Midnight Oil

Thu 5th Mar, 2009 in Features

Story by Andrew Weaver

Since breaking up in the wake of 2002 release Capricornia, venerated Australian musical legends Midnight Oil have re-formed twice. On the first occasion, they came together to support relief efforts for the Boxing Day tsunami that wreaked havoc in late 2004.

Now they are gathering together once more – this time for Sound Relief, to raise funds after devastating bushfires tore through Victoria, killing hundreds, and floods in Queensland and New South Wales similarly caused great turmoil.

Every time something awful happens in Australia, it seems Midnight Oil are the cause célèbre. So…are they ever going to get back together for happy times alone?

Drummer Rob Hirst believes that it takes something like the greatest peace-time disaster since World War II to bring the band back together again. “It’s certainly something on that scale that would prompt the band to get together,” he says. “The band members were more surprised than anyone that Pete [Garrett, the band’s frontman and part of Kevin Rudd’s Labor Government], with his incredible workload and in his new position as Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts would actually make the call.”

It seems that the Honourable Member for Kingsford-Smith was the one who suggested that the band might like to take part in the fundraising efforts. Garrett was the man who followed up on the organiser’s request that the Oils be part of it.

“Never did we think that not only would Pete agree to do it, but initiate the acceptance. There’s Midnight Oil, and we have these songs and we were lucky enough to play around the country for close on to a quarter of a century and our last show ever was at Wave Aid. But because of this tragedy, and because we think we can still really put on some strong and memorable shows, we don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t proceed.”

The second reformation since their break-up, Hirst doesn’t see a time moving forward where they necessarily will reteam as a band as an ongoing exercise. But, he also doesn’t rule it out.

“I’d never say never,” he confirms, “and we’re all amazed that this is happening, because we never thought it would. There was a time when some of us wanted to move on with our respective projects. But you also reach a point down the track where you become immensely proud of what you’ve done. If people are still interested in hearing the songs, then there’s a new generation of kids who might have heard about the band but were never going to get a chance to see us live. So we feel fortunate to have survived that time and I’m still sure we’ll put on really strong shows.”

As a warm-up for their Sound Relief performance, Midnight Oil are putting on two shows in Canberra – ostensibly so that Garratt can walk across the road from representing his electorate in federal parliament and get some extensive rehearsal time in with the band.

Interestingly, both the shows are five dollars more expensive than the Wave Aid shows, and no mention has been made as to where that money is going. Hirst defends it as necessary, as they’ll be utilising their own desk and own crew, who are being flown in from around the world.

“There’s a lot of costs involved, and you could spend half an hour getting the sound right,” he says of their expected short set for Sound Relief. “Because we don’t want that to happen. There are all these logistic costs to do it properly, that explains the cost there.”

When the band performs at Sound Relief, they’ll be playing the Melbourne leg of the show, at the MCG, as opposed to playing their home turf in Sydney.

“The organisers asked us to come to the MCG – perhaps in the back of their mind they remembered that the tsunami gig was in Sydney last time,” he says. “Because the bushfires are an Australian tragedy, but particularly a Victorian and very close to Melbourne tragedy, they’d put us on the hallowed grounds of the MCG. We’re very excited just by that – there’s such folklore attached to that place.”

Once again, as per Wave Aid, it’s the reformation of Midnight Oil that is the biggest drawcard for the show. But why them? Is it their past political stance? Or is it the songs themselves, their very – œcome together’ nature, which makes Midnight Oil the banner band for events such as this?

“We were, right from the start, very involved in big gigs,” Hirst says of the band’s past. “There was a big earthquake gig in Newcastle all those years ago, and there were quite a few gigs around the place for homeless kids. There were shows here and overseas, in London, in the latter part of the cold war about the nuclear build-up and the antagonists. And there shows on behalf of indigenous people here, and in the United States and New Zealand and Canada. Perhaps because of the legacy of these shows it’s why we’re asked to perform at this type of gig.”

No doubt they’ll now, in the wake of a second reformation, be asked to perform at a very different sort of gig. After Neil Young headlined it this year, who better to headline Big Day Out in 2010 than Midnight Oil?

“You never know,” he says with a laugh. “If Pete gets a taste for it, and things get even duller in parliament, then he might actually do it!”

With parliament in recess throughout January, he’s really got no excuse not to get back on the road…

Midnight Oil perform as part of Sound Relief at the MCG on Saturday 14 March. They’ll also play two warm-up shows in Canberra on 12 and 13 March at the Royal Theatre.