Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Barbed Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm here down Under with the legendary Peter Garrett. Peter Hi, Bob. Well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. If people call you Pete,
Speaker 1: is that fine? Are you definitely a Peter? No? No,
Speaker 1: I take I take either. I'm an assie. So we're
Speaker 1: pretty easy about those things. Well, you know, I'm Robert.
Speaker 1: I was never called Robert. I've been bobbed from like
Speaker 1: day one. Okay, So what are we going to do
Speaker 1: about climate change? Well, a bunch of different things. The
Speaker 1: first one would be to make sure that we have
Speaker 1: an economic instrument in every economy. The best way we
Speaker 1: can fix it quickly is to put a penalty on
Speaker 1: carbon pollution. So that's like a carbon tax. Use the
Speaker 1: money that you get from the carbon tax to essentially
Speaker 1: recycled dollars into zero emissions technologies, renewables, energy efficiency, the
Speaker 1: new stuff, the hydrogened cells and the like that are
Speaker 1: going to make the world continue to go without putting
Speaker 1: more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Do it in a
Speaker 1: way which essentially encourages first mover companies and innovators to
Speaker 1: do their job well. And those who are going to
Speaker 1: dig their heels in and don't want to change, and
Speaker 1: are essentially writing a suicide note for for subsequent generations
Speaker 1: pay the price. Okay, let's be very specific. The day
Speaker 1: we're recording this, Trump says he's pulling out of the
Speaker 1: Paris Accords. Those that plan sounds great, But in the
Speaker 1: world we live in, can we enact that plan? Well?
Speaker 1: I think we can, and I think the fact that
Speaker 1: Trump's pulling out is in some ways not unexpected, but
Speaker 1: it is not fatal to the Paris Accords essentially being
Speaker 1: the next big stepping stone to the world community reducing emissions.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of technical and political issues in the
Speaker 1: Paris Accord which are challenging. One is that up to now,
Speaker 1: countries are simply pledging. They're not promising to enact their
Speaker 1: reductions in legislation or by a mandate or a feared
Speaker 1: or a regulation or whatever that has to happen. And
Speaker 1: a second thing is that, from what the science is
Speaker 1: telling us, even if those countries who have already made commitments, say,
Speaker 1: for example, to reduce their emissions down to a certain
Speaker 1: figure in the next twenty or thirty years, unless they
Speaker 1: all do it, unless we all do it, then the
Speaker 1: chances of us holding warming to a level that makes
Speaker 1: the planet habitable become less. So I think what's going
Speaker 1: to happen is that when they next go the country's
Speaker 1: next go to the Conference of the Parties as it's called,
Speaker 1: America will still probably be an observer, even if they're
Speaker 1: talking about pulling out. Those countries that have committed to
Speaker 1: do it, mainly the European countries, China, India in particular,
Speaker 1: and the South American block, will have more information in
Speaker 1: front of them saying, you know what, we need to
Speaker 1: accelerate reductions. So we can't go in with the business
Speaker 1: as usual, let's play around at the edges approach. We
Speaker 1: will have to do more. Some countries will then make
Speaker 1: specific additional commitments. As they do that, the pressure then
Speaker 1: comes on bad neighbors to to follow suit. And of
Speaker 1: course the outliers are countries, particularly like Saudi Arabia and Russia,
Speaker 1: who aren't playing ball at this point in time. Okay,
Speaker 1: what will be the incentive to the people to become
Speaker 1: more aggressive? I think there are two. One is that
Speaker 1: the cost of inaction on dealing with climate change is
Speaker 1: rising exponentially, whether it's insurance costs, infrastructure destruction, population movements,
Speaker 1: effects on agriculture. I mean, look at your home state
Speaker 1: now as we speak, can California I mean like seriously
Speaker 1: becoming an extremely difficult place to even because of wildfire, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that, whilst maybe not necessarily each time caused by
Speaker 1: climate change, certainly global warming intensifies wildfires as it does
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other things. So that's the first
Speaker 1: incentive is economies aren't going to be able to pay easily,
Speaker 1: particularly economies that are in debt, which many world economies are,
Speaker 1: for all of the infrastructure repair, emergency services and the like.
Speaker 1: So that's the first incentive. The second incentive is that
Speaker 1: if we're serious about a future for our kids, then
Speaker 1: we have to be able to envisage a future where
Speaker 1: there's they've still got jobs, have still got opportunities, and
Speaker 1: of course all of those are in the new technologies,
Speaker 1: in the new areas of low emissions, solar, wind, energy efficiency,
Speaker 1: electric cars. I mean, you name it. There's there's a
Speaker 1: whole world of zero economy out there for us, but
Speaker 1: we need to get going on it. So you're optimistic, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic, although I've been in this issue on and
Speaker 1: off for many, many years, Bob, and I think the
Speaker 1: current political developments, particularly in your country, but in others
Speaker 1: where you have rogue right wing governments who either don't
Speaker 1: believe in it or don't want to do anything about it,
Speaker 1: makes it more difficult. And additionally, I think in many cases, industry,
Speaker 1: particularly the fossil fuel industries, the oil and gas companies
Speaker 1: and others, have really played hardball with this issue and
Speaker 1: are deeply culpable for knowing, as the tobacco companies did
Speaker 1: thirty or forty or fifty years ago, that what they
Speaker 1: were doing was imperiling the planet, but not being prepared
Speaker 1: to scale back their activity. So I see the most
Speaker 1: recent amount of citizens activities in different countries, including ours,
Speaker 1: and more so in Europe perhaps than yours, but also
Speaker 1: in yours extinction rebellion, this grassroots movement that's starting to build.
