Sometime in the late 1960’s Elvis Presley opted to send his gold Cadillac on tour and stay at home. While a reconstituted Midnight Oil may not play Australia until next year, fans can make do with the next best thing … a wonderful immersive exhibition that celebrates their work to date. “The Making Of Midnight Oil” exhibition has been making its way around Australia for the last two years and, finally, now it’s in Queensland at the Noosa regional Gallery. Cockroaches frontman Paul Field caught up for a chat with Oil’s songwriter/drummer Rob Hirst to discuss the band’s history and the exhibition.
Paul: Tell us about the Making of Midnight Oil exhibition which has been making its way around the country for the last couple of years.
Rob: I finally got all my stuff out of the attic after four decades. It’s got everything from the the “sorry suits” from the closing ceremony of the Olympics to a new documentary Rob Hambling’s made about making Ten-to-One, where Jim talks extensively. There’s posters and photos I’ve uncovered, and stickers and laminates and pages and all that kind of shit.
Then there’s this thing where I’ve tried to recreate what it might have been like being at a Midnight Oil concert at the Royal Antler Hotel, in 1979, 1980, which involved sticky carpet and sharpened elbows. I won’t tell you any more about it, but that’s kind of a little wildcard that I’ve thrown in there as well.
Paul: How often did you guys tour back in the day?
Rob: Massive amount in the early days. We did 180 shows a year, for the first five years. Another interesting thing about the exhibition is for people in bands now, or people who wander in because it’s free, they can see a period of music which is almost completely disappeared. The gigs aren’t there. The bands don’t exist. This is before the Internet age when we used to have to work so hard, with poll posters and street posters and street press, and word of mouth and the odd radio interview. But there was no Internet, no social media or any of that.
It was a different age, so it’ll be interesting for new people I think as well. Although the exhibition is based around it, it’s also about the bands that were there at the time: the Mentals, The Cockroaches, The Chisel, the Angels, even AC/DC back then. When it was a massive number of shows people played, and the gigs that you could play. When we talked about pubs, it wasn’t pubs where you get a couple hundred people into the Annandale, it was 1,500 to 2,000 people in these beer barns, night after night.
Paul: We kind of rode the last wave of the pub-rock era. It just doesn’t exist now, does it?
Rob: Totally gone. Fortunately, the festivals are coming to partially compensate, but nothing was as good as playing night-after-night, in front of one of the most demanding and most testosterone-soaked crowd you would find in the world, which is why those bands that appeared played a certain kind of music. It was very tough and loud, and Jim and I used to kind of write songs which would appeal — would get us out alive of the Comb ‘N’ Cutter Hotel in Blacktown. You could see people glaze over during new songs when you threw them in, and adjust to the song, so they kind of got it.
Paul: What’s your favourite gig from that era?
Rob: I used to like playing some of the classic places that so many bands before us had played. For example, we just managed to play the Bondi Lifesaver before it closed up. We played four or five gigs there.
In fact, it has a special place in our heart because at the back of the Lifesaver, on December the 10th, ’77 — sounds like a long time ago — we had three or four record companies from the majors all wanting our signature on a deal at the back. None of which we went with. We formed our own label, Powderworks, which is an indie label, incidentally, just around from where Jim Moginie’s studio still is, in Brookvale. We haven’t travelled far.
We played all those classic gigs that people had played in ballrooms, like Checkers — which goes back to people like Frank Sinatra coming out and playing, and the Beatles and people like that.
And overseas as well, the gigs we loved playing the most were places like the Fillmore, where there’s photos the Who, Mamas & the Papas, and Creedence, The Doors, Jethro Tull, and all these bands playing. We used to play better at those places because we thought “Fuck, the people that have trodden these boards.”
Paul: It was good to see the giant Exxon sign hanging in the gallery when the show was in Manly. I know there’s a back story to that gig in New York City.
Rob: Yeah, we finally got the Exxon protest gig (recorded way back in 1990) on DVD a couple of years back. The filmmaker, Larry Jordan, did such a great job with all the grainy black-and-white stuff. I particularly love all those cops who were going to shut us down after one song, and then gradually started to move their ample hips left and right, and then said to Gary (Morris), our manager, “These guys are pretty good. They’re from Australia, right? Give them one more song. They’ve come a long way.” And so one-by-one, we actually managed to get away with the six or seven songs, or whatever it was.
PF: I think if you’re in with the New York cops you’re safe.
Rob: I think we’d donated, or Sony had donated to the Policeman’s Ball or something. Money had changed hands. That’s the way it’s done over there.
Paul: I’ve got to say, watching the footage on the flatbed truck, there you are on the Avenue of Americas and I couldn’t help thinking of AC/DC doing “Long Way to the Top” in Australia. Were they an inspiration for being on the truck?
Rob: In the back of our minds, maybe they were, yeah. I’ve always loved that AC/DC track with the bagpipes in Swanson Street.
