Peter Garrett

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Barbed Left Sets podcast.
I'm here down Under with the legendary Peter Garrett. Peter Hi, Bob. Well,
let me ask you a question. If people call you Pete,
is that fine? Are you definitely a Peter? No? No,
I take I take either. I'm an assie. So we're
pretty easy about those things. Well, you know, I'm Robert.
I was never called Robert. I've been bobbed from like

(00:29):
day one. Okay, So what are we going to do
about climate change? Well, a bunch of different things. The
first one would be to make sure that we have
an economic instrument in every economy. The best way we
can fix it quickly is to put a penalty on
carbon pollution. So that's like a carbon tax. Use the

(00:49):
money that you get from the carbon tax to essentially
recycled dollars into zero emissions technologies, renewables, energy efficiency, the
new stuff, the hydrogened cells and the like that are
going to make the world continue to go without putting
more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Do it in a
way which essentially encourages first mover companies and innovators to

(01:14):
do their job well. And those who are going to
dig their heels in and don't want to change, and
are essentially writing a suicide note for for subsequent generations
pay the price. Okay, let's be very specific. The day
we're recording this, Trump says he's pulling out of the
Paris Accords. Those that plan sounds great, But in the

(01:36):
world we live in, can we enact that plan? Well?
I think we can, and I think the fact that
Trump's pulling out is in some ways not unexpected, but
it is not fatal to the Paris Accords essentially being
the next big stepping stone to the world community reducing emissions.
There's a couple of technical and political issues in the

(01:59):
Paris Accord which are challenging. One is that up to now,
countries are simply pledging. They're not promising to enact their
reductions in legislation or by a mandate or a feared
or a regulation or whatever that has to happen. And
a second thing is that, from what the science is

(02:20):
telling us, even if those countries who have already made commitments, say,
for example, to reduce their emissions down to a certain
figure in the next twenty or thirty years, unless they
all do it, unless we all do it, then the
chances of us holding warming to a level that makes
the planet habitable become less. So I think what's going

(02:40):
to happen is that when they next go the country's
next go to the Conference of the Parties as it's called,
America will still probably be an observer, even if they're
talking about pulling out. Those countries that have committed to
do it, mainly the European countries, China, India in particular,
and the South American block, will have more information in

(03:03):
front of them saying, you know what, we need to
accelerate reductions. So we can't go in with the business
as usual, let's play around at the edges approach. We
will have to do more. Some countries will then make
specific additional commitments. As they do that, the pressure then
comes on bad neighbors to to follow suit. And of
course the outliers are countries, particularly like Saudi Arabia and Russia,

(03:28):
who aren't playing ball at this point in time. Okay,
what will be the incentive to the people to become
more aggressive? I think there are two. One is that
the cost of inaction on dealing with climate change is
rising exponentially, whether it's insurance costs, infrastructure destruction, population movements,

(03:49):
effects on agriculture. I mean, look at your home state
now as we speak, can California I mean like seriously
becoming an extremely difficult place to even because of wildfire, etcetera.
And that, whilst maybe not necessarily each time caused by
climate change, certainly global warming intensifies wildfires as it does

(04:11):
a whole bunch of other things. So that's the first
incentive is economies aren't going to be able to pay easily,
particularly economies that are in debt, which many world economies are,
for all of the infrastructure repair, emergency services and the like.
So that's the first incentive. The second incentive is that
if we're serious about a future for our kids, then
we have to be able to envisage a future where

(04:33):
there's they've still got jobs, have still got opportunities, and
of course all of those are in the new technologies,
in the new areas of low emissions, solar, wind, energy efficiency,
electric cars. I mean, you name it. There's there's a
whole world of zero economy out there for us, but
we need to get going on it. So you're optimistic, Yes,

(04:55):
I'm optimistic, although I've been in this issue on and
off for many, many years, Bob, and I think the
current political developments, particularly in your country, but in others
where you have rogue right wing governments who either don't
believe in it or don't want to do anything about it,
makes it more difficult. And additionally, I think in many cases, industry,

(05:16):
particularly the fossil fuel industries, the oil and gas companies
and others, have really played hardball with this issue and
are deeply culpable for knowing, as the tobacco companies did
thirty or forty or fifty years ago, that what they
were doing was imperiling the planet, but not being prepared
to scale back their activity. So I see the most

(05:38):
recent amount of citizens activities in different countries, including ours,
and more so in Europe perhaps than yours, but also
in yours extinction rebellion, this grassroots movement that's starting to build.
I see that as part of a new response two
people being absolutely frustrated that we're not getting enough done,
and on the other side, the potential for social democrat

(06:02):
parties eventually to reclaim some ground and enact things like
a green New Deal type thing, which you've seen in
your country well It's interesting because Greta Thunberg has been
put down by all the right wing. It shows the
power of one individual. Oh amazing, It's just you know,
people are playing in the background, just like one one
rock performer, one band can make such a difference. So

(06:23):
how do you become so politicized? To begin with? Oh? Gee,
I don't know. That's the way I am as a person. No, no, no,
let's go back to the beginning. You and I are
the same age. I'm trying to think whether I'm here
with an area nite man with actually you and me?
But in any event, uh, okay, you you grew up where? So?
I grew up in a suburb of Sydney, which is

(06:47):
the biggest city in Australia on the East Coast, and
I grew up basically in a middle class a little
bit slower. How many generations has your family been in Australia.
So on my mom's side, uh, four and on my
dad yeah, four, and on my dad's side, I think

(07:07):
three or four have Do you have any idea where
they came from and what their incentive was? Yes, I
do so. On my mom's side they come from the
United Kingdom, from England, excuse me. And on my dad's
side they come from Belgium and the United Kingdom. You
have any idea why they came, Yes, we know that

(07:28):
they came looking for a better life, as most immigrants do,
and that when they arrived. On my dad's side, they
were very involved in politics actually as it turned out,
and business and sport and all of those things. Unfortunately
on the wrong side, on the right wing side. But yeah,

(07:51):
so so I'm not from convict stock in Australia and
obviously our Aboriginal on island of people are the first Australians.
But I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a iterational Australian
in Okay, So you grew up in a suburb, your
parents work outside the home. Yes, so my my dad
is a business manager in English. That's like sort of

(08:12):
a like a managing director of a company, but a
small but a big German company. But the Sydney office
was the company they used to make tapes b a
SF really okay yea, so maybe the first chrome teams
you remember, I know, cause that's love to talk about them. Uh.
And my mom was who was a big influence onthing,

(08:34):
actually was one of the first generations of women here
in Australia to graduate from university. It was at the
end of World War Two. Of course, many men had
lost their lives, women had gone into the workforce. They
were working from America were completely uneducated. What was Australia's
rule in World War two? So in World War two

(08:58):
we were um basically followed the English into the war,
and in the middle of the war, after Pearl Harbor
was bombed by the Japanese, we of course we're on
the same side as you were, the Americans. And it
was during that time, in early nine in forties that

(09:18):
as a colony, which is previously what the country had
been a British colony, we pivoted to use an Obama term,
and our Prime Minister at the time said, up to
this point in time, we've been an English colony, and
we love the Queen and all of that, but we
are now going to become close friends with America and Americans,
and we need to because our survival depends on it.

(09:41):
And we fought with the Americans against the Japanese as
they proceeded to get closer and closer to Australia, I
mean Japanese actually bombed not only Pearl Harbor, but Darwin,
a city to the north of Australia, and sent submarines
down this side. The country was never physically invaded. And
was your father in the war? No, my father was,
and actually he was very unwell. In fact, he was

(10:02):
unfortunately suffered ill health for most of his life. But
my mother was. So she served in the Women's Air
Force Regiment and along with many other young women, when
they were discharged or demobilized at the end of the war,
they went to university. And so she became a social worker.
And before you get there, her family, Yes, did her appearance.

(10:25):
Did her father go to university? Her father was a dentist, Okay,
so he was a professional. Yeah, he was a professional,
and he would probably feel positive about her going to university. Yeah,
I imagine so, although I think in those days they
were still pushing the boat out a little bit to
do those things. First generation. Really do you think about
him nine in forty seven? Probably your mother is a

(10:48):
social worker, correct, and working with who so working with
poor people, the underclass paid by the government. Correct. She
actually was the first social worker to be employed here
in Sydney, the city that we're in the one with
the harbor Bridge and the Opera House. And to establish

(11:11):
what was essentially a community center in a working class
area down by the docks, which had many retired seamen
merchant seamen who had been at sea and who had
done this, that and the other, and then who had retired.
And they built community centers of which there are now
many in Australia, and it's really an opportunity for older

(11:31):
people just to come. They play cards that have sing alongs.
On Friday. I'd come down from my school and and sing,
you know, it's a long way to Tipperary or all
those old songs to these people. And she did that
for a while and then she moved further up the
food chain, so she became a senior social worker in
a big mental hospital here and basically working in the

(11:52):
areas of health and aged care. So how did your
parents meet. They met on the North Shore, Sydney, which
is the area that we come from, where mutual friends
gathered at a boarding house. In those days, young people
when they left home didn't go off and you know,
share flats or houses or things like that. That they

(12:14):
would go to a boarding house which was run by
you know, somebody and an old couple or whatever. There
were a couple of spinster aunts that ran a board
run a really nice old fashioned boarding house out in
the suburbs. And of course the men could visit the
girls that were in the boarding house, or the boys
could visit the girls, but only you know, for between
six and eight, and they'd have to sip tea while
they were watched over by some martinette. But that's anyway

(12:38):
they met up there. So they just bumped into each
other and someone set them up. Look, I don't know
the full story. Yeah, so your mother didn't used to
talk about the good old days? Not really, Okay, So
how many kids in your family? So on their side
or on my side? So I'm I'm the oldest of
three boys, and the other two were how much younger?