Speaker 1: I see that as part of a new response two
Speaker 1: people being absolutely frustrated that we're not getting enough done,
Speaker 1: and on the other side, the potential for social democrat
Speaker 1: parties eventually to reclaim some ground and enact things like
Speaker 1: a green New Deal type thing, which you've seen in
Speaker 1: your country well It's interesting because Greta Thunberg has been
Speaker 1: put down by all the right wing. It shows the
Speaker 1: power of one individual. Oh amazing, It's just you know,
Speaker 1: people are playing in the background, just like one one
Speaker 1: rock performer, one band can make such a difference. So
Speaker 1: how do you become so politicized? To begin with? Oh? Gee,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's the way I am as a person. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. You and I are
Speaker 1: the same age. I'm trying to think whether I'm here
Speaker 1: with an area nite man with actually you and me?
Speaker 1: But in any event, uh, okay, you you grew up where? So?
Speaker 1: I grew up in a suburb of Sydney, which is
Speaker 1: the biggest city in Australia on the East Coast, and
Speaker 1: I grew up basically in a middle class a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. How many generations has your family been in Australia.
Speaker 1: So on my mom's side, uh, four and on my
Speaker 1: dad yeah, four, and on my dad's side, I think
Speaker 1: three or four have Do you have any idea where
Speaker 1: they came from and what their incentive was? Yes, I
Speaker 1: do so. On my mom's side they come from the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom, from England, excuse me. And on my dad's
Speaker 1: side they come from Belgium and the United Kingdom. You
Speaker 1: have any idea why they came, Yes, we know that
Speaker 1: they came looking for a better life, as most immigrants do,
Speaker 1: and that when they arrived. On my dad's side, they
Speaker 1: were very involved in politics actually as it turned out,
Speaker 1: and business and sport and all of those things. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: on the wrong side, on the right wing side. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so I'm not from convict stock in Australia and
Speaker 1: obviously our Aboriginal on island of people are the first Australians.
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a iterational Australian
Speaker 1: in Okay, So you grew up in a suburb, your
Speaker 1: parents work outside the home. Yes, so my my dad
Speaker 1: is a business manager in English. That's like sort of
Speaker 1: a like a managing director of a company, but a
Speaker 1: small but a big German company. But the Sydney office
Speaker 1: was the company they used to make tapes b a
Speaker 1: SF really okay yea, so maybe the first chrome teams
Speaker 1: you remember, I know, cause that's love to talk about them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And my mom was who was a big influence onthing,
Speaker 1: actually was one of the first generations of women here
Speaker 1: in Australia to graduate from university. It was at the
Speaker 1: end of World War Two. Of course, many men had
Speaker 1: lost their lives, women had gone into the workforce. They
Speaker 1: were working from America were completely uneducated. What was Australia's
Speaker 1: rule in World War two? So in World War two
Speaker 1: we were um basically followed the English into the war,
Speaker 1: and in the middle of the war, after Pearl Harbor
Speaker 1: was bombed by the Japanese, we of course we're on
Speaker 1: the same side as you were, the Americans. And it
Speaker 1: was during that time, in early nine in forties that
Speaker 1: as a colony, which is previously what the country had
Speaker 1: been a British colony, we pivoted to use an Obama term,
Speaker 1: and our Prime Minister at the time said, up to
Speaker 1: this point in time, we've been an English colony, and
Speaker 1: we love the Queen and all of that, but we
Speaker 1: are now going to become close friends with America and Americans,
Speaker 1: and we need to because our survival depends on it.
Speaker 1: And we fought with the Americans against the Japanese as
Speaker 1: they proceeded to get closer and closer to Australia, I
Speaker 1: mean Japanese actually bombed not only Pearl Harbor, but Darwin,
Speaker 1: a city to the north of Australia, and sent submarines
Speaker 1: down this side. The country was never physically invaded. And
Speaker 1: was your father in the war? No, my father was,
Speaker 1: and actually he was very unwell. In fact, he was
Speaker 1: unfortunately suffered ill health for most of his life. But
Speaker 1: my mother was. So she served in the Women's Air
Speaker 1: Force Regiment and along with many other young women, when
Speaker 1: they were discharged or demobilized at the end of the war,
Speaker 1: they went to university. And so she became a social worker.
Speaker 1: And before you get there, her family, Yes, did her appearance.
Speaker 1: Did her father go to university? Her father was a dentist, Okay,
Speaker 1: so he was a professional. Yeah, he was a professional,
Speaker 1: and he would probably feel positive about her going to university. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I imagine so, although I think in those days they
Speaker 1: were still pushing the boat out a little bit to
Speaker 1: do those things. First generation. Really do you think about
Speaker 1: him nine in forty seven? Probably your mother is a
Speaker 1: social worker, correct, and working with who so working with
Speaker 1: poor people, the underclass paid by the government. Correct. She
Speaker 1: actually was the first social worker to be employed here
Speaker 1: in Sydney, the city that we're in the one with
Speaker 1: the harbor Bridge and the Opera House. And to establish
Speaker 1: what was essentially a community center in a working class
Speaker 1: area down by the docks, which had many retired seamen
Speaker 1: merchant seamen who had been at sea and who had
Speaker 1: done this, that and the other, and then who had retired.
Speaker 1: And they built community centers of which there are now
Speaker 1: many in Australia, and it's really an opportunity for older
Speaker 1: people just to come. They play cards that have sing alongs.
