Nic Cester was the latest musician to appear on The Plug with Neil Griffiths podcast and he didn’t hold back when it came to discussing the rise and fall of Jet.
Jet were one of the biggest rock success stories in Australian in the 00s. From 2003 until 2009, they scored three top five albums, beginning with the massive chart-topping Get Born: it shifted over 650,000 units in Australia, becoming certified 8x platinum. That album contained the hit most people know the group for, the electric ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’.
Their fame didn’t last, though, and Jet disbanded in 2012 before getting back together in 2016. Aside from touring, no new music has been forthcoming. Nic stopped by Griffiths’ podcast this week, the latest in a long string of big-name guests, including Jaguar Jonze, Tom Morello, and Tom DeLonge.
And he was brutally honest when talk turned to Jet’s early success. “At that particular moment, there was a lot of toxicity within the group and a lot of excessive behaviours,” Nic recalled. “Even just in terms of the business side, we’d become famous for one specific style of music which was never what I was about personally.”
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He continued noting the huge pressure he felt for Jet to sound and play a certain way. “I just felt I was trapped under the weight of expectation from the band because the success had been so enormous in the beginning,” he said. “The assumption was that would just keep continuing and doing one specific genre of music. I was like, ‘how did I get myself into this?’ It wasn’t me or what I’m about.”
When Griffiths asked him about the possibility of Jet doing any shows again, Nic was hesitant. “Personally I have no real desire or ambition at the moment but who knows in 5 or 10 years how I’ll feel,” he conceded.
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Check out Nic Cester on The Plug with Neil Griffiths:
