Trophy Eyes' John Floreani Thought He Was Gonna Die In A Bar But Kept Partying Anyway

I was pretty hooked on Trophy Eyes the minute I heard the hook of their single Chlorine back in 2016, and the band’s highly metaphorical lyrics, melodic riffs and seamless back-and-forth between throat and clean vocals was a breath of fresh air from the many metal bands sitting atop the Australian heavy music world.

The band stepped up even more on the follow-up to Chemical Miracle on last year’s The American Dream, packed full of huge pop punk gang vocals, more experimental songwriting and a brand new side of singer John Floreani’s vocals – warm, smooth, comforting. More Gang Of Youths than Northlane.

I’d met John a couple of times before never really got the chance to actually chat and pick his brain (the last time we met, I was awkwardly standing side of stage at Jimmy Eat World, who Trophy Eyes were supporting), so to have John share his wild breadth of stories for Two Truths & A Lie’s first birthday was honestly a treat.

Have some ice cream cake and enjoy.

Truth

John: So this story is kind of intense, and the other one is kind of sweet. But the first story is one of the craziest things to ever happen to me in my life – I was in Thailand, recording with Trophy Eyes, and we were at a bar not too far away from the studio. At that point, this town we were at, it’s called Bang Saray. It used to be a really nice little fishing village and it was chill. So anyway, me and Kevin, the guitarist, we were at this bar called Happy Bar I think.

U: Sounds legit!

J: Yeah! We were having a couple of drinks and we met this guy there who was like, our age, his name was Robbie. We were talking to him and he had a Thai girlfriend from that town, they got into this big argument and she left. Everything continued normally after that – drinking, chatting, laughing – but after a little while he stood up and goes, ‘oh, she’s taken my wallet!’ So he jumped on his motorbike and rode away.

U: So he didn’t pay?

J: I think he knew the bartenders, I think he was there quite a lot. And we all suspected that he might go apologise to his girlfriend and try and get his wallet back, but a few hours later, we heard this really loud buzzing noise, like engines.

U: You’re still at the bar at this point?

J: Yeah, we’re still at the bar. I got up off my chair and kind of stood on the road and looked over and all I could see was this silhouette of a man running towards us and behind him was all these headlights? I was like, ‘what is this…’ The person, the closer they got, we could tell they were yelling. It wasn’t until he was like 100m away that we could make out that he was yelling, ‘run!’

U: He was yelling ‘run’ at you guys? Oh wow.

J: Yeah! This is in the middle of the night and he’s being followed by what looked like 10 or 15 motorbikes, they were chasing him down the road. Then he got close enough and I realised he had no shirt on and no shoes, covered in blood and cuts, and he ran through the bar and jumped into the kitchen of this bar. I followed him into the bar being like, ‘holy shit! I’m gonna die!’

U: Yeah, of course.

J: He kind of disappeared and I didn’t know where he went, so I was looking around for something in the kitchen to defend myself with because I thought this was some sort of gang and they’re gonna like, kill us. All I could find were frying pans and cooking utensils and thought, ‘well, this won’t do.’ My next thought – this all happened in the space of like five seconds, by the way.

U: Yeah your brain’s just going so fast I bet.

J: Yeah, so my next thought was: ‘Kevin’s probably still outside enjoying his beer.’ So I ran back outside and thought, ‘what can I do to help us?’ and the only place I knew that had a lock on the door was the bathroom. I was trying to drag Kevin into the bathroom, lock the door and hide. He was way too drunk, he was like, ‘don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it.’ At this point the motorbikes are doing circles around the bar.

U: Fuuuuck.

J: I was really starting to panic, it was total chaos and people were screaming at us, I’m trying to get Kevin and he’s yelling at me, ‘don’t worry about it’. So finally I got Kevin out of his seat and then some lady came out who owned the bar, she was a Thai person as well, and she started yelling at them in Thai.

U: At the bikers?

J: Yeah, and by some miracle they left. After they left, they said we should sit there for a while because they’re probably waiting at the end of the road, and they might be trouble.

U: And you’re like, ‘WE’RE NEVER LEAVING!’

J: [laughs] Then 15 minutes later, that guy Robbie jumps off the roof and landed among us and goes, ‘sorry about that everybody.’ We’re like, ‘holy shit, what happened to you?’

U: Does he have his shirt on and stuff now?