Speaker 1: On Friday. I'd come down from my school and and sing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a long way to Tipperary or all
Speaker 1: those old songs to these people. And she did that
Speaker 1: for a while and then she moved further up the
Speaker 1: food chain, so she became a senior social worker in
Speaker 1: a big mental hospital here and basically working in the
Speaker 1: areas of health and aged care. So how did your
Speaker 1: parents meet. They met on the North Shore, Sydney, which
Speaker 1: is the area that we come from, where mutual friends
Speaker 1: gathered at a boarding house. In those days, young people
Speaker 1: when they left home didn't go off and you know,
Speaker 1: share flats or houses or things like that. That they
Speaker 1: would go to a boarding house which was run by
Speaker 1: you know, somebody and an old couple or whatever. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of spinster aunts that ran a board
Speaker 1: run a really nice old fashioned boarding house out in
Speaker 1: the suburbs. And of course the men could visit the
Speaker 1: girls that were in the boarding house, or the boys
Speaker 1: could visit the girls, but only you know, for between
Speaker 1: six and eight, and they'd have to sip tea while
Speaker 1: they were watched over by some martinette. But that's anyway
Speaker 1: they met up there. So they just bumped into each
Speaker 1: other and someone set them up. Look, I don't know
Speaker 1: the full story. Yeah, so your mother didn't used to
Speaker 1: talk about the good old days? Not really, Okay, So
Speaker 1: how many kids in your family? So on their side
Speaker 1: or on my side? So I'm I'm the oldest of
Speaker 1: three boys, and the other two were how much younger?
Speaker 1: So five years to my next brother who is in Brisbane,
Speaker 1: and then another three years to the youngest brother. Okay,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times the oldest kid has a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure on them, but it's also the favorite
Speaker 1: of what was it like being the oldest boy? Look,
Speaker 1: I think I conform, you know, pretty much to the
Speaker 1: letter to the responsible eldest child. Look, I actually had
Speaker 1: a very happy childhood. My mom and dad passed away
Speaker 1: in my late teens, but up to that point in time,
Speaker 1: I never felt I never had that into sort of
Speaker 1: parent to kid tension that quite often arrives. I think
Speaker 1: I enjoyed taking on extra responsibilities as a kid and
Speaker 1: looking after my younger brothers, which I did, and both
Speaker 1: my parents worked so they were quite often away a lot. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you didn't test the limits or your parents were
Speaker 1: very you know, lenient, and I think there was so
Speaker 1: much lenient. I think, no, I didn't test the limits,
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in it. It seemed to me to be
Speaker 1: completely unnecessary. I loved being kid, and from my perspective
Speaker 1: when I was a kid is that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to grow up. I could see the responsibilities that had
Speaker 1: olds had, and I thought that there's plenty of time
Speaker 1: for that to happen later on. And I still feel
Speaker 1: this even more strongly now today, that we deny children
Speaker 1: and young people the opportunity just to have those wonderful, open,
Speaker 1: almost aimless periods of in their life where they're not
Speaker 1: under social appression, they're not trying to meet somebody, they're
Speaker 1: not trying to start their career. You know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of weird because now if someone says they're board, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what world they're living and not so
Speaker 1: much input. But certainly in america's a result of incommittee quality.
Speaker 1: The elite, so to speak, are so busy scheduling their children,
Speaker 1: trying to get them in a better educational system that
Speaker 1: they have. No, they don't even fear for themselves. The
Speaker 1: other thing, of course, is the fear. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would come home from school, I change into my play clothes,
Speaker 1: I go off on my bike, and that would be
Speaker 1: yet exactly same, no concept of a play date. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how old were you? Well, how did your parents
Speaker 1: pass away? So my dad add basically had a big
Speaker 1: asthma attack. He was he worked pretty hard, and when
Speaker 1: I was seventeen, and then four years later our family
Speaker 1: home burnt down and my mom was in the family
Speaker 1: home at the time and she perished. Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to have a response to that. So your father dies
Speaker 1: at seventeen, doesn't that mess with the family's economics? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. I mean we a he It's an
Speaker 1: interesting story, Bob, because I think, like most parents, he
Speaker 1: wanted the best for his kids. One of one of
Speaker 1: the things he wanted to do was to send us
Speaker 1: to a good school and inverted commas. So he worked
Speaker 1: extra hard to enable us to do that. But in
Speaker 1: so doing, I think he put his already not too
Speaker 1: good health at jeopardy. We were, but my mom was
Speaker 1: a successful professional by that stage, so you know, even
Speaker 1: once he died, she was able to support us. And
Speaker 1: by that stage I had left home and gone to university,
Speaker 1: so my two brothers were still at home. And then
Speaker 1: your mother dies tragically, yes, and you're an orphan. So
Speaker 1: what's that like. Well, I mean, at the time, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was traumatic and an extremely difficult period
Speaker 1: for us, and it took all of us quite some
Speaker 1: time to recover from it. And I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: but they were slack, you know, they didn't have an
Speaker 1: insurance or anything like that. That was it. But on
Speaker 1: reflection now and I look back on it, I think,
Speaker 1: even even though of course I terribly missed my mom
Speaker 1: and we were close, but it made us in some
Speaker 1: ways in other ways because we went back literally to nothing,
Speaker 1: and we looked after one another. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: I started even though I was at Uni, doing law
Speaker 1: and I'm a lawyer by professional training, but I'm really
Speaker 1: a musician and an activist, and music had started to
Speaker 1: come into my life. And so I think when I
Speaker 1: got onto stage and some one of my closest, oldest
Speaker 1: friends sort of said to me, who knew the family before,
Speaker 1: when you got on stage, you you definitely it seemed
Speaker 1: like you definitely had to expunge some of the heart
Speaker 1: smashes that you had. But for me, it was a
Speaker 1: case of making every minute. I just knew how precious
Speaker 1: life was by that stage because I lost my mom. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you were twenty three, you say when your mother died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, but in anything, your your brothers were much younger,
Speaker 1: that's right. How did they manage? Well? We all we
Speaker 1: all we all camped together. I was back in Sydney
Speaker 1: and we just got a little flat somewhere and we started.