(13:00):
So five years to my next brother who is in Brisbane,
and then another three years to the youngest brother. Okay,
and a lot of times the oldest kid has a
lot of pressure on them, but it's also the favorite
of what was it like being the oldest boy? Look,
I think I conform, you know, pretty much to the

(13:20):
letter to the responsible eldest child. Look, I actually had
a very happy childhood. My mom and dad passed away
in my late teens, but up to that point in time,
I never felt I never had that into sort of
parent to kid tension that quite often arrives. I think
I enjoyed taking on extra responsibilities as a kid and

(13:42):
looking after my younger brothers, which I did, and both
my parents worked so they were quite often away a lot. Okay,
so you didn't test the limits or your parents were
very you know, lenient, and I think there was so
much lenient. I think, no, I didn't test the limits,
wasn't interested in it. It seemed to me to be
completely unnecessary. I loved being kid, and from my perspective
when I was a kid is that I didn't want

(14:03):
to grow up. I could see the responsibilities that had
olds had, and I thought that there's plenty of time
for that to happen later on. And I still feel
this even more strongly now today, that we deny children
and young people the opportunity just to have those wonderful, open,
almost aimless periods of in their life where they're not
under social appression, they're not trying to meet somebody, they're

(14:25):
not trying to start their career. You know, it's kind
of weird because now if someone says they're board, you know,
I don't know what world they're living and not so
much input. But certainly in america's a result of incommittee quality.
The elite, so to speak, are so busy scheduling their children,
trying to get them in a better educational system that
they have. No, they don't even fear for themselves. The

(14:46):
other thing, of course, is the fear. I mean, I
would come home from school, I change into my play clothes,
I go off on my bike, and that would be
yet exactly same, no concept of a play date. Okay,
so how old were you? Well, how did your parents
pass away? So my dad add basically had a big
asthma attack. He was he worked pretty hard, and when

(15:06):
I was seventeen, and then four years later our family
home burnt down and my mom was in the family
home at the time and she perished. Yeah, it's hard
to have a response to that. So your father dies
at seventeen, doesn't that mess with the family's economics? Yeah,

(15:27):
a little bit. I mean we a he It's an
interesting story, Bob, because I think, like most parents, he
wanted the best for his kids. One of one of
the things he wanted to do was to send us
to a good school and inverted commas. So he worked
extra hard to enable us to do that. But in
so doing, I think he put his already not too
good health at jeopardy. We were, but my mom was

(15:51):
a successful professional by that stage, so you know, even
once he died, she was able to support us. And
by that stage I had left home and gone to university,
so my two brothers were still at home. And then
your mother dies tragically, yes, and you're an orphan. So
what's that like. Well, I mean, at the time, it was,
it was. It was traumatic and an extremely difficult period

(16:15):
for us, and it took all of us quite some
time to recover from it. And I think, I mean,
but they were slack, you know, they didn't have an
insurance or anything like that. That was it. But on
reflection now and I look back on it, I think,
even even though of course I terribly missed my mom
and we were close, but it made us in some
ways in other ways because we went back literally to nothing,

(16:38):
and we looked after one another. And of course, you know,
I started even though I was at Uni, doing law
and I'm a lawyer by professional training, but I'm really
a musician and an activist, and music had started to
come into my life. And so I think when I
got onto stage and some one of my closest, oldest
friends sort of said to me, who knew the family before,

(17:00):
when you got on stage, you you definitely it seemed
like you definitely had to expunge some of the heart
smashes that you had. But for me, it was a
case of making every minute. I just knew how precious
life was by that stage because I lost my mom. Okay,
so you were twenty three, you say when your mother died. Yeah,
I think, but in anything, your your brothers were much younger,

(17:22):
that's right. How did they manage? Well? We all we
all we all camped together. I was back in Sydney
and we just got a little flat somewhere and we started.
My brother and I got a contract cleaning out um
taxis that did the midnight shift on taxis here in
Sydney from twelve in the morning till five am. And

(17:42):
that's what we did to survive. How long did you
do that for? Oh, a year or two? Yeah, with
other jobs as well, thrown in whilst music was starting. Okay,
so let's go back to school. Were you a popular
kid at school? Um? Yeah, Look, I wouldn't have been unliked.
I think reasonably popular, but I wasn't sort of head
of the gang or anything like that. Do you have friends? Yeah? Yeah, no,

(18:04):
I had some friends. Okay. Now, you're obviously a tall gentleman.
How how tall are you? Six four and a half
in socks? Yeah? So what is it like were you
tall as a young kid? Yeah? I was tall and gorky,
you know. Okay, So how does that affect your personality? Well?
I think it probably means that you're a little aware
of social settings. Look, I'm I'm quiet and polite in

(18:28):
one way. This is just the character that I have.
But in another way, I'm not insecure about myself at all,
and I don't think I really ever have been, even
as a teenager. And I put that down to my
parenting inasmuch as, um, I had parents who encouraged us.
They weren't indulging us and saying, oh aren't you fantastic

(18:49):
little Pete? You know you can see you know you're
going to be a pop star. There's none of that.
They just treat you with respect. But say, you've got
if you want to do something, you've got the potential
to do. Whatever it is you choose to do, you
can do, and you get a good hearing here. And
we don't judge people, we don't label people. We don't
spend our time comparing ourselves against others. I never heard
my parents talk about the people next door and wishing

(19:11):
I had more or less money than that. Listen, my
parents were the exact opposite. My mother. My older sisters
still traumatized by, you know, my father and mother talking
about a girl in the neighborhood and enough great she was, etcetera.
And my mother would you know if I called her
up and I was gonna do something, you know, as
she would say, you know, essentially, why you I'm still
dealing with that, so so certainly. And then I grew

(19:32):
up on the eastern coast of the United States, and
the transistor came along, and we were listening to the sports, baseball,
the Yankees, and then I had certain singles. Then of
course the Beatles hit and all hell broke loose. What
was it like for you being here? Well, so, yeah,
I can count my equanimity, I said, because I think

(19:54):
I was pretty decent parenting, uh and my mom my
parents loved the Beatles. So the parents loved the Beatle.
So let's go back to the beginning. In my house,
my parents were avid music lovers, but they played the
show tunes, right, how about your parents same? So yeah,
I grew up on a diet of show tunes Crosby, Sinatra, Elvis.

(20:16):
But they kept going and they enjoyed parties. And so
the Beatles came and that sort of first British pop
invasion so rolled through the suburbs of Sydney and came
into our living room. But by that stage as well,
I had years for music too. I did a stand
a boarding school. You talk about transis, I did a

(20:37):
boarding school. I distinctly remember having my little transistor under
the pillow at night, listening to the Kinks, you know,
listening to the Who, listening to whatever. Doors. So, if
your parents are Beatles fans, that doesn't square with the
generational revolution that we experienced, and people talk about where

(20:59):
people are finding against their parents. Your parents were they hipsters?
Were most other people's parents like that? I wouldn't say
they were hipsters. I just think they were relatively broad minded.
And open, and I think they just enjoyed music, and
I think they were civil sort of people, so they
weren't trying to impose their strictures and their views on
their kids. They taught us good manners and you know,

(21:22):
how to treat other people. But it was pretty basic stuff. Okay,
So you have three kids yourself, that's what I have
three daughters. And how old are they? Thirty three, thirty two,
and thirty Okay? Well there, they've been out of the
house for a while and they never leave anymore. No,
I'm noticing. Yeah, I love that. Okay, So how do

(21:43):
you feel about their music? Well, I think it's incredible
for them, because it's incredible for them. How do you
feel your parents were Beatles fans? Are you a hip
hop fan? Yeah? I don't mind a little bit bits
of hip hop? Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm selective, I think,
am I listening? The reason I said incredible though, is
that their palettes so much wider than mine. Of course,

(22:04):
it's just massively wider. And if you listen to their playlists,
you know what they curate. It's crazy. I mean, I'm
hearing stuff I never knew. But I'm also hearing things
that I loved, but I thought they would never actually
ever listen to. Okay, so you're in boarding school. What
age do you got a boarding school? I only did
a brief stinting boarding school, but I was in boarding
school when I was fifteen and a half. So what happened?

(22:25):
Why was a brief? My parents went away and they
just stuck us in there, you know, for a period
of time. Where did they go? So my dad had
to go to work in Germany because and my mom
had relatives in actually North America and Canada, so she
took off as well. So that you parked you in
boarding school? Thanks mom and dad. So how long was that?

