MIDNIGHT OIL
Photo credit: © Philip Morris
Rob Hirst – Drums + Vocals
Martin Rotsey – Guitar
Peter Garrett – Lead Vocals
Jim Moginie – Guitar, Keyboards + Vocals
Bones Hillman – Bass + Vocals (1987 to 2020)
Andrew James – Bass (Founding member to 1980)
Peter Gifford – Bass + Vocals (1980 to 1987)
Midnight Oil is more than just a rock ‘n’ roll band. From the northern beaches of Sydney to the streets of Manhattan, they have stopped traffic, inflamed passions, inspired fans, challenged the concepts of “business as usual” and broken new ground.
Rob Hirst (drums, vocals) and Jim Moginie (guitars, keys and vocals) started making music together at school in 1972, with singer Peter Garrett joining in 1975 and Martin Rotsey (guitar) came on board the following year. Founding bass player Andrew “Bear” James was replaced by Peter “Giffo” Gifford from 1980 until 1987 when Bones Hillman joined the band.
The eponymous 1978 album, smartly nicknamed The Blue Meanie, spoke directly about the milieu in which it was born (Sydney surf/suburbs culture). The next year Head Injuries came closer to capturing Midnight Oil’s incendiary live energy honed across hundreds of sweat drenched gigs. By the time Place Without Postcard was released in 1981, the Australian pub rock scene was at its zenith. Suburban beer barns held 2,000 punters and ‘The Oils’ were filling them nightly, creating rock ‘n’ roll chaos. Being an ‘Oils’ fan wasn't a part time or passive experience.
Throughout all this the band wrote their own rules: refusing to appear on popular TV shows like Countdown and shunning all the music biz norms. At the same time Midnight Oil was becoming known for their support of environmental and social justice causes. The singular trail that they blazed set the tone for everything that followed.
In 1982, their fourth album 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 turned everything on its head. The band deconstructed their sound and reassembled it into complex agitrock anthems like Power And The Passion and US Forces. As ‘The Oils’ expanded their creative ambitions they also expanded their audience. The album was a monster success, staying in the Australian charts for over 200 weeks and was also popular on US college radio – as the band expanded its ambitions, it also expanded its reach.
Red Sails in the Sunset came next. Recorded in Japan, it took sonic experimentation and polemics to new and extreme levels. It loomed large on the charts through 1984 against the backdrop of singer Peter Garrett making a run for the Australian Senate on a Nuclear Disarmament platform.
Photo by Tony Mott. Courtesy of Midnight Oil.
Image credit: © Tony Mott
In 1986 Midnight Oil was invited to tour through some of Australia’s most remote communities with legendary Aboriginal group Warumpi Band. The Blackfella/Whitefella tour was a transformative experience that exposed the band to the austere beauty of the desert landscape, the inspiring creativity of the Indigenous people and the deplorable conditions in which so many of those people existed. The band returned to Sydney and created their global breakthrough Diesel and Dust. Singles from that classic album like The Dead Heart, Put Down That Weapon, Dreamworld and, of course, Beds Are Burning brought Midnight Oil to new audiences around the globe. The band toured internationally through 1987 and 1988 driving the album to huge critical and commercial success. It ultimately sold more than 6 million copies and earned them a Grammy nomination, although the band declined to attend the ceremony in order to honour their commitment to a political event at home.
1990’s Blue Sky Mining saw melodic tracks like One Country, Blue Sky Mine and Forgotten Years bring an international orientation without losing any of their characteristically Australian voice. While touring the US after the album’s release, the band drew attention to the environmental disaster caused by an Exxon oil tanker that ran aground in Alaska. They hired a flatbed truck and played a blistering guerrilla set outside the Exxon offices in New York, stopping traffic and putting the issue on front pages worldwide.
Midnight Oil’s creative evolution continued with 1993’s Earth and Sun and Moon with its emphasis on melody, textures and storytelling. They toured the world on the WOMAD festival and were one of the first international artists to play in South Africa after Nelson Mandela came to power. These new experiences influenced 1996’s atmospheric album Breathe which they recorded in Sydney and New Orleans. Then, in typically perverse fashion, the band created arguably their most angry and confronting release – 1998’s Redneck Wonderland. In Australia anti-migrant and anti-Aboriginal sentiment was being inflamed for political gain and Midnight Oil’s visceral response pulled no punches.
In 2000, the band performed to an audience of over a billion people at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games revealing clothing emblazoned with the word, SORRY; thereby provoking global discussion about the apology due to Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families between the 1890s and 1970s. That year they also recorded the excellent Say Your Prayers, an anthem for the East Timorese, which appeared on a benefit release and was stripped onto their 11th studio album Capricornia.
In December 2002 Peter Garrett left the band to pursue a full-time political career. Nonetheless in 2005 ‘The Oils’ regrouped to headline the Waveaid tsunami benefit at the SCG, and in 2009 they topped a massive bill for Sound Relief at the MCG where over 80,000 fans joined them in raising millions for victims of Australian fires and floods.
In 2017 Midnight Oil came back together for an epic world tour called The Great Circle. It officially began with a surfside pub gig in Sydney and then looped around Brazil, North America, Europe and New Zealand before climaxing with a lap of Australia starting in the outback, then heading around the coast and culminating in Sydney’s Domain on Armistice Day. Over the course of those 7 months Midnight Oil played 77 gigs in sixteen countries to over half a million fans.
Photo by Tony Mott. Courtesy of Midnight Oil.
Image credit: SFF by Tim Levy
2020 saw the band release their first new music in nearly two decades - The Makarrata Project – on which all the songs shared a strong lyrical focus on Indigenous reconciliation, and featured collaborations with First Nations friends. The release sought to elevate public awareness of ulurustatement.org/the-statement. Lead single Gadigal Land (feat. Dan Sultan, Joel Davison, Kaleena Briggs and Bunna Lawrie) was peer voted as the prestigious Song of the Year at the 2021 APRA Music Awards.
Sadly on the same weekend that The Makarrata Project debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA Charts, Bones Hillman passed away after a battle with cancer. He was the bassist with the beautiful voice, the band member with a wicked sense of humour, and a brilliant musical comrade. At the time of recording The Makarrata Project with Bones, ‘The Oils’ also tracked another dozen songs together. This extra chapter of their career came to a close in 2022 with the release of those tracks on a new album and final world tour both aptly titled Resist.
Resist also topped the Australian charts and was a fittingly forward looking, final statement for the band whose clarion call has always been “its better to die on your feet than live on your knees”.