Speaker 1: My brother and I got a contract cleaning out um
Speaker 1: taxis that did the midnight shift on taxis here in
Speaker 1: Sydney from twelve in the morning till five am. And
Speaker 1: that's what we did to survive. How long did you
Speaker 1: do that for? Oh, a year or two? Yeah, with
Speaker 1: other jobs as well, thrown in whilst music was starting. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's go back to school. Were you a popular
Speaker 1: kid at school? Um? Yeah, Look, I wouldn't have been unliked.
Speaker 1: I think reasonably popular, but I wasn't sort of head
Speaker 1: of the gang or anything like that. Do you have friends? Yeah? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I had some friends. Okay. Now, you're obviously a tall gentleman.
Speaker 1: How how tall are you? Six four and a half
Speaker 1: in socks? Yeah? So what is it like were you
Speaker 1: tall as a young kid? Yeah? I was tall and gorky,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So how does that affect your personality? Well?
Speaker 1: I think it probably means that you're a little aware
Speaker 1: of social settings. Look, I'm I'm quiet and polite in
Speaker 1: one way. This is just the character that I have.
Speaker 1: But in another way, I'm not insecure about myself at all,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I really ever have been, even
Speaker 1: as a teenager. And I put that down to my
Speaker 1: parenting inasmuch as, um, I had parents who encouraged us.
Speaker 1: They weren't indulging us and saying, oh aren't you fantastic
Speaker 1: little Pete? You know you can see you know you're
Speaker 1: going to be a pop star. There's none of that.
Speaker 1: They just treat you with respect. But say, you've got
Speaker 1: if you want to do something, you've got the potential
Speaker 1: to do. Whatever it is you choose to do, you
Speaker 1: can do, and you get a good hearing here. And
Speaker 1: we don't judge people, we don't label people. We don't
Speaker 1: spend our time comparing ourselves against others. I never heard
Speaker 1: my parents talk about the people next door and wishing
Speaker 1: I had more or less money than that. Listen, my
Speaker 1: parents were the exact opposite. My mother. My older sisters
Speaker 1: still traumatized by, you know, my father and mother talking
Speaker 1: about a girl in the neighborhood and enough great she was, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And my mother would you know if I called her
Speaker 1: up and I was gonna do something, you know, as
Speaker 1: she would say, you know, essentially, why you I'm still
Speaker 1: dealing with that, so so certainly. And then I grew
Speaker 1: up on the eastern coast of the United States, and
Speaker 1: the transistor came along, and we were listening to the sports, baseball,
Speaker 1: the Yankees, and then I had certain singles. Then of
Speaker 1: course the Beatles hit and all hell broke loose. What
Speaker 1: was it like for you being here? Well, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can count my equanimity, I said, because I think
Speaker 1: I was pretty decent parenting, uh and my mom my
Speaker 1: parents loved the Beatles. So the parents loved the Beatle.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to the beginning. In my house,
Speaker 1: my parents were avid music lovers, but they played the
Speaker 1: show tunes, right, how about your parents same? So yeah,
Speaker 1: I grew up on a diet of show tunes Crosby, Sinatra, Elvis.
Speaker 1: But they kept going and they enjoyed parties. And so
Speaker 1: the Beatles came and that sort of first British pop
Speaker 1: invasion so rolled through the suburbs of Sydney and came
Speaker 1: into our living room. But by that stage as well,
Speaker 1: I had years for music too. I did a stand
Speaker 1: a boarding school. You talk about transis, I did a
Speaker 1: boarding school. I distinctly remember having my little transistor under
Speaker 1: the pillow at night, listening to the Kinks, you know,
Speaker 1: listening to the Who, listening to whatever. Doors. So, if
Speaker 1: your parents are Beatles fans, that doesn't square with the
Speaker 1: generational revolution that we experienced, and people talk about where
Speaker 1: people are finding against their parents. Your parents were they hipsters?
Speaker 1: Were most other people's parents like that? I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: they were hipsters. I just think they were relatively broad minded.
Speaker 1: And open, and I think they just enjoyed music, and
Speaker 1: I think they were civil sort of people, so they
Speaker 1: weren't trying to impose their strictures and their views on
Speaker 1: their kids. They taught us good manners and you know,
Speaker 1: how to treat other people. But it was pretty basic stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you have three kids yourself, that's what I have
Speaker 1: three daughters. And how old are they? Thirty three, thirty two,
Speaker 1: and thirty Okay? Well there, they've been out of the
Speaker 1: house for a while and they never leave anymore. No,
Speaker 1: I'm noticing. Yeah, I love that. Okay, So how do
Speaker 1: you feel about their music? Well, I think it's incredible
Speaker 1: for them, because it's incredible for them. How do you
Speaker 1: feel your parents were Beatles fans? Are you a hip
Speaker 1: hop fan? Yeah? I don't mind a little bit bits
Speaker 1: of hip hop? Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm selective, I think,
Speaker 1: am I listening? The reason I said incredible though, is
Speaker 1: that their palettes so much wider than mine. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's just massively wider. And if you listen to their playlists,
Speaker 1: you know what they curate. It's crazy. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: hearing stuff I never knew. But I'm also hearing things
Speaker 1: that I loved, but I thought they would never actually
Speaker 1: ever listen to. Okay, so you're in boarding school. What
Speaker 1: age do you got a boarding school? I only did
Speaker 1: a brief stinting boarding school, but I was in boarding
Speaker 1: school when I was fifteen and a half. So what happened?