(22:45):
Not very long? Okay? So are you a record collector
when you're before you go to university? Look, I think
I fall into the category of someone who loves their
music a lot and who is a bit of a
bou bird. But I'm not an avid collector. I'm not
one of these fans. I'm not a musician who can
tell you every B side that their favorite band forgetting

(23:08):
the music. Yeah, when you're in in the mid sixty
six four to seventy or so, when you graduate from
high school, are you listening to the radio, going to shows,
doing all that stuff. No, not really going to shows,
listening to the radio and pop radio and just starting
to get a little bit of interest. I mean I went,

(23:28):
I went to a show, but I couldn't afford to
go in, so I stood outside with my ear up
against the brick wall to hear what was going on inside.
You remember what show that was? Yeah, it was. It
was a band called um Tamim Shudd who were actually
almost a sixty psychedelics band, surf band, and but they
were a big band in our area. And uh, yeah, amazed.

(23:49):
Were you the type of guy who would dance when
the music played at shows? No, I'm standing back and
listening and trying to figure out what's going on, you know, Okay,
and you someone who has girlfriends in that era, yes,
but more so at university. So for me it really came.
So I left home in seventy and instead of going

(24:10):
to university in my hometown in the city of Sydney,
I essentially went to the Quill of Washington. I went
to Canberra and we have a national university there and
I was on the college there and it was there
that and but people came from all over Australia and
actually from other parts of the world as well. It's
interestingly mainly Africa. And there was a lot of music,

(24:30):
A lot of new music was pouring through. People were
reading the New Music Express, Rolling Stone. We were seeing
that explosion of music which washed through sixty six to
seventy in the States, in particular San Francisco at All
washes into Australia. Really, yeah, what acts do you remember
from that era? Well, I guess to begin with on

(24:54):
the on the English side, all of the big classic
acts that you and I both know. And then additionally,
what more widely people like UM Fairport Convention, Robert Wyatt's
Soft Machine at All. On the American side, um again
the classic bands of that era, but the Birds would

(25:15):
be the one that really sort of hits me quite hard,
and I liked a lot. And then you go to
the doors. You've got the Mummers and the Pappas, You've
got the explosion of San Francisco bands, Moby Grape and
so on and solf. Okay, so was this your number
one interest once you're in university or I've always surfed
and always yeah yeah, So I mean, you know, I'm

(25:35):
an American. I don't know the the geography of Australia,
but camera is not by no, it's not not correct.
But but I grew up here, and yeah, I mean
I think it's something like of Australians live within fifty
kilometers of the coast. When did you start surfing? We
all start young here, Yeah, like four or five. You

(25:56):
still surf now, unfortunately not as much as I do,
but I get in the water. But the point being,
I still love to serve. But I was listening to
music I was interested in. I sang in the choir
at school, and I sang in a few little folky things.
And when I got to the university, the roys bands playing,
you know, in the colleges on the weekends, and I

(26:17):
fell in with a bunch of people who liked music.
And I got a job actually as a volunteer on
the university radio station because they didn't have anyone to
to sort of do the night shifts. And I always
been a nighttime person, so I started playing music on
the radio at night, and then I started playing music
at night in bands. Okay, when you were on the radio,

(26:38):
how many days a week we are on the radio,
I think two or three nights a week. Okay, what
would you play well, the whole side of you know,
Adam Hart mother by people. You know, I've like that.
I never really got into it, but whatever. Okay, So
at what point do you say, shoul I could be
a performer. Well to two points really. The first is

(27:02):
that there was you know, SI had some mates and
they had a band and they were writing songs or
trying to and they were running around and I went
to see them because I had a truck driving license
and I was driving trucks as well. Let's start for
a second. Let's go back here. You say you're trained
in law. You know, every country is different. That means
if you and me, if I, you know, smashed the

(27:25):
window here, could you defend me in court? Uh? Well
I could? Yeah, I mean I are you licensed to
do that? No, not at this point in time, and
I've let that pass over. Okay, But but at one
time you were licensed at one At one time I
had gone and past my barrister's admission, So I could
have appeared for you in a quarter. Okay. What was

(27:45):
your drive to be an attorney? I think partly that
I couldn't think of anything else. I could do, or
I could talk. You know that this is a talking job,
and I'm not mathematically or technically minded. And as I
got a little older, I realized is that the legal
system was pretty important. I studied air and space law

(28:06):
and pennology penology, which is the law of prisons and criminals.
And I thought I'd go to the bar potentially, or
I'd work in the international field in the area of
space law and international agreements and things like that. Now,
in America, you've got a college for four years, then
you got to law school for three years. How does
it work in Australia. Yeah, so we don't have a
college system here. You go straight to university essentially when

(28:29):
you finished high school, and the law degree will take
you four years if you do it by your by itself.
I actually did an arts degree in politics as well,
so double degree. So that's by the time you've done
it six years, okay, and then you have an exam
but you know, for a law but you never practiced law.
I practiced very briefly, and so I just like me. Yeah, no, no,

(28:50):
we're quite similar. How briefly did yous? Six months? And
what kind of law did you practice? I was providing
advice to companies a out the different laws in different states.
Australia is a federation, so we know nothing. The federation
means what, Yeah, a bit like Canada. So when Australia
was first occupied by the British, they occupied at state

(29:14):
by state and they constituted laws in each of those states,
and the country didn't come together as a whole nation
until nineteen one, even though you know, the English had
been here since the mid seventies, seventies and early eight hundreds.
So the states had to agree to become a federated
nation and they've all got different laws. The states do

(29:34):
their own things still to this day. So it was
very dry, very boring stuff, and I quickly left. Okay,
but were you working for yourself? How are you getting
working for myself? How did you get to work? I
think you know. A solicitor who had been at law
school with me said, I'll look, these companies need to
know what they can do with their labeling. Do you
want to have a go at it? And I said, yeah, okay.

(29:56):
Did you quit because music was becoming successful or because
you just could stand doing it? No? I did it
and I didn't do it for very long. I didn't
mind it. But by that stage I had met Rob
Hurst and Jim mcgeanie from who had started a band
at school really and it started writing songs, and we

(30:16):
had become Midnight or by that point, and we agreed
that if we were going to do anything with it,
then we would stop what we were doing otherwise and
just throw ourselves out all time. Let's go back to
the earlier story. You were a truck driver. Yeah, looks
so I drove trucks in my dad's company when I
was when I was last year of school, Like how
big a truck but not not a massive semi trailers,

(30:38):
but the next one is now. And I kept that
license and when I was at at university in the
National University, pay my way through and of course by
this stage my dad's passed away and then then so
you know, I wanted to not be a drain on
my mom, so I used to work on the weekends
driving trucks. And then I actually took a year off
where I had worked for a big trucking company just

(31:00):
to pay off debts and you know, sort out money.
And I started because I had the truck driving license.
Of course I was the guy that could be the
roadie exactly, and you know, big and strong in those days.
So I was loading the boxes in and out and
helping these people just so I know. Usually I would
think of a trucking company. You drive there, you drop
off your car, you drive, you leave the truck back.

(31:21):
How did you have the truck to work for? Used
to let the used to let us have the truck,
which was quite novel in those stuff. I'm sure it
wouldn't happen to that, especially if they knew what was
happening to it. But I heard the band and I
liked it, and I was listening to lots of music
and playing music at night in the college station. But
the singer wasn't really that good, and I said something like,

(31:43):
you know, look, and they said, how are we going?
You know? I said, wow, I'm not too bad, but
the singers maybe well classic Australian response, I suppose you
could do better and I said yeah, I'm sure. Okay.
Wait two things, Um, how long you slept in the

(32:05):
gear before this conversation? Not very long, okay? And did
you say the singer was bad because in your horror
you knew you wanted the gig no, I didn't actually
think I'd end up singing with them at all. They
just asked me the question. I just answered it honestly. Okay,
Then what happened? Then they said, well, do you want
to come along and sing? I said, yeah, sure, I'll
do that, which I did. So we were we were

(32:25):
a university band made up mainly of students, and we
were not very good. We were playing covers, we were
playing a lot of rock and roll. We were playing
you know, roadhouse blues, little Stone songs and so on.
But eventually we also had a fellow that came to

(32:46):
join us who was someone who got onto synthesizes very
early on, who was a huge fan of enos as
it turned out, and he built for himself a little
primitive noise generator. So we used to play rock and
roll with since the size this going on in the background,
and we just toured relentlessly in and around Canberra, but
only on the weekends. Okay, you have a unique vocal style.

(33:11):
Were you singing in that style when you were doing covers?
Probably probably not very very well, but yeah, okay, same style. Okay,
just but what is the Australian personality? Because you're self deprecating.
Is that because of your success or is that Australians.
I think it's partly Australians. We tend not to blow

(33:31):
our own trumpet to that's changing a little bit. You
do get people that blow their trumpets a bit louder now,
But I think it's part of our our national culture
to some extent. But it's probably also part of my nature.
I'm not I don't know what what it is, but
I tend not to want to shout too loudly about
what I'm doing. I mean, I'm proud of what I do,

(33:52):
but it's yeah, I think it's just the way we are. Okay,
So you're playing with this band, you're you're talking about
it in a very negative way, even though you ultimately
had great success. You're playing on the weekends. What kind
of gigs, what kind of money you make? And not
much so? And it's not midnight oil. And this comes
in a in a second or two time. So I'm

(34:12):
in Canberra where students and we we are reliable because
we had a van that we won't and a p
A and we're heading off to say a hotel like
a pub in a country town, maybe an hour's drive
from Canberra and we're playing on a Friday night to
maybe one or two hundred people, and we're getting a

(34:34):
couple hundred bucks to do that. We're playing at Unis
balls and dances. We could we would actually play anything,
you know, play anywhere, and we played out in paddocks
for farmers and you know who would always be shouting,
you know, play a C D C, you know, and
we have to play some more. Okay. So what was
the thought at the time just having a lark or
was it, well, maybe this will turn into something for me.

(34:55):
It was a little bit of both. Actually, such a
good question, because I intended to finish my my law,
but I actually found I knew I would like performing
and I love singing, and even though we weren't that good,
it was still good fun and we were meeting girls
and carrying on and doing whatever. And I thought at
the time I loved this and I understand how it works,

(35:19):
but I don't know that it can go that far
with these people, even though they were good friends. And
actually what ends up happening is I go back to
see my mom before she passes away, and I'm up
in Sydney in holidays. I'm looking for a job, and
normally I would work as a labor or a truck driver.
And there's an ad in the paper singer wanted for
tour on the coast. And I answered the ad and

(35:41):
showed up and there were these younger guys in a
room but they could really play. And that was midnight
Oil or the beginning of midnight Oil. And so I
auditioned as it were no one else auditions, so I
was it, and off we went. Well, let's go back
a little bit. You see the ad, Yeah, you might
have been looking for something. Yeah, yeah, well I had

(36:02):
to work over the summer period, you know. Well, I
mean in Los Angeles there's a famous rag called the Recycler. Okay,
so in Australia was it? Were there commonly ads for
bands in this paper? No, it's complete. It was. It
was one of those really strange that this is like
an ad in the l A Times. Yeah, underneath you know,
car washing and but also, okay, if you're looking for

(36:24):
a job for money, one doesn't necessarily think they can
make the kind of money in a band, correct then
as opposed to a straight gig. No, that's right. But
it looked like fun and uh, I thought, Leah, I
should do it. Okay, So how far away is the
band from where you're living? Well, they all roughly the

(36:46):
north shore areas, okay, so they're they're close. You get there,
you get the gig. And they had a tour book. Yeah,
they had a tour book. How many dates which they
worked out themselves, so they were quite enterprising. I think
probably about fifteen or six really, yeah, So you go
on the road with them, yes, how long after the
ad about three or four weeks? It was a rehearsal, Yeah,

(37:07):
lots of rehearsal okay, and you go out on the road.
What was it like, yes, so it was it was
a tour during summer, in our summer season where everybody
is on the coast, So it was a tour of
the coast. So we're playing in surf clubs, in hotels
on the beach, in little halls on the beach, we're
sleeping on the beach, and it was It was great fun.

(37:30):
Um a little wild and willie at times, but really
good fun. But for me, I was older than they
were two years maybe when that makes a difference, it
does at that age, and I thought that was fun,
And they said yeah, look, it's been great to have you.
But I was going back to Canberra, back to the university,
finished my lawd degree and they were doing their own thing.

(37:52):
They were students as well, but younger than me, and
you know, I think they didn't really necessarily think I
was going to hang round, and so they went off
to look for another singer in Sydney and I went
back to Canberra, okay, just to stop for a second.
So if they booked the Twit themselves, somebody in the
band was very enterprise. Yeah, so that would have been

(38:13):
Rob Hurst, the drummer. It's always the drummer. The drummer
is always a business guy. Just say Metallica. Okay, okay,
really so, but I could admit it's always the business guy.
So the drummer. So you go back to Canberra. Then
what happens. I do another year studying and you don't
have any contact with at all, very little And are

(38:34):
you playing with your other band? Yeah? Okay, and it
starts to fall apart. Yeah, And actually when I get
back to play with them, I think it's not as
good as it could be. And I've been with a
band that was how can you keep him down on
the farm. Yeah, no, exactly. So at the end of
that year, of course, I'm going to come back up
to city again to visit my mom and see my
friends and so on, and so we're in touch. And

(38:56):
they said, well, look, actually we haven't found another singer.
Do you want to come and just you know, do
some shows and we we we we want to keep playing.
I said, yeah, sure, I'll do that, and eventually that
became the genesis of Midnight. All okay, you play for
the summer. Don't you have to go back to school again. Yeah. Well,
by that stage I thought, you know what this is.

(39:16):
This band really is a worthwhile. You know, I really
loved what I heard, and I thought we could do something.
I wasn't quite sure what it would be, so I
transferred to finish my lawd degree up here, which is
what I did. Okay, and what happens with the band.
We rehearse at night, we start playing on the weekends.

(39:37):
I finished my LAWD degree, I said to them, I
want to finish it and get it done. I've gone
this far. I did just sit more throw and they
some of them had degrees as well, but they were
not long as mine. So we most of us finished
our unithing as we were rehearsing and writing songs and
just trying to get ourselves sorted out. Now, when you
were playing the Beach the first summer, you weren't doing

(39:57):
original material very little. So did the original material come
to be? Rob Hearst and Jim mcgeannie, who was the
guitarist keyboard player, had met at school and they started
to write songs and had fiddle around writing songs and
discarding songs and writing songs, and they started to bring
songs in it. We started to play them, And what

(40:18):
was your involvement to begin with? I'd say, yeah, let's
see if we can sing it. And then after a
while I started throwing in ideas. And then eventually where
Martin Rossi joins the band and we start writing together.
But they're still bringing most of the ideas, the melodic
ideas and the musical structures and things like. Okay, so
let's jump ahead. You practice law for six months, if that,

(40:39):
if that, and then you say okay. The band says
we're either going to throw in seriously or whatever. But
no one has any money, right correct, So what do
you do for money? Well, we we just decided to
play you know, we we thought, I mean, it's actually
it's actually me saying. You know, at this point in life,
if you're going to do anything, you've got to really

(41:00):
throw yourself out it. You can't pretend. We can't be
mucking around on the weekends. We are going to play
no matter what, anywhere, anytime anyone will give us a
dollar to play, We'll go and play, which is what
we did. So we and we started creating our own shows.
They had done some of that themselves, and I'd done
that when I was at at university. Right, well, why
don't we plan that room over there? They don't have bands.

(41:21):
Go and talk to the guy that runs it. It's
his bar. Yeah, all right, whatever, you know, I'm not
going to give you any money, but if we make,
you know, fifty bucks on the bar, you get five bucks,
whatever it might be. You just go and do it. Okay?
How will we all? Were you at this point? So
I'm twenty yeah, two and a half, twenty three at
this okay? And what are you living on while this

(41:42):
is going on? Burgers? Okay? And so at what point
what's the big brick so to speak? Even though there's
a lot of little bricks but what what is the
turning point? Well, look, I think you know, in a
career this long, Bob, there's obviously quite a few of those.
So one of them is that we actually got a
manager who shared the vision. Was the manager experienced or

(42:05):
not at all? So how did you find the manager?
He found us. Yeah, he came and we played in
surf pubs. We started just occupying a hotel. We'd play
in the corner and we just set up on a
Friday or Saturday night and to be booked the Publican
was happy because people would come in and by beer,
and eventually the numbers just grew and grew and grew,
and then eventually started charging people more and more and

(42:27):
we'd have lines out around the block. And he was
one of those people who started to come. He was
a real estate agent, he was a surfer, and he said,
you need a manager, which of course we did because
Rob and I were doing it at that stage, and
you know, we had other things that we wanted to
do and he had. He was crazy and wild, but
he also had a great spirit of let's let's do

(42:49):
something really in a very different way. In some ways,
we're a very conventional band, you know, we play, we rehearse,
we write songs, We used bespoke instruments. If you come
and see us play live, you're going to see a
performing band. But in other ways we're completely the opposite
of that. We're very different and we essentially no one

(43:09):
wanted to know about us. No one wanted to you know,
Columbia when they first heard us passed on us. You
know they said no, not with that guy singing, no way.
Uh So, having having a manager that did that was
I think that's our first break and our second break
really is here in Australia. We have a public broadcasting network.

(43:30):
It's a little bit like National Public Radio, but it's
much bigger, and it's run by the supported by the government,
and they established a youth station just fortuitously at the
same time as ourselves and other bands like In Excess
and Men at Work and so on and so forth.
We're just starting to emerge and we got played on

(43:51):
the radio, which we never were getting played on commercial
radio or FM radio. There's just no way. So we
got played, So give them what happened. Crowds got bigger. Okay,
just to be clear, once you say we're going pro
I'm giving our practicing law, and you're playing what percentage
of the materials original? What percentages covers it? By that

(44:13):
stage is original? Yeah, and so, and we're going out
to places, you know, let's just call them, like a
redneck tavern or something like that on a Tuesday night
and we're just setting up, you know, and we're playing too.
You know, fifty people a hundred people are two hundred
people all original material and political material too. Sometimes that
starts to creep in. And to begin with, audiences here

(44:34):
in Australia didn't you know, they like the fact that
we were there and I would talk a lot on stage.
I'm talking to people and you're talking about what's going
on in the world and politics and culture and what
have you. But they didn't necessarily like the music to
begin with. But but we threw ourselves into it. You know,
we were sort of half punks as well. So we
were tearing out the stage at nine and playing loud

(44:54):
and fast and furious, and the energy of the band
draw drew people back, and then eventually more and more
people kept on coming. I mean, it's literally the classic
thing and that you know, many stories like this. Okay,
so what's the dream at that point, can we make
a record? Can we actually survive off being musicians? So
you get on the youth radio station audience to get bigger,

(45:18):
and then what happens, Well, we we eventually we do
make a record. So we couldn't find a major that
we could agree with. So okay, so you had offers,
but the deals were not good or they yeah, they
wanted to change what we were doing whatever, and they
just weren't talking our language. So we formed our own label,

(45:39):
but it was put out by actually a television company
here that actually happened to have a pressing plant. They
just had acquired a pressing plant and they were pressing
country music and um sort of gimmick records. So we
formed a label which we had control over. What you're
in n seventy six Yeah, okay, where was the money

(46:02):
to make the record? They advanced us a bit of
money to make it, and we had we had a
loan from the bank and we we we found a
bank manager. Surprisingly, and this fellow is very important minight
Olds history, as it would be for any band who
didn't tell his superior officers that he was loaning money
over drafting a band. It took us about seven years

(46:23):
from when we first went professional to get out of debt.
How much did you borrow? Not a lot, maybe a
hundred grand, but those days exactly. Okay, So when you
would go back to the big manity would continue to
give your money. Yeah, just honored us. What was the pitch.
He'd been to see us, and he could see the
people there, you know, and he didn't really understand anything

(46:47):
about it, but he just knew there was something going on.
And see importantly here, unlike modern era, we've got no
social media. We're not in the city darlings, were not
the culture darlings, and we're playing in the suburbs too
as well. And we're hardheaded and doing it our own way.
But we're not talking about it. We're not trumpeting it
to anybody, we're not self proseitize it. So it was

(47:09):
just happening. Okay. Who owns the record today? We do
with them? Okay. And so how many currents through which
we license back into Sonny? Okay? So how many copies
do you press? I think five thousand? Yes, so I'm

(47:29):
at the Gigger in stores through stores, yeah, distributed in stores.
So if you press five thousan in yourself five thousand
M feel pretty good about yourself, absolutely, And you know,
and I heard the song on the radio. I heard
one of it. We didn't get anything on the charts,
but of course that station we got played. And I
drove home and my grandmother was still alive, and I
was taking it down. You know, used to take her
out on a Sunday just to have a little lunch

(47:50):
thing and then take her back to where she was living.
And I heard this, heard our song, you know, for
the first time, first time I ever heard my verse
on the radio. As far as I was concerned, I
had a record my gran and could see that I
you know, I was I was an artist who was
making a living out of it. Out of it. That
was it. We'd made it. Anything since then has been green. Okay.
And how long did the original manager last? A decent time?

(48:13):
You know, he was with us for probably fifteen to
twenty years. Okay, So you put out the record independently
than what happens, I've just kept on going more touring. Okay.
How many deeds can someone play in Australia. It's a
big country, but there aren't that many people know. But
you know, and I don't want to be nostalgic about

(48:34):
the Australian music scene at that time, because I think
it's probably a little bit the same in other countries,
certainly in the States, which has got a very healthy
scene in different ways. But at this point in time,
for a variety of different reasons, there were a lot
of places to play if you wanted to, or you
created your own places to play and then essentially invited
people to come and share the space with you. So

(48:55):
we would play a hundred and fifty to two hundred
gigs a year, and all over the country. All over
the country, so in the big cities, driving up and
down the coast, country towns, pubs, working men's clubs, university halls,
sometimes surf clubs, and just relentlessly play and play and play. Okay,

(49:16):
at this point some Australian bands, not that this even
happened the sixties, but certainly in the mid seventies they're
starting to make it on a worldwide basis. Do you
see that as an avenue from midnight Oil? We always
had our eye on going further than Australia, only because
we realized that there's a limited number of times that
you can run around the country and we were students

(49:40):
of music. We've all got different tastes, but you know,
whatever we were listening to, was it was the Clash,
was it Red Hot Chili Peppers, was it lou Reed?
It didn't matter. We were just listening to everybody and
we knew there was a bigger world out there. How
that would happen and how we would make that work.
I don't think we had any idea. So what's the
next step? After the independent record? Another one, and then

(50:04):
another one, and then Glenn John's comes to Australia who
formally produced The Who and the Stones, and various people
leverage legend. Again, he gets asked out here by the
record companies. I think it's a music conference of some kind,
and sees the band playing live in one of these
big surf pubs with sweat pouring off me and a

(50:25):
bunch of wild At what point do you shave your head?
That's happened long ago? What was the That wasn't really
a show of this thing, particularly because I'm still surfing
at the time and it was just getting in the way. Also,
my brother and I used to love taking going out
in the water and taking in the water photography of
big waves, big surf here and the professional surface. So

(50:48):
we used to love going out. You know, you sometimes
see them there's the people with the flippers stucking under
in the way, so that's what we were doing. But
you pop up to take the photo and I had
long hair at the time and would be this wisp
of hairt yeah, literally said in my way, I'm cutting
it off? Correct And did you ever grow it after that? No? Okay,
but that was when no one that's right, no one

(51:09):
at all. But you're you're that kind of a kind
of classic guy says if everybody's going one way, I'm
going a different way. Probably didn't even enter my mind
to be okay. So Glenn John sees you, he sees us,
and he convinces A and M that that we're worth it.
Uh and says, look, come to England and record. You've

(51:30):
got a couple of records under your belt, but I
think we can do better than that. And A and
M were interested in and had seen us, and we
actually I think we may have traveled once, just briefly,
and done a few shows in London, then came back
with our tae between our legs. In any event, we
record with glint A and m pass on the album
all together. They decided they don't want to put it out,
but they paid for it, correct. Yeah, he goes across

(51:53):
the l A and New York to try and shop it,
and you know he's proud of it, to his great credit,
but no one's interested. So we come back to Australia
and yeah, your ego must have been pretty crushed. Well. No, actually,
the judgment of record company people on the value of
our music has never meant much for me, you know.

(52:15):
I mean I don't disrespect them, and I've got some
great friends in the business now, but they're always looking
and hearing it through a certain prison. Okay, So you
always had confidence always, Okay. So you come back to Australia.
What ultimately happens with that record? That record is released
here in Australia and it does well well eventually on Columbia.

(52:35):
So here in Australia. Columbia then become interested and they
essentially pick up that record. So CBS picks it up.
But there's a lot of negotiation because we want to
maintain control over everything pretty much as we can. So
they pick it up here and they get the opportunity
to license it in other territories. We continue touring, we

(52:58):
continue playing, but we start making little for as we
save up in that money. So we too here, you know, work, work, work,
and then head across to San Francisco or l A
on your own money, no label money, correct, all on
our own money. Okay. So the drummer basically finds places
to play there. No, he's not doing all the business now.

(53:18):
So Gary Morris, who manages us at that stage, our manager,
and we get an agent and we we invite people
to see us, and if they like the band and
they want to support the band, they become part of
the Midnight or family and we enjoy working with people
like that. And so yeah, they find places for us
to play. Okay. So it was their idea to go
to these places. Now we wanted to go, but we

(53:40):
wanted to help us. Okay. So you you go. You
have this one album? Is it even out in another territories?
It's got limited release in other territories. Okay, So you've
got to San Francisco to what happens. We played under
fifty people in a club and you're building an audience
and they say, hey, though that's nice. Yeah, we're building

(54:01):
an audience. It's intermittent, but we're building it. We're meeting
people in the business. We met David Frick from Rolling
Stone comes to see us, and people who are watching
what's going on. We play colleges, start to play a
few colleges, get played a bit on college radio, but
essentially still come back again. And then we realize that
we're at that junction point, you know, we need to

(54:22):
really figure out what the next step for us can be.
So we go back to London with a bunch of
songs under our belt. We meet a young producer, a
guy called Nick Laurna who has produced Public Image and
Gang of Youth and now produces Nick Cave and various
other people. And we go to the Townhouse Studios in

(54:42):
Shepherd's Bush where lots of different people have recorded, including
Phil Collins's famous big drum sound in the Air Tonight,
and we really work hard to create a record which
is three to one record tender one um a record
which was our door di you know, we've we've reached
that point. Who pays for it? I can't remember the details,

(55:04):
but I think we may have got some advance for it,
and we may have coughed up a bit ourselves and
we came back. That record then goes onto the Australian charts.
We have a number of big radio songs here. We've
had a little bit of radio we play before. It
stays on the charts in our own country for over
two years and it breaks us essentially into as a

(55:27):
mainstream artist. We've become a mainstream artist essentially, even though
lots of people knew about us, but it was always
a cult. It was an underground you know. And then
that some of those songs gets picked up mainly by
college radio and some alternate Columbia in the state. Correct.
It's a big record for us, but it makes no
indent really in other parts of the world. We then

(55:50):
continue to make records, we keep doing what we're doing.
I'm now getting increasingly drawn into political activism as well,
so our careers get a little stretched because I am
now in a situation where I stand for public office here. Yeah,
where's uh beds are burning? It's coming so okay, So

(56:14):
what's your motivation to go sideways and become running for
political office? Well, it was the nuclear disarmed issue, and
we we'd actually recorded an album after tender one. We
went and record in Japan, and after we finished recording,
a bunch of us said, well, look, we're here, why
don't we go and have a bit of a look
at the country. I went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I
saw what happened when the atomic bomb was dropped, and

(56:37):
I thought, it's crazy that we've got, you know, thirty
thousand of these things sitting in each of the warheads
America and Russia. We can't use them. That's got a change.
And there was a party that sprung up here in
Australia and I ran for the Senate. I nearly, I
nearly became a senator. Okay, well yeah, theoretically if you've
got elected, that will put it in the being correct absolutely,

(56:59):
So what the rest of the be a member of
saying well, you know, I think it's something about midnight
or you know, we we've always given one another enough
space and respect to what they knew. I wanted to
do it, you know, to go where we want to go.
And was the band going to fall apart? Well, no,
you know, maybe they'd go off and do stuff themselves.
Maybe I could join them on the weekends. We didn't okay,
just a little bit slow. What was the process of

(57:20):
saying of throwing your hat in the ring? At what
point did you say, you know what caused that? There's
a party, etcetera. Yeah, look at a small grassroots party
that forms and they're looking for candidates. They had different candidates.
They had a possible candidate here, but a bunch of
people came to me and said, look, what don't you
be our candidate? You know, tender one was a really
strong record at the time, anti nuclear record, I'd spoken

(57:43):
out about those things already. You're very well known. Sort
of have a go and I said, yeah, look, I'm
more than happy to do that. Okay, so you run,
you go door to door. Do you really push it? Yep?
We run up. Well, it's for the Senate here, so
you're not campaigning as you were, say, in a district
or something like that, like a congressman or woman. We're

(58:06):
written off by the media and the major parties as
a novelty act and belittled and criticized. But what but
many young people, particularly respond and our we start to
become more and more popular. What happens next is a
technical issue, but essentially in our system party's preference other

(58:27):
candidates when they use up their existing number of votes,
and here the major parties decided not to preference me
at all. So essentially, even though I got a lot
of primary votes, many many, many primary votes, I just
missed out on getting into the Senate on primary votes
alone and received So look, I think the shorthand of it, Bob,

(58:50):
is that it was an incredible experience and we we
created something quite special here. We had artists and writers
and filmmakers and other musicians all involved. It was it
was it was small people's movement, and we shifted the
foreign policy of the country a little bit, not as much,
perhaps as we would have liked, but more than we
would have if we hadn't done anything. I ran a campaign,
but I didn't get in, and that was a blessing

(59:11):
for Midnight Oil and for our audience because we could
resume the career. Okay, so how do we get to
their hit? So by that stage I have been approached
to become the president of one of the big national
environment organizations here in Australia, it's called the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Who We've done a little bit of benefit concerts and

(59:33):
things for in the past, and I could see through
my lawyer eyes that they needed, uh, you know, the
possibility of someone to work with them. And the fellow
who became their executive director, who was also a lawyer
like me, had been working with Aboriginal people in the
middle of this country near the Big Red Rock or

(59:54):
who are about to get their land back given back
to them, has been stolen essentially by the British, and
they wanted to make a little film. And he said,
he called me up and called Gary up, and he said, look,
do you think they oars would write a couple of
songs for this film? That the traditional elders, the older
people in the tribes would like them to write a
song on some songs. And we said, yeah, of course,

(01:00:16):
we'd love to do that. And so Dead Heart and
Beds are Burning in their initial phases, songs that Rob
Herst brought to us in difference um finished in different ways.
Why don't we use these songs. So we recorded Dead
Heart long before we made Diesel and Dust long before
Beds are Burning. And we said, and we send it

(01:00:37):
to them and said do you like it, you know,
would you like to use this fear film? Yes, they
would and Beds was another song that we had which
we were mucking around with. We then thought like it's
time to make an album. We went into the studio.
It was Beds about what it was about? Then, correct,
it's not the same subject absolutely, yeah, And and and
potentially a song to be used for this film a

(01:00:58):
little film, right, I got it. It's like American Indian
people from Flagstaff as putting together like a mini film
which two people are going to see. So we went
into the studio. So Warre Livesey who had produced an

(01:01:20):
English artist called the Matt Johnson Yeah, an epic had
come over to produce, and we had the songs. We
had most of the songs written, and we went into
Albert studio. The c d C guys had a little
that their publishing house had a small studio in Sydney
and the Northern Beaches and we started to record the songs,

(01:01:42):
including Beds of Burning, which once we'd finished with it,
we knew it was hummable and all of that, and
it was a strong song, but we had no idea
that it would eventually become that sort of breakthrough song
for us. How does it become the breakthrough song in
part because at the same time you had MTV is
starting to show videos, and we made some videos a

(01:02:04):
little bit slower. So you have a deal, you have
a deal with CBS, which at some point becomes Sony,
but this is before that, and you make Diesel and Dust.
Is it put out simultaneously in the US as it
is in Australia. Yes, Now that the company is ready
for who decides to make the video? We do, okay,

(01:02:25):
And so you know, the video ultimately gets airplay all
over the world whatever. But how much money is spent
on that video? Well, Sony paid paid. Of course, you
ultimately paid for it exactly. But they answer the money, Yeah,
So I think it was jointly agreed. You know. I
think that we've always done our made our own videos

(01:02:47):
and done our own artwork and all that stuff. The
record company will will will come to the party and
lend us, as you say, some money, perhaps depending on
what the budget are. But we decided what we wanted
to do and we shot some of it here in
Sydney and some of it out in the bush. And
people have heard the record by that stage. And you know,
obviously the A and R people and others were excited
about it and thought, wow, you know, we've got some

(01:03:08):
songs here that that might get onto radio that's important
for them at the time in the States. As I
understand it, you probably know more about this than I.
So this is what we gleaned. The payola thing was
was starting to be had risen up its head again,
certainly on radio on radio, and it seemed like there
was a little bit more openness for people just to

(01:03:30):
play other music. And we started to get played on
radio and some there were some big stations that started
to run the song, and so the radio play came
before the video play. I think, so yeah, but you know,
to be honest, it's a bit of a blur to me.
So I'm assuming it did, but I'm not. But at
what point do you realize you're on the ricord ship here?

(01:03:52):
I think when we go back to play and we've
been playing big clubs and college is and then our
agent says to us, actually, we're playing amphitheaters and they've
sold out, so we might even play some bigger places.
But I look, here's the thing for us. You know,
for most many musicians, they literally do have a kind

(01:04:15):
of overnight success and they're scratching themselves a bit, and
then you know they can hang onto it or they
build on it or whatever. From what I've been telling you,
you know, we've been plugging away in a country on
the other side of the world forever, right exactly. Well
that's you know, the old But okay, you make the video.
I mean, I'm on the other side of the ocean.
But it starts to really blow up. So at one

(01:04:37):
point to Sony and New York say, or CBS New
York say, you've gotta come here. We're gonna do this,
you know, they well they're saying it pretty quickly and
fairly readily, and so away we go. So what was
it like, Well, you know, it's one of those funny things.
Everything starts to move that much more quickly when that
happens in your career, and you will have talked to
other artists like this. You know, they'll say, I actually

(01:04:57):
can't remember what happened between, you know, because you know
we were going fast and furious. I mean, it's not
I can't not remember it because we were we were
lying on our backs in some nightclubs somewhere. It's just
that we never based ourselves overseas we always based ourselves
in Australia and we've always marched the beat of our
own drum. Plus we're not that fast about popular culture

(01:05:21):
and whether we're in or out or who's who in
the zoo, So for us it was more a case
of what can we get done whilst insane and remaining
connected to home. You go on the road to partake
of the rock star lifestyle. Not really, I mean we're
we're no, you are me. I don't know which part.
But let's start with the alcohol and the drugs. No,

(01:05:44):
that's not. I mean we enjoy our having a beer
and a glass of wine and all of those things.
And people will have you know, had whatever interaction with
recreational drugs as young person, teenagers and young adults. But
Midnight Idol has got a very strong work ethic and
we enjoy ourselves, I mean our idea of partaking the
rock and roll. So we couldn't actually believe that when

(01:06:04):
we played a show there was a bottle of wine
there in the green, there was a writer. Wow. When
we finished, someone would drive us into a car to
a club where we could hear another band, and we
would sit around having a beer and talking to other musicians.
I mean that was heaven on a stick. And what
about sex? Most of us are settled with our permanent

(01:06:26):
girlfriends wives, so by time it hit, yeah, you already
had your girlfriend, We already had kids, were more. Really
most of us are married men, okay with children before
the success? And what's paying for that lifestyle? Correct? Yeah?
I mean the music is enough money to make this
all work? Yeah? Well, we worked hard, you know, and
and we did our own deals, and we had a

(01:06:47):
manager and an agents that people that shared our vision.
I mean, we were the ultimate do it yourself outfit.
In some ways, we didn't have you know, safety pins
in our genes, but we had that attitude. But also
we weren't ripped off by people. You know, we we
were thoughtful about Okay, everybody is married. Are they still
married to those people? Uh? Three of us are. Yeah.