J: No! Still shirtless, still covered in blood. He didn’t really explain it, he said it was crazy and I was like, ‘did you get your wallet back?’ and he goes, ‘no I didn’t even see her!’ Kinda brushed over the details. Then he’s like, ‘well, I’m gonna go out now.’ And I’m like, ‘are you sure?! I think that’s probably the end of the night…’ He’s like ‘nah nah nah’. He wanted to go into Pattaya, the big city. It’s about a 40-minute drive and we’re all very, very drunk. He said, ‘I’m gonna ride to my house, get a shirt and go to Pattaya, do you wanna come?’ Kevin’s like, ‘nah mate, I’m going to bed’, and I for SOME reason was like, ‘yeah sure!’

U: [laughs] Oh man.

J: I could barely see or say my name, but I jumped on my hired scooter and followed it to his house then we went into the nightclubs, it’s just crazy. It’s a giant party capital. We were there the rest of the night, drinking more and more, and the last thing I remember was when we got there, it must’ve been like 4 in the morning and there were carts and cars of people. I’d never even ridden a scooter before, I don’t drive so I had no idea what I was doing. I’m lucky I didn’t die. We went to one bar, walked out at 7am and it was daytime and I jumped back on my scooter and rode back in the morning traffic, people flying past me at 140km an hour. I kind of had no recollection after that except I woke up on the steps to one of the cleaners of the hotel we were staying at. I was in the sun and she poked me with a broom and got one of the boys in the band, Andrew. It was about 4pm that afternoon that I went back to the studio and everyone was waiting for me to explain what had happened, they were cranky, they were like, ‘we thought you’d died, we were driving around looking for you…’

U: Oh my god…

J: I was like, ‘I don’t really know what happened, I went out in Pattaya and then I woke up on the steps,’ and Andrew was like, ‘the cleaner thought you were dead!’ My bike was upside down a mile away.

U: That is WILD.

J: Yeah, it was one of my biggest nights. I don’t know if it’s my favourite story but it’s one of my most impressive stories. This was while recording Chemical Miracle.

U: Did you manage to track vocals that day?!

J: Nah, I don’t think so… [laughs] Or maybe! Shane [Edwards, producer] likes it when I go out drinking and sing because my vocals are so much more rough. He’ll use that to his advantage.

Truth

J: I was in Texas with my girlfriend and her family this Christmas, and it was just before Christmas.

U: She’s American?

J: Yeah, she’s from Texas. I was with her and her family and it was nice and cold out, the trees are bare, you can smell wood smoke…

U: Mmmmmm…

J: Everyone’s celebrating. The way they do Christmas there is insane.

U: I know! It’s so cosy.

J: Yeahhh. And everyone is SO into the spirit. Growing up in Australia, one in every ten houses had decorations maybe?

U: Totally! It’s so chill here? It’s like we just want the holiday and don’t really care that much about the family bonding side of it?

J: Yeah, but there everyone goes to mass and everyone eats for a week, it’s really fun. I think at one point it was early afternoon and my girlfriend Bianca, her sister and their mum went out to get their nails done. I was at home with Bianca’s sister’s fiancé Bobby and their dad and we were just playing football in the backyard, American football. I’m honestly a rugby person myself so I didn’t know any rules or the plays or anything like that, but it was just really sweet. I don’t know if it’s hard for everybody but it’s always been hard for me to communicate with people’s families and people who are older than me, finding a space where you feel welcome and where people genuinely enjoy your company, you know?

U: I get you totally.

J: Yeah, and after how many years, it’s really sweet to share this genuine moment with these two guys, just throwing a ball around and enjoying a beer in the afternoon. When I think back about that moment, it’s definitely one of those to be proud of – like an achievement. You read these like, inspirational quotes about how like, ‘you’d rather be lonely than be surrounded by people that make you feel lonely’, like all that crap, but it hit me at that point that I found this really good group of people and when I’m 100, I’ll look back on this fondly. It’s one of those few moments I can point to that.

U: That’s really so nice. Are you close to your family here?

J: My mother.

U: I guess then it’s also nice to have these older guys there being bros with you!

J: Yeah, I remember the first time I met them, we went to a shooting range.

U: So Texas.

J: Bianca’s dad is an ex-Marine of 20-something years and he’s a great shot, and he did the intimidating father thing. It was cool going from there, where he didn’t really know me, to now being in the family. I’ve spent a few holidays with them now and it’s an intimate time of the year. Especially in America, to let strangers into your family home. It was just this extra gratitude for them treating me so kindly.

U: How long have you two been long distance? It must be tough.

J: We were for about two-and-a-half years.

U: Oof. Good effort.

J: Yeah, I wouldn’t call it proper long distance though because we lived with each other on either side of the world every now and then. She’d live with me in Sydney for eight months, I moved to Texas when I wasn’t touring for the best part of two years, then she came back here for a while.

U: You chopped and changed a lot.