Speaker 1: Why was a brief? My parents went away and they
Speaker 1: just stuck us in there, you know, for a period
Speaker 1: of time. Where did they go? So my dad had
Speaker 1: to go to work in Germany because and my mom
Speaker 1: had relatives in actually North America and Canada, so she
Speaker 1: took off as well. So that you parked you in
Speaker 1: boarding school? Thanks mom and dad. So how long was that?
Speaker 1: Not very long? Okay? So are you a record collector
Speaker 1: when you're before you go to university? Look, I think
Speaker 1: I fall into the category of someone who loves their
Speaker 1: music a lot and who is a bit of a
Speaker 1: bou bird. But I'm not an avid collector. I'm not
Speaker 1: one of these fans. I'm not a musician who can
Speaker 1: tell you every B side that their favorite band forgetting
Speaker 1: the music. Yeah, when you're in in the mid sixty
Speaker 1: six four to seventy or so, when you graduate from
Speaker 1: high school, are you listening to the radio, going to shows,
Speaker 1: doing all that stuff. No, not really going to shows,
Speaker 1: listening to the radio and pop radio and just starting
Speaker 1: to get a little bit of interest. I mean I went,
Speaker 1: I went to a show, but I couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: go in, so I stood outside with my ear up
Speaker 1: against the brick wall to hear what was going on inside.
Speaker 1: You remember what show that was? Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a band called um Tamim Shudd who were actually
Speaker 1: almost a sixty psychedelics band, surf band, and but they
Speaker 1: were a big band in our area. And uh, yeah, amazed.
Speaker 1: Were you the type of guy who would dance when
Speaker 1: the music played at shows? No, I'm standing back and
Speaker 1: listening and trying to figure out what's going on, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: and you someone who has girlfriends in that era, yes,
Speaker 1: but more so at university. So for me it really came.
Speaker 1: So I left home in seventy and instead of going
Speaker 1: to university in my hometown in the city of Sydney,
Speaker 1: I essentially went to the Quill of Washington. I went
Speaker 1: to Canberra and we have a national university there and
Speaker 1: I was on the college there and it was there
Speaker 1: that and but people came from all over Australia and
Speaker 1: actually from other parts of the world as well. It's
Speaker 1: interestingly mainly Africa. And there was a lot of music,
Speaker 1: A lot of new music was pouring through. People were
Speaker 1: reading the New Music Express, Rolling Stone. We were seeing
Speaker 1: that explosion of music which washed through sixty six to
Speaker 1: seventy in the States, in particular San Francisco at All
Speaker 1: washes into Australia. Really, yeah, what acts do you remember
Speaker 1: from that era? Well, I guess to begin with on
Speaker 1: the on the English side, all of the big classic
Speaker 1: acts that you and I both know. And then additionally,
Speaker 1: what more widely people like UM Fairport Convention, Robert Wyatt's
Speaker 1: Soft Machine at All. On the American side, um again
Speaker 1: the classic bands of that era, but the Birds would
Speaker 1: be the one that really sort of hits me quite hard,
Speaker 1: and I liked a lot. And then you go to
Speaker 1: the doors. You've got the Mummers and the Pappas, You've
Speaker 1: got the explosion of San Francisco bands, Moby Grape and
Speaker 1: so on and solf. Okay, so was this your number
Speaker 1: one interest once you're in university or I've always surfed
Speaker 1: and always yeah yeah, So I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: an American. I don't know the the geography of Australia,
Speaker 1: but camera is not by no, it's not not correct.
Speaker 1: But but I grew up here, and yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think it's something like of Australians live within fifty
Speaker 1: kilometers of the coast. When did you start surfing? We
Speaker 1: all start young here, Yeah, like four or five. You
Speaker 1: still surf now, unfortunately not as much as I do,
Speaker 1: but I get in the water. But the point being,
Speaker 1: I still love to serve. But I was listening to
Speaker 1: music I was interested in. I sang in the choir
Speaker 1: at school, and I sang in a few little folky things.
Speaker 1: And when I got to the university, the roys bands playing,
Speaker 1: you know, in the colleges on the weekends, and I
Speaker 1: fell in with a bunch of people who liked music.
Speaker 1: And I got a job actually as a volunteer on
Speaker 1: the university radio station because they didn't have anyone to
Speaker 1: to sort of do the night shifts. And I always
Speaker 1: been a nighttime person, so I started playing music on
Speaker 1: the radio at night, and then I started playing music
Speaker 1: at night in bands. Okay, when you were on the radio,
Speaker 1: how many days a week we are on the radio,
Speaker 1: I think two or three nights a week. Okay, what
Speaker 1: would you play well, the whole side of you know,
Speaker 1: Adam Hart mother by people. You know, I've like that.
