The power and passion of Midnight Oil: the inside story of the band that changed Australia

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A new documentary – more than five years in the making – follows the unforgettable trajectory of one of Australia’s greatest rock bands, who are still radical decades later

. Now, in the next century, I re-posed my first question to him: where are all the Midnight Oil love songs? A few boy-girl romance numbers would have shifted a lot more records.

The chemistry was the making and the breaking of the band. For Jim Moginie making music was the only way he felt normal. I saw Rob Hirst play in his high school garage band and even then he had the showmanship, the flair and the beats. Martin Rotsey was born with a guitar on his hip.The focus of Midnight Oil was always going to be its large, bald frontman. At 198cm , or thereabouts,is big in every way. He is incredibly generous and open-hearted. Tireless. Smart and warm in person.

“​​People were getting dissatisfied,” Hirst recalls. “But here’s the thing, it was that dissatisfaction in my case – kind of a mini-nervous breakdown, I think, with panic attacks and whatever – that comes out on the album. It’s a desperate sounding album by a band that was actually pretty desperate, we needed to make that breakthrough.”

The Oils’ live shows were now massive productions. Garrett was an incredible frontman, his dancing was something to behold. He was in his natural state declaiming the evils of the world while behind him Hirst’s right foot and the bass put all caps on the vitriol. Everything was going smoothly until Earth and Sun and Moon. While Midnight Oil were in the studio, the music world changed. Smells Like Teen Spirit was a line in the sand. Corporate rock sucked. Alternative, amateurish, angry was it for the day. There was a whole new posse of angry young men, from Pearl Jam and Nirvana to Ice-T and Tupac.Midnight Oil put land rights and environmental issues front and centre in a way few other bands had before them.

 

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