(01:07:10):
Well that's pretty good for rock and roll. Okay, so
you have this big success, to what degree do you
feel pressure you gotta follow it up? Well, the precious
inevitably going to come, uh, simply because you're you're aware
of it. And the Blue Sky Mining is the next record,
and there are a couple of songs on there, that
that also with Shart songs, but those were successful songs.
But when you're sitting there in the studio and you

(01:07:32):
know you've had a hit album, to what degree you say,
I've got to write something, I'm worried about whether it's
going to be a good video good not at all. No,
it's not in our dialogue. We don't. We don't think
like that. Okay, and if okay, so then you continue
to have success. At what point do you get back
into the politics. I should qualify my last answer to you,

(01:07:53):
Bob when I said we don't think like that. Of course,
when people are writing songs, they'll think about whether this
is the kind of song that might get played on radio,
because we're students of music and we're musicians, but it's
not our predominant sort of thought. Our thinking space is
always around what works for us. What is midnight Oil?
Is it going to fly or not? We don't really know.
This one sounds like it, maybe it won't. It doesn't

(01:08:15):
matter here it is. So that's how that works. Blue
sky Mine. Well, we then have the career that sort
of settles and then stagnates a bit, you know, big
in anybody, Yeah, doing doing okay, not heaps of and
we give a fair bit away. You know, we've got
our own sharable things happening, and I mean we're not saints.

(01:08:36):
We look after ourselves, but we also like to support people.
So how do you get into the politics thing ultimately
full time? Well, by the early naughties, I think, from
my perspective, at least, we reached the point where if
we don't relocate and re transform what we're doing, we're
really going around in a kind of a circle, which

(01:08:58):
for midnight all is not healthy. And at that stage,
I've done two terms as the a c F President,
I've spent quite a bit of time in the National Parliament.
I've been negotiating political deals and legislations and all those
sorts of things. And I wasn't sure what I would do,
but I thought, I want to do more politics, whether

(01:09:18):
it's in an energeo capacity or whether it's in a
formal capacity. And as it turned out, it became a
formal capacity. So I get invited to join the Labor Party,
which is the equivalent of the Democrats here, and by
a confluence of events, there's a seat which I can
win if if I stand for it. And so I
say to the oils at that point, when when I

(01:09:41):
finished with the oils at that stage, to them too.
I hadn't decided on politics, although everyone thought it would happen,
but I didn't know what would happen anyway. Eventually it
does happen and I become a member of parliament. I
get elected here to a seat here in Sydney, a
place where we played a lot, where I went to UNI,
had good close connections with the community, and my life
changes completely for ten years. What does the band say

(01:10:03):
about all this? Look mixed feelings. I think some would
have liked kept on doing what we were doing, maybe
with people doing solo albums and we regroup occasionally. Others
were like, yeah, that's that makes sense, that's you've always
been that kind of person. So well, you're doing the
political thing for ten years. What are they living on?
What are they doing? They just do different things, you know.

(01:10:25):
They well, it's funny. They thought they'd get another singer
for a while. That proved a little bit right, so
they form about It ends up being an instrumental band
called The Break and they play arts festivals and around
and about a bit. They do their own solo albums.
Both Jim and Rob prolific writers, so there's lots of

(01:10:47):
music coming out. Jim produces people and they play with
other people, so they live the life of working musicians,
and they're going to be pissed at you. Yes and no,
I think that. I don't know. I mean, we've talked
about it a bit. The attitude seems to be, Hey,
you know you've got to We're not We're not the

(01:11:09):
kind of person we can hold back. Okay, what about
your mind? You're leaving the circus. Are you cool with that? Yes,
very much so, Okay, you go into politics now at
the end of it, Okay, what do you think about
it of having been in politics? Did not regret it
for a second. Well, you have an experience, But to

(01:11:30):
what degree we're your goals fulfilled? Some goals were fulfilled
to the extent that I hoped for, and others fell short.
My major feeling about it, Bob, is that I probably
should have done it earlier. What would have happened if
you've done it earlier. I think if I had done
it earlier, I may have had a longer career, and

(01:11:52):
maybe even a more senior career. Even though I was
a cabinet minister. I was very senior by the end.
So I, for example, I'm very interested in foreign airs. Um,
so perhaps you know that that I might have ended
up as a Minister for Foreign Affairs if I had
a start earlier. So I herded is, how does it end? Well,
we have a leader at the time, he's the Prime Minister.

(01:12:13):
I'm the Environment Minister under him, but he's a difficult
person to be let I only ever had one boss.
One was enough. But he's then replaced by a woman
leader who becomes Australia's first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
When that changeover happened, she gives me all of her portfolios,

(01:12:33):
or most of them. So I become the Education Minister,
and I work as the Education Minister and the Youth Minister,
and we pass laws to improve education. But the party
is not traveling well in the polls, and he, the
first Prime Minister, stages that come back and I privately
decide if he comes back, I'm not staying. So he

(01:12:55):
comes back and I say to my colleagues, Okay, that's it.
They want me to stay and stay in that role,
but I resigned from that role. And then when the
next election comes, I don't stand again. What was the thought?
I mean, you know, what were you planning to do
if you were no longer having that career? Well, I
could do anything, you know. I could spend some time
with my my dearly beloved wife, you know, and she's

(01:13:18):
been hanging in for me for a long time. Because
I've obviously been working really hard and long hours and
all of those things. I understand how the country works.
I've had a lot of experience, you know, big levels
of government. I've been an activist. Now I can add
value to someone. Okay, So once you don't stand for
a re election, at what point do you say, fuck,
we'll get the band together. Well that's the good question,

(01:13:40):
isn't it. So I thought I'd be working essentially as
a lawyer, come activists with community groups. That's what I thought.
I'd been doing, and playing a bit of music on
the side, you know. I thought, well, we'll play a
club and we'll raise a bit of money, you know,
for for for whatever, and have some fun. But I
finish and then as I wrote my autobiography, and as

(01:14:02):
I'm writing my biography, there's a guitar sitting in the
corner of my study, and I'm I'm an average guitarist,
but I can play the guitar and I'm a musician,
so I know, with the chords and this guitar, as
you know, it's starting to move and it's quite weird,
and I'm thinking, am I seeing things? It's not really moving,
but it's calling me. Pick me up, you know, So

(01:14:22):
I start picking the guitar up. At the end of
each day, i'd try and write eight hundred words, you
know what it's like, And then I pick up the
guitar and I'm just playing some simple chords and I
end up with a dozen or so what I call
folk songs. So I played these folks songs just like
a sixteen year old. You know. I've got a few
folks because I've always been in a band with people
who are great songwriters, and they're always writing songs and

(01:14:43):
playing guitar. You should record the songs have some fun.
So inevitably I do go and record those songs with
Martin Rozzi from Midnight or but with other people as well.
We turn them into electric folks songs. And I loved it,
you know, I really I just re encountered that part
of my life, which makes me feel good. And in
doing that, Martin and I were chatting, and of course

(01:15:05):
we said it would be interesting to see what happened
if we got in a room together. Shall we do it?
And I said to the oils, do you want to
get in a room together? Because I've loved making music
by myself A little different when you're back with your
colleagues again, with the promise that we made to one another,
which we weren't going to break, get in the room
and if everybody doesn't feel, literally, as an older musician

(01:15:25):
who's been around the block ninety times, that we're blowing
one another's heads off, then you've got to walk out
the door. But as it turned out, it sounded alarmingly
better than I remembered, and we thought, well, let's play
some shows. And it was literally little steps like that
ended up to today. Okay, So what what year do
you stop running for re election? Two thousand and twelve? Okay?

(01:15:55):
And at what point do you start running your autobiography
straight away? Okay? So you really we never did all
these other things working through whatever. You went straight to
the bio autobiography. Okay, So then you're in the room together,
you play the small shows. At what point do you say, funk,
We're going to give it a run. Pretty much straight away? Yeah,
pretty much straight away. I think there's no point in

(01:16:18):
doing it halfheartedly, and there's only one way of testing it,
you know, to see if people are there. And I
think that challenge, of course, is the one that you
don't want to be a nostalgia act. You don't want
to be past your best physically or obviously not as
as young as you were. So what is it that
makes it work well? For us? It's always been about

(01:16:39):
the sound that we're creating on the stage. Is that
still going to happen. We've got new management who shared
the vision. We played here a little bit and people
went beyond bananas. It was a little bit well okay,
and so you could feel that the lightning, but really, well,

(01:17:01):
let's go and play in the world and see if
there's anyone there. But this was a really big deal, okay,
because I would hear from people literally from Canada literally
the you gotta go, you gotta go, and I you know,
this was such a big deal okay, And and we
views were great. Whatever you come back from that tour,

(01:17:21):
now what well, we gotta make some music. So yeah,
we've started writing and recording and we'll do that. And
so if you went back on the road, where can
you play? Where? Where does midnight oil mean something? Pretty
much everywhere? Just Australia, United States, Canada. Now we could
play uh so South America, Brazil, Europe, um scandinaving countries

(01:17:48):
and on this last toury to go to all those places.
Yes we did, we play most of them. It wasn't
lucrative in some ways in some places that were certainly
paid for itself and better. Okay, Yeah, let's go back
to the political thing. Okay, what did you learn about
the process? It's a little bit like making sausages. You

(01:18:11):
don't want to get too close to it, you know,
if you've got high ideals about it. But on the
other hand, it's the most important game in town. Okay,
but to what degree by making the sausage does it
teamp the individual? To what do we do you have
to compromise? Well that the definition of politics is compromised.

