I gotta admit, I arrived at the Midnight Oil party a little late.
Back in the summer of 1986 I traveled to Australia for my younger sister’s wedding, and happened to see the band kicking royal butt at a Melbourne-area pub called Fosters. By that time the Aussie quintet had already released five studio albums packed with politically motivated and socially conscious songs that rocked hard and got you thinking at the same time.
I made a mental note to keep an eye on these guys, and I didn’t have to wait long, because the next year saw the release of Diesel and Dust, which broke the band big-time in North America. By the time that LP hit the record racks in Canada “the Oils” had perfected their status as a band that matters, delivering a concept album about environmental causes and the struggles of Indigenous Australians. At the time the group was composed of lead vocalist Peter Garrett, guitarists Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey, bassist Peter Gifford, and drummer Rob Hirst.
But Hirst was more than just the band’s timekeeper. He was a crucial part of the songwriting team. On Diesel and Dust alone he cowrote the singles “Beds Are Burning”, “Dreamworld”, and “The Dead Heart”. And on the band’s 1990 followup, Blue Sky Mining, Hirst wrote or cowrote seven of the album’s 10 songs, including the title track and what is arguably Midnight Oil’s best song, the rousing anti-war anthem “Forgotten Years”, inspired by his father and grandfather’s military experiences.
I got my second live taste of Hirst’s formidable drumming abilities when the Oils played Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre on the Diesel and Dust Tour in April of 1988. At a press conference the day of the show Hirst was asked about the group’s preoccupation with political themes, and while he acknowledged that serious side of the band, he also pointed out that “Some people just come to Midnight Oil concerts because it’s supposed to be a powerful rock ‘n’ roll experience.”
“And it is!,” piped up frontman Garrett. “It will be tonight!”
Judging by my review of the show, he wasn’t kidding.
Five years later I got to experience the percussive power of Hirst and the thrilling overall effect of Midnight Oil for a third time when the band shared the stage with the Tragically Hip on the first Another Roadside Attraction traveling festival. The tour landed at Seabird Island, near Agassiz, B.C., on July 17, 1993, and at that point in time Garrett was an outspoken critic of the logging of Vancouver Island’s Clayoquot Sound. Right after the band’s first song he began berating MacMillan Bloedel and the B.C. government that agreed to let the logging giant devour pristine areas of the old-growth forest.
Not everyone in the crowd of roughly 25,000 shared Garrett’s view–I remember one pro-logging dude shouting “Go back to Australia, you tree-hugging a**hole!”–but I admired how his band was ready and willing to take a stand on important issues, no matter where in the world they were.
I didn’t get the opportunity to interview a member of Midnight Oil until October of 2001. By that time the band’s popularity had waned considerably, and it was heading to Vancouver for two Commodore Ballroom shows in support of its eleventh studio album, Capricornia, which I didn’t mind at all.
This was just six weeks after the terror attacks of 9/11, so when I contacted Hirst en route to a gig in Detroit, I asked if, in light of recent world events, his band was still actively pushing the antiwar cause.
“Well, we’re certainly pushing antiviolence messages,” he replied, “particularly when it comes to violence directed at innocent people. That would certainly be a constant.” Hirst confirmed that numbers like “US Forces”—and other antinationalist songs such as “Short Memory” and “One Country”—had not been deleted from the current tour’s set list.
After the second Vancouver show I took my Aussie brother-in-law, a big homegrown Oils fan, backstage, where we got to meet Hirst in the flesh. He was incredibly welcoming and ego-free, traits I’d noticed while talking to other famed Aussie-based musicians like Jimmy Barnes from Cold Chisel, James Reyne from Australian Crawl, Doc Neeson from Angel City, and the members of AC/DC.
All the best old-school Aussie rockers seemed to me to be the kind of people you’d really like to sit down and have a beer with.
As you can see, I got the superfriendly Hirst and a couple of other accomodating band members to sign my vinyl copy of Diesel and Dust, which is currently displayed in a hallowed location in my basement man-cave.
Midnight Oil announced earlier today that Rob Hirst has died after a three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. May he rest in peace.