd would pack the venue and NME stated at the time about the gig "This band are the future of rock. In ten years time, 10,000 people will claim to have been at that gig."
While many in the press championed the band, they had their detractors.Some in the press dismissed the band and more specifically