Benjamin David Gillies was born on the 24th October 1979, in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia and is a musician, probably best known as the drummer in the Silverchair rock band. As a member of the above mentioned band, he has sold almost 10 million albums around the world and has had more hits in the Top 20 in the last decade than any other Australian artist. Gillies has been active in the entertainment industry since 1992.
How much is the net worth of Ben Gillies? It has been estimated by authoritative sources that the overall size of his wealth is as much as $20 million, as of the data presented in early 2017. Music is the major source of Gillies’ fortune.
Ben Gillies Net Worth $20 Million
To begin with, Gillies was raised in Newcastle; initially he was a drummer in The Marching Koalas and taught his friend Chris Joannou.
Concerning his professional career, he became the founding member of the rock band Silverchair in 1992, and in addition to playing the drums, he also played the guitar. In the beginning, the band followed the roots of Seattle’s grunge of the 1990s, with a sound that refers to Pearl Jam and a few from Nirvana. But the band changed its strands throughout his career, presenting different musical styles and varying the sonority of compositions. The band was very successful in the Australian music industry, receiving numerous important awards. They were successful firstly with “Tomorrow”, which won a local music competition on SBS, an Australian television network. The band was soon contracted by Murmur and was very successful in holding national and international concerts.
In 2003, following the release of the “Diorama” album, the band announced a hiatus, during which their members engaged in the side projects The Dissociatives, The Mess Hall and Tambalane. They met again in 2005 at Wave Aid, and then released Young Modern. The sound of Silverchair has evolved throughout his career with different styles in specific albums becoming increasingly ambitious over the years, from grunge and post-grunge of his debut album to a more orchestrated sound. Silverchair has won 21 ARIA Music Awards out of 49 nominations. The band also received six APRA awards. All five of their albums reached number one on the ARIA Album Chart: “Frogstomp” (1995), “Freak Show” (1997), “Neon Ballroom” (1999), “Diorama” (2002) and “Young Modern” (2007), consistently adding to Ben’s net worth.
In addition to being a member of Silverchair, Gillies participated as a singer in a song originally written by Midnight Oil at the ARIA Awards in 2006 for the induction of Midnight Oil into the ARIA Hall of Fame. When he is not on tour with Silverchair, Ben teaches drums part-time at the Rosie’s School of Rock in Newcastle, Australia.
Finally, in the personal life of Ben Gillies, when he was on vacation in Italy in 2008, Ben proposed to his girlfriend Hayley Alexander, however, the couple separated in 2009. In 2010, he married Jack Merivale, but the two announced their separation a year later. Currently, he is single.