Speaker 1: I never really got into it, but whatever. Okay, So
Speaker 1: at what point do you say, shoul I could be
Speaker 1: a performer. Well to two points really. The first is
Speaker 1: that there was you know, SI had some mates and
Speaker 1: they had a band and they were writing songs or
Speaker 1: trying to and they were running around and I went
Speaker 1: to see them because I had a truck driving license
Speaker 1: and I was driving trucks as well. Let's start for
Speaker 1: a second. Let's go back here. You say you're trained
Speaker 1: in law. You know, every country is different. That means
Speaker 1: if you and me, if I, you know, smashed the
Speaker 1: window here, could you defend me in court? Uh? Well
Speaker 1: I could? Yeah, I mean I are you licensed to
Speaker 1: do that? No, not at this point in time, and
Speaker 1: I've let that pass over. Okay, But but at one
Speaker 1: time you were licensed at one At one time I
Speaker 1: had gone and past my barrister's admission, So I could
Speaker 1: have appeared for you in a quarter. Okay. What was
Speaker 1: your drive to be an attorney? I think partly that
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of anything else. I could do, or
Speaker 1: I could talk. You know that this is a talking job,
Speaker 1: and I'm not mathematically or technically minded. And as I
Speaker 1: got a little older, I realized is that the legal
Speaker 1: system was pretty important. I studied air and space law
Speaker 1: and pennology penology, which is the law of prisons and criminals.
Speaker 1: And I thought I'd go to the bar potentially, or
Speaker 1: I'd work in the international field in the area of
Speaker 1: space law and international agreements and things like that. Now,
Speaker 1: in America, you've got a college for four years, then
Speaker 1: you got to law school for three years. How does
Speaker 1: it work in Australia. Yeah, so we don't have a
Speaker 1: college system here. You go straight to university essentially when
Speaker 1: you finished high school, and the law degree will take
Speaker 1: you four years if you do it by your by itself.
Speaker 1: I actually did an arts degree in politics as well,
Speaker 1: so double degree. So that's by the time you've done
Speaker 1: it six years, okay, and then you have an exam
Speaker 1: but you know, for a law but you never practiced law.
Speaker 1: I practiced very briefly, and so I just like me. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're quite similar. How briefly did yous? Six months? And
Speaker 1: what kind of law did you practice? I was providing
Speaker 1: advice to companies a out the different laws in different states.
Speaker 1: Australia is a federation, so we know nothing. The federation
Speaker 1: means what, Yeah, a bit like Canada. So when Australia
Speaker 1: was first occupied by the British, they occupied at state
Speaker 1: by state and they constituted laws in each of those states,
Speaker 1: and the country didn't come together as a whole nation
Speaker 1: until nineteen one, even though you know, the English had
Speaker 1: been here since the mid seventies, seventies and early eight hundreds.
Speaker 1: So the states had to agree to become a federated
Speaker 1: nation and they've all got different laws. The states do
Speaker 1: their own things still to this day. So it was
Speaker 1: very dry, very boring stuff, and I quickly left. Okay,
Speaker 1: but were you working for yourself? How are you getting
Speaker 1: working for myself? How did you get to work? I
Speaker 1: think you know. A solicitor who had been at law
Speaker 1: school with me said, I'll look, these companies need to
Speaker 1: know what they can do with their labeling. Do you
Speaker 1: want to have a go at it? And I said, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Did you quit because music was becoming successful or because
Speaker 1: you just could stand doing it? No? I did it
Speaker 1: and I didn't do it for very long. I didn't
Speaker 1: mind it. But by that stage I had met Rob
Speaker 1: Hurst and Jim mcgeanie from who had started a band
Speaker 1: at school really and it started writing songs, and we
Speaker 1: had become Midnight or by that point, and we agreed
Speaker 1: that if we were going to do anything with it,
Speaker 1: then we would stop what we were doing otherwise and
Speaker 1: just throw ourselves out all time. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the earlier story. You were a truck driver. Yeah, looks
Speaker 1: so I drove trucks in my dad's company when I
Speaker 1: was when I was last year of school, Like how
Speaker 1: big a truck but not not a massive semi trailers,
Speaker 1: but the next one is now. And I kept that
Speaker 1: license and when I was at at university in the
Speaker 1: National University, pay my way through and of course by
Speaker 1: this stage my dad's passed away and then then so
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to not be a drain on
Speaker 1: my mom, so I used to work on the weekends
Speaker 1: driving trucks. And then I actually took a year off
Speaker 1: where I had worked for a big trucking company just
Speaker 1: to pay off debts and you know, sort out money.
Speaker 1: And I started because I had the truck driving license.
Speaker 1: Of course I was the guy that could be the
Speaker 1: roadie exactly, and you know, big and strong in those days.
Speaker 1: So I was loading the boxes in and out and
Speaker 1: helping these people just so I know. Usually I would
Speaker 1: think of a trucking company. You drive there, you drop
Speaker 1: off your car, you drive, you leave the truck back.
Speaker 1: How did you have the truck to work for? Used
Speaker 1: to let the used to let us have the truck,
Speaker 1: which was quite novel in those stuff. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen to that, especially if they knew what was
Speaker 1: happening to it. But I heard the band and I
Speaker 1: liked it, and I was listening to lots of music
Speaker 1: and playing music at night in the college station. But
Speaker 1: the singer wasn't really that good, and I said something like,
Speaker 1: you know, look, and they said, how are we going?
Speaker 1: You know? I said, wow, I'm not too bad, but
Speaker 1: the singers maybe well classic Australian response, I suppose you
Speaker 1: could do better and I said yeah, I'm sure. Okay.
