   benjamin david "ben" gillies (born 24 october 1979) is an australian musician, best known as the drummer of australian rock band silverchair from 1992 until its breakup in 2011. in 2003, gillies formed tambalane with wes carr, initially as a song-writing project, they released a self-titled album in 2005 and toured australia but subsequently folded. by june 2011, after silverchair's disbandment, gillies was in the final stages of about 12&nbsp;months of working on his solo album and he said that it was not a continuation of his earlier work with tambalane. ==career== benjamin david gillies was born on 24 october 1979 in merewether, a suburb of newcastle nsw. he started as a quad drummer in the band, the marching koalas, before forming the grunge group, innocent criminals, at the age of 12 with friends daniel johns and chris joannou. playing originally at school and other venues in the newcastle area, they came to attention after a weekend music workshop at the tanilba bay progress hall funded through the arts council of new south wales in march 1994. by october 1994, under their new name silverchair, their first ep tomorrow had reached no.&nbsp;1 on the aria singles chart. silverchair went on to release five no.&nbsp;1 albums, frogstomp (1995), freak show (1997), neon ballroom (1999), diorama (2002) and young modern (2007).{{cite web | archiveurl = http://www.webcitation.org/62owfpuqr | url = http://australian-charts.com/showinterpret.asp?interpret=silverc
1979_births Australian_multi-instrumentalists Australian_rock_drummers Living_people People_from_Newcastle,_New_South_Wales Silverchair_members