J: We did, but just recently we moved down to Melbourne to a little apartment outside east Melbourne. Finally living together, we’ve completed our de facto visa, so it’s really good. There’s a lot less goodbyes, a lot less FaceTime calls and a lot less time on the road.

Lie

J: Okay, so the lie story is another slightly crazy one from when I was a kid, maybe 15 or 16. I grew up in a really small town about four hours inland from Sydney in Mudgee. From 4 until 17 I lived there, so most of my young life. So around high school, I guess we were watching a lot of Jackass and stuff like that.

U: [laughs] Typical! I did too.

J: I think everybody does! I had a tight-knit but large group of friends, especially for the population there. It was a tiny little dust town. So I was fortunate to have a lot of really cool friends, we got in and out of trouble like you do in those little towns where there’s not much else to do. One day, we decided we were gonna do a scavenger hunt when the sun goes down! We were all gonna tell our families we were staying at each other’s houses.

U: That’s such a cool idea!

J: Yeah! Our parents didn’t know where we were, so we were effectively outside past our curfews. We were all out, had a long list of things to do, and it took some time to kind of build it up. Now that I think about it – it was like 10 points to be arrested, and all of them were 10 points and you had to see how many you could get.

U: Oof!

J: It was actually a really, really fun, time of my life, hilarious, but some of them were not so great. There was a person that really hated this older bully type person from high school, we knew where they lived so one of the tasks was to take people’s mailboxes and throw them into that person’s pool. Over the fence and into their pool.

U: Oh god.

J: Yeah, just naughty, dumb shit. Anyway we did it and went to bed, added the points up and my team came second. The next day we met up again and were going to go eat, we walk past that person’s house – we hadn’t really realised it but the town had reacted to it badly. We kind of turned it upside down. It wasn’t such a big town.

U: You guys actually wreaked havoc?

J: Yeah. And you don’t think you’re doing that at the time, but the next morning you see the aftermath and it’s like, ‘holy shit. This place is fucked.’ There were pushbikes in the bottom of the pool – one of them was to ride a pushbike off the big board. Anyway, so we’re walking past this bully’s house and he came out and goes, ‘were you people out last night? There’s like 50 mailboxes in my pool.’ We’re like ‘no no! It wasn’t us!’ He’s like, ‘I know it was you,’ and we’re like ‘well, we saw someone out last night, it was Jake,’ And he goes, ‘I’ll text him.’ We say, ‘pretty sure it was him.’ So we go past this person’s house and there’s police there. They come to us and go, ‘there they are, they said it was Jake, they saw him.’ We’re like, ‘we don’t know, it had nothing to do with us, it was Jake.’ This lie had snowballed to the point where we were telling the police about the person who did all these things, but he was actually un-involved and had nothing to do with it.

U: Oh noooo.

J: Yeah, it was really weird and bad. I had lots of anxiety and then yeah, the whole thing got blamed on him. He had this curfew [from then on], I think it was 9pm, and if he was seen after 9 the police would pick him up and take him home.

U: Oh NO!

J: [laughs] I know! It got really out of control. It was a spur of the moment thing: ‘who did this?’ ‘I dunno, this person I don’t like!’ Definitely not something I’m proud of but it’s one thing I did as a kid that kind of snowballed into something drastic.

U: So what other stuff did you do that night?

J: Some pretty simple stuff – pull the numbers off people’s mailboxes and make your phone number. One was sit on this sign in this park, it was really high up, but you also had to stop others from doing that. So somebody took the sign down after they sat on it so no one else could sit on that sign. Another one was running down this huge hill with a look-out of the town. Roll down in a bin. Nothing too crazy! Just dumb kid shit.

U: I feel like this would make a really great song. I can almost see the music video – like, a bunch of mates running around town in the middle of the night.

J: I can see it, it’s a good visual.

U: The summer nights, anything can happen vibe. I mean, you did some stupid shit but I think you could like, romanticise it a little for a really good song!

J: I look back at it and go, ‘ugh, young dumb kids, what was I thinking’, but it’s also kind of funny.

U: I guess you had to make fun for yourself in this small town.

J: When I was a kid, it was a very backwards place. The way people thought was very small town, and for some reason, maybe our parents or the music we were listening to at the time, we didn’t think like that. We were the break in the link. I guess that’s why we all became friends.

Trophy Eyes are supporting Bring Me The Horizon alongside Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and You Me At Six in Australia from April 10 until April 13. Their latest album, The American Dream, is out now.

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If you’re a musician and have some stories to share and some secrets to tell – be it hilarious or heartbreaking, humiliating or honourable – send us an email at twotruthscolumn[at]gmail[dot]com.

We might be telling the whole world about the time you accidentally killed your brother’s pet snake and replaced it without anyone knowing in no time.