(01:18:32):
There is nothing happens politically, even the big steps in
this world, without someone somewhere compromising to some extent. The
question around that is always are you compromising the very
thing that you're standing for. Are are you ultimately advancing it?
And I think nine times out of ten my viewers
that within the party we were always advancing it if

(01:18:54):
there were things that you didn't agree with, which essentially
is a compromise for you. That is part of the
process of being a team player in a political party.
In the Westminster system. One of the things that holds
us back politically as a species people's egos and people's
lust for power and the fact that they'll do anything

(01:19:14):
for it, and the fact that they don't support their
colleagues for the greater good. And one of the things
that I did when I went into politics was I
essued the fact that I was really a very well
known national person in Australia, celebrity if you like, not
my my word, but probably definitely the most famous person
ever to walk into the Parliament just like that. And

(01:19:35):
anyone who's tried that before, whether it's been a football
player or a sports star or someone has got smashed
out of the park. And I wasn't going to show
up on the weekend shows and crack jokes about midnight oil.
And you know, we've played a big set, and now
the legislation is star. I did it as a serious politician,
and a lot of people here didn't quite figure that

(01:19:56):
out to begin with, that, including my peers, couldn't quite
understand that. But I felt that the Midnight Oha was
too important for me to demean them in any way
by using them. And I also felt the politics as
too serious as a vocation to try and utilize show
business to advance it. So I was a classic policy wonk.
I'm the boring guy that reads everything you know and

(01:20:19):
wants to get it done. Okay, So what was it
like when people thought you compromised him? That angry at you?
I'm talking about constituents, Uh, mostly predictable all part of
the course. And what could you cope with it? Oh? Yeah, no,
of course, yeah okay? And then well what you know,
you were a minister of education and you've in a

(01:20:41):
perfect world. What would you like the educational system to
be well as it should be in your country? You know?
And I went to I went to your country. I
spent time with the education secretary there, Obama's education secretary,
and we just can't remember the guy's name, but you know,
trying to do good stuff So here's here's the here's
the deal as eventually, unless we have well rounded citizens

(01:21:04):
emerging in our countries who have got the capacity to innovate,
to empathize, to be creative, who've got a decent knowledge base,
and who understand a bit about history, the world to
be messy. In order to do that, you have to
maximize the opportunity for any young boy or girl, whether

(01:21:26):
they're living in the suburbs of Connecticut or they're out
in the middle of wherever, and no matter how much
money their parents or carera zone, to be the best
student they can be. So we've got a Bell curve
in our populations in America, and I've got a Bell
curve in Australia. You want to make sure everybody gets
the best opportunity, but you're bell curve. Kids are the
ones who become the scientists, the designers, the leaders of

(01:21:48):
the future. To do that, you have to make sure
that every school is adequately resourced to do that job.
The teachers are well trained and well remunerated, and that
the leaders in this schools principles or head masters or mistresses,
whatever you call them in your country, have got the
capacity to lead and in our country. That means that

(01:22:09):
everyone should get supported in education funding from the big
budget according to need, not the loudest voices, not the
richest schools according to need. And these other principles apply.
If you think about when you and I went to school,
and some people listening to this compared to my kids
and then their kids. You don't need to be a

(01:22:31):
brain in mass to be able to add up. You've
got a pocket calculator. Nowadays you've got a computer. You
don't need to be told how the world actually fits
together in terms of geography, because you can ask Madam
Google and Madam Google and enlighten you. But how do
you become a well rounded citizen? How do become someone
who learns to listen, who understands problem solving, who realizes

(01:22:54):
the gaps in their own knowledge, and then goes off
and make sure that they fill those gaps to do
something with them, is imbued with a sense of concern
for their fellow people. You can only do that by
good education system in the primary level. And if you
look at a country that does it well, Finland is
of course as example, but there are others that's what
they do and they don't do it they don't work harder,

(01:23:16):
the kids aren't in class longer than they are in
Australia or the States. They're not being coached at home
by tutors more than other people are. At all. Their
teachers are well remunerated effectively, their masters of education, and
the schools are well supported. That's what you got. Okay,
But in the United States, first reaction to what you're

(01:23:38):
saying is who's going to pay for all this? Yeah,
well guess what. Everybody should pay, including the wealthy. Everybody
should play, including the big companies. Know you're preaching in
the converted here, but just you know, looking at the thing.
I mean in America, tax is a dirty word. You
can't even mention it. It's a third real topic. So

(01:24:00):
so what is the hope for the world. Well, I
can't talk about the hope of the world. The hope
for America is it's got to get over its allergy
to tax. You know, it's gotta there's gotta be a
reconfiguration of language to enable that to happen. Okay, let's
as I say, well, let me let me be more
specific and broad. At the same time, we have all
these nationalistic people around the world primarily a reaction to

(01:24:23):
income inequality and globalization. You and me know the globalization
is inevitable. You know, you don't want to make a
flat screen. You don't want to be three thousand dollars
for a flat screen. But we can also say that
the people were left behind globalization didn't get any help. Correct. Okay,
but is the world going to move more towards Rexit,

(01:24:45):
ward towards Trump or is there going to be an
event that flips us back to what ones was in
terms of globalization? What do you think? Okay? Uh, big question.
But I think essentially that one component of nationalism Trump
and Brexit, which if you like, a previous social democratic
and progressive forces haven't fully understood, is the tribal nature

(01:25:10):
of communities and nations, and that unless we are clear
about how we essentially mediate globalism locally as opposed to, hey,
just let it happen, people are going to be then
it's going to be a very contested space politically. Having
said that, I think that the most important awareness that

(01:25:32):
we can have is the awareness that we got when
NASA for NASA for sent people to the moon, you know,
and we first saw the photos and so it's simple
sounds like a very simplistic thing to say, but the
truth of it is that, you know, it's eight and
a half billion people and numbers growing, although eventually it
will stabilize off and a world that where the ecology
and the environment of the world is pretty much getting

(01:25:52):
stretched to map to breaking point. We have to work
out the cooperative mechanisms for allowing us to have national
and international responses to these issues which are coherent and
can work hand in hand. And that is essentially the
vision that they had after World War Two when they
set up the United Nations, and that vision was we

(01:26:13):
cannot have a global war. Now the vision must be
we must have absolute global cooperation whilst maintaining the sanctity
of communities, local communities, regional communities and nation states to
chart their own course within these much more broadly agreed parameters.
And the obvious one around here, Bob, is climate change,

(01:26:34):
because it's the ultimate economic issue, but it's also the
ultimate global issue, and it's the ultimate environment issue. It
affects us all and no rich person you know living
in your state or this city who thinks they can
escape it by having a better air conditioning system. And
a world of state is going to escape. It's not
going to happen. Okay, we're does music fit in with

(01:26:54):
all this? Well, music is our soundtrack, you know. Music
is the soundtrack about time of the zychi that whatever
is happening at the moment, it's not necessarily going to
lead the charge. Music doesn't change the world by itself.
It can't. People do it. It's people that change the world.
But they need their songs. I've got to have their songs,
They've got to have their soundtracks. So I think that

(01:27:15):
music has not even a role to play. I think
it it does its thing in a most magical way.
It crosses, if you like, the mind to the heart
barriers very quickly. It goes straight to both and then
it goes to your feet as well. What could be better?
That's what you need? Okay, So you've achieved so much,
You've had an internationally successful group that didn't sell out,

(01:27:37):
you had a political career. What is the next dream? Well,
I I just hope to be able to do each day. Well,
you know, and I think this is honestly, and I'm
not trying to be falsely modest, but I really do
think that one of the mistakes that is easily made,
particularly in this profession, is to believe that you have

(01:27:59):
the answers that you're the hero. You know. I don't
buy the hero myth, you know. I think it's been
a really dangerous myth for Western civilization. I buy the
collective myth. Together working together, using our different skills and capacities,
A believe we can get good stuff done. So I'll
just continue to do that with my music friends and
with anyone else who wants to do. Okay, did you
have that same viewpoint before you got involved in politics

(01:28:21):
or did you learn it as a results. I had
the same view before I got involved in politics. My
views haven't changed much over the last thirty years. Okay,
so much food for thought. Peter Garrett certainly politician, lead, singer, charismatic.
Thanks so much for doing this well, Bob, has been
a pleasure to talk to your mate. Okay, great, I

(01:28:42):
have so much more to learn until next time. This
is Bob left SA

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Bob Lefsetz

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