Speaker 1: Wait two things, Um, how long you slept in the
Speaker 1: gear before this conversation? Not very long, okay? And did
Speaker 1: you say the singer was bad because in your horror
Speaker 1: you knew you wanted the gig no, I didn't actually
Speaker 1: think I'd end up singing with them at all. They
Speaker 1: just asked me the question. I just answered it honestly. Okay,
Speaker 1: Then what happened? Then they said, well, do you want
Speaker 1: to come along and sing? I said, yeah, sure, I'll
Speaker 1: do that, which I did. So we were we were
Speaker 1: a university band made up mainly of students, and we
Speaker 1: were not very good. We were playing covers, we were
Speaker 1: playing a lot of rock and roll. We were playing
Speaker 1: you know, roadhouse blues, little Stone songs and so on.
Speaker 1: But eventually we also had a fellow that came to
Speaker 1: join us who was someone who got onto synthesizes very
Speaker 1: early on, who was a huge fan of enos as
Speaker 1: it turned out, and he built for himself a little
Speaker 1: primitive noise generator. So we used to play rock and
Speaker 1: roll with since the size this going on in the background,
Speaker 1: and we just toured relentlessly in and around Canberra, but
Speaker 1: only on the weekends. Okay, you have a unique vocal style.
Speaker 1: Were you singing in that style when you were doing covers?
Speaker 1: Probably probably not very very well, but yeah, okay, same style. Okay,
Speaker 1: just but what is the Australian personality? Because you're self deprecating.
Speaker 1: Is that because of your success or is that Australians.
Speaker 1: I think it's partly Australians. We tend not to blow
Speaker 1: our own trumpet to that's changing a little bit. You
Speaker 1: do get people that blow their trumpets a bit louder now,
Speaker 1: But I think it's part of our our national culture
Speaker 1: to some extent. But it's probably also part of my nature.
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't know what what it is, but
Speaker 1: I tend not to want to shout too loudly about
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I mean, I'm proud of what I do,
Speaker 1: but it's yeah, I think it's just the way we are. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're playing with this band, you're you're talking about
Speaker 1: it in a very negative way, even though you ultimately
Speaker 1: had great success. You're playing on the weekends. What kind
Speaker 1: of gigs, what kind of money you make? And not
Speaker 1: much so? And it's not midnight oil. And this comes
Speaker 1: in a in a second or two time. So I'm
Speaker 1: in Canberra where students and we we are reliable because
Speaker 1: we had a van that we won't and a p
Speaker 1: A and we're heading off to say a hotel like
Speaker 1: a pub in a country town, maybe an hour's drive
Speaker 1: from Canberra and we're playing on a Friday night to
Speaker 1: maybe one or two hundred people, and we're getting a
Speaker 1: couple hundred bucks to do that. We're playing at Unis
Speaker 1: balls and dances. We could we would actually play anything,
Speaker 1: you know, play anywhere, and we played out in paddocks
Speaker 1: for farmers and you know who would always be shouting,
Speaker 1: you know, play a C D C, you know, and
Speaker 1: we have to play some more. Okay. So what was
Speaker 1: the thought at the time just having a lark or
Speaker 1: was it, well, maybe this will turn into something for me.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit of both. Actually, such a
Speaker 1: good question, because I intended to finish my my law,
Speaker 1: but I actually found I knew I would like performing
Speaker 1: and I love singing, and even though we weren't that good,
Speaker 1: it was still good fun and we were meeting girls
Speaker 1: and carrying on and doing whatever. And I thought at
Speaker 1: the time I loved this and I understand how it works,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that it can go that far
Speaker 1: with these people, even though they were good friends. And
Speaker 1: actually what ends up happening is I go back to
Speaker 1: see my mom before she passes away, and I'm up
Speaker 1: in Sydney in holidays. I'm looking for a job, and
Speaker 1: normally I would work as a labor or a truck driver.
Speaker 1: And there's an ad in the paper singer wanted for
Speaker 1: tour on the coast. And I answered the ad and
Speaker 1: showed up and there were these younger guys in a
Speaker 1: room but they could really play. And that was midnight
Speaker 1: Oil or the beginning of midnight Oil. And so I
Speaker 1: auditioned as it were no one else auditions, so I
Speaker 1: was it, and off we went. Well, let's go back
Speaker 1: a little bit. You see the ad, Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: have been looking for something. Yeah, yeah, well I had
Speaker 1: to work over the summer period, you know. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean in Los Angeles there's a famous rag called the Recycler. Okay,
Speaker 1: so in Australia was it? Were there commonly ads for
Speaker 1: bands in this paper? No, it's complete. It was. It
Speaker 1: was one of those really strange that this is like
Speaker 1: an ad in the l A Times. Yeah, underneath you know,
Speaker 1: car washing and but also, okay, if you're looking for
Speaker 1: a job for money, one doesn't necessarily think they can
Speaker 1: make the kind of money in a band, correct then
Speaker 1: as opposed to a straight gig. No, that's right. But
Speaker 1: it looked like fun and uh, I thought, Leah, I
Speaker 1: should do it. Okay, So how far away is the
Speaker 1: band from where you're living? Well, they all roughly the
Speaker 1: north shore areas, okay, so they're they're close. You get there,
Speaker 1: you get the gig. And they had a tour book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a tour book. How many dates which they
Speaker 1: worked out themselves, so they were quite enterprising. I think
Speaker 1: probably about fifteen or six really, yeah, So you go
Speaker 1: on the road with them, yes, how long after the
Speaker 1: ad about three or four weeks? It was a rehearsal, Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of rehearsal okay, and you go out on the road.