The crowd was quite small when we first started. We played right on 12 o’clock and suddenly thousands of people came out of the Rockefeller Center and came down all the elevators. And then we had like a 10,000 crowd. Then the banner was unfurled, and then suddenly, we had a real gig. If it had been shut down, it would’ve been a bit of a fizzer. So looking back at it now, it was almost a gig that never happened.
Paul: I’ve got to say New York’s changed over the decades, but you can be fined for walking across the street the wrong way. How did you get away with doing the protest?
Rob: Exactly. It seemed incredible. We had some spies in CBS Sony Columbia over there that were talking to the cops or something. Their people had spoken to our people. It was planned well in advance. We’d rehearsed on the flatbed the night before. We’d come in from Philly or Boston or something. We’d had a two-night stand at Radio City Music Hall, either side of this gig.
We stumbled out at 11 o’clock in the morning. Our manager got us up out of bed. We’re rubbing sleep out of our eyes, and he said, “You’ve got to get on stage. The cops are going to shut us down before we even start. Don’t worry about the hired car, just walk, because there’s a huge traffic jam.”
We pushed our way through the crowd, got on stage, and you can hear it in the audio. Pete’s still getting last night’s gig out of his throat. But I think the thing is, you’ll know from your own music, you’ve played so many gigs in so many different weird environments. And if you come from that background of playing Australian pubs and clubs – hundreds of times – then you can just get up and do it and you’re on automatic. It’s just another gig.
Paul: I’ve got to tell you it does add to the enjoyment of the footage. Peter falls off the speaker at one stage.
Rob: Yeah, and then climbs right back up.
Paul: There’s roadies running around. It looks pretty shaky. What was it like playing around that?
Rob: Like all those things, it’s just over before you start. We were just grateful that we could play more than one song. The cops were trying to direct — trying to keep one stream of traffic going, instead of four or five. It was a beautiful day, like Sydney today. It was a beautiful blue-sky day and one of those things where at the end of it you think “What did we just do? What was that about?”
As far as the message went, we were just tapping into this general anger, growing anger that Exxon and other corporations, but particularly Exxon with its destruction of that Alaskan wilderness, and the fact they appeared not to be at all interested in cleaning up their act to any degree. We’d just sort of been speaking to people and they were all furious. This looked like not only was this — up until then, probably the world’s worst environmental disaster, but the Exxon share price had hardly wavered. And they were just getting on with business. It’s like fuck that. We were just doing our bit.
Paul: Knowing that it could be shut down at any moment, the set list had to be pretty much on mark about what you were singing about. The set list had to be pretty on the ball.
Rob: Yeah, that’s right. Our set lists were always on the run. It’s probably decided as we got up on stage, someone yelled to someone. But by then we had this set which was full of Diesel and Dust songs, and Blue Sky Mining songs as well, plus songs from back cataloguing, including “Progress,” which always used to sound good live. In fact, the only song that was a big weird was “Instant Karma” thrown in at the last minute. We’d played it before but we thought hang on, John Lennon, New York City, this is their song. Also the lyrics of course, “Instant Karma’s gonna get ya.” Directed directly at to this Exxon building, with their faces pressed against that smoky glass, peering down angrily at the band.
Paul: Did they react officially to the protest?
Rob: No, I was thinking back to JFK and the Dallas assassination. Thinking how many firearms are in this city. We’re sitting ducks up here. Anyway, of course that didn’t happen. I don’t think anyone at Exxon knew this was going to happen.
Paul: When you shot that video, had you played Radio City Music Hall?
Rob: Yeah, we were doing a two-night stand at Radio City. Think of the history of that place. Think of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and other people playing it — incredible.
Paul: Before you hit Radio City, where else in New York did you play?
Rob: One time we played a place called the Forum, which was downstairs at Madison Square Garden. We often got to go out to Long Island, to this place called Jones Beach. Lovely gigs at Jones Beach. I remember a particularly great bill with Chrissie Hynde who was singing with UB40 at the time, so the two bands together was a beautiful night at Jones Beach. It juts out into the bay there.
And the best gigs there were the open-air ones, like Red Rocks in Denver, and places like that, where you’re gasping because it’s a mile in the sky. Pete and I used to need the oxygen tank. Just beautiful places to play in America. The Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, and the San Diego County Bowl. Used to love the outdoor gigs.
The Making of Midnight Exhibition is at Noosa Regional Gallery until November 20. Entry is free. Rob Hirst will be in conversation with Sean Sennett on Saturday 8 October, 11am-12.30pm. Places are limited, so contact the Gallery on 5329 6145 to secure your booking. $30.00 per person pre-payment essential. *Please note the Gallery will be closed during the event.
The Field Brothers new album Everyday Is Like An Elvis Movie is out through ABC/Universal on October 28.