Speaker 1: What was it like, yes, so it was it was
Speaker 1: a tour during summer, in our summer season where everybody
Speaker 1: is on the coast, So it was a tour of
Speaker 1: the coast. So we're playing in surf clubs, in hotels
Speaker 1: on the beach, in little halls on the beach, we're
Speaker 1: sleeping on the beach, and it was It was great fun.
Speaker 1: Um a little wild and willie at times, but really
Speaker 1: good fun. But for me, I was older than they
Speaker 1: were two years maybe when that makes a difference, it
Speaker 1: does at that age, and I thought that was fun,
Speaker 1: And they said yeah, look, it's been great to have you.
Speaker 1: But I was going back to Canberra, back to the university,
Speaker 1: finished my lawd degree and they were doing their own thing.
Speaker 1: They were students as well, but younger than me, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think they didn't really necessarily think I
Speaker 1: was going to hang round, and so they went off
Speaker 1: to look for another singer in Sydney and I went
Speaker 1: back to Canberra, okay, just to stop for a second.
Speaker 1: So if they booked the Twit themselves, somebody in the
Speaker 1: band was very enterprise. Yeah, so that would have been
Speaker 1: Rob Hurst, the drummer. It's always the drummer. The drummer
Speaker 1: is always a business guy. Just say Metallica. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: really so, but I could admit it's always the business guy.
Speaker 1: So the drummer. So you go back to Canberra. Then
Speaker 1: what happens. I do another year studying and you don't
Speaker 1: have any contact with at all, very little And are
Speaker 1: you playing with your other band? Yeah? Okay, and it
Speaker 1: starts to fall apart. Yeah, And actually when I get
Speaker 1: back to play with them, I think it's not as
Speaker 1: good as it could be. And I've been with a
Speaker 1: band that was how can you keep him down on
Speaker 1: the farm. Yeah, no, exactly. So at the end of
Speaker 1: that year, of course, I'm going to come back up
Speaker 1: to city again to visit my mom and see my
Speaker 1: friends and so on, and so we're in touch. And
Speaker 1: they said, well, look, actually we haven't found another singer.
Speaker 1: Do you want to come and just you know, do
Speaker 1: some shows and we we we we want to keep playing.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, sure, I'll do that, and eventually that
Speaker 1: became the genesis of Midnight. All okay, you play for
Speaker 1: the summer. Don't you have to go back to school again. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: by that stage I thought, you know what this is.
Speaker 1: This band really is a worthwhile. You know, I really
Speaker 1: loved what I heard, and I thought we could do something.
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite sure what it would be, so I
Speaker 1: transferred to finish my lawd degree up here, which is
Speaker 1: what I did. Okay, and what happens with the band.
Speaker 1: We rehearse at night, we start playing on the weekends.
Speaker 1: I finished my LAWD degree, I said to them, I
Speaker 1: want to finish it and get it done. I've gone
Speaker 1: this far. I did just sit more throw and they
Speaker 1: some of them had degrees as well, but they were
Speaker 1: not long as mine. So we most of us finished
Speaker 1: our unithing as we were rehearsing and writing songs and
Speaker 1: just trying to get ourselves sorted out. Now, when you
Speaker 1: were playing the Beach the first summer, you weren't doing
Speaker 1: original material very little. So did the original material come
Speaker 1: to be? Rob Hearst and Jim mcgeannie, who was the
Speaker 1: guitarist keyboard player, had met at school and they started
Speaker 1: to write songs and had fiddle around writing songs and
Speaker 1: discarding songs and writing songs, and they started to bring
Speaker 1: songs in it. We started to play them, And what
Speaker 1: was your involvement to begin with? I'd say, yeah, let's
Speaker 1: see if we can sing it. And then after a
Speaker 1: while I started throwing in ideas. And then eventually where
Speaker 1: Martin Rossi joins the band and we start writing together.
Speaker 1: But they're still bringing most of the ideas, the melodic
Speaker 1: ideas and the musical structures and things like. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's jump ahead. You practice law for six months, if that,
Speaker 1: if that, and then you say okay. The band says
Speaker 1: we're either going to throw in seriously or whatever. But
Speaker 1: no one has any money, right correct, So what do
Speaker 1: you do for money? Well, we we just decided to
Speaker 1: play you know, we we thought, I mean, it's actually
Speaker 1: it's actually me saying. You know, at this point in life,
Speaker 1: if you're going to do anything, you've got to really
Speaker 1: throw yourself out it. You can't pretend. We can't be
Speaker 1: mucking around on the weekends. We are going to play
Speaker 1: no matter what, anywhere, anytime anyone will give us a
Speaker 1: dollar to play, We'll go and play, which is what
Speaker 1: we did. So we and we started creating our own shows.
Speaker 1: They had done some of that themselves, and I'd done
Speaker 1: that when I was at at university. Right, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we plan that room over there? They don't have bands.
Speaker 1: Go and talk to the guy that runs it. It's
Speaker 1: his bar. Yeah, all right, whatever, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give you any money, but if we make,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty bucks on the bar, you get five bucks,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. You just go and do it. Okay?
Speaker 1: How will we all? Were you at this point? So
Speaker 1: I'm twenty yeah, two and a half, twenty three at
Speaker 1: this okay? And what are you living on while this
Speaker 1: is going on? Burgers? Okay? And so at what point
Speaker 1: what's the big brick so to speak? Even though there's
Speaker 1: a lot of little bricks but what what is the
Speaker 1: turning point? Well, look, I think you know, in a
Speaker 1: career this long, Bob, there's obviously quite a few of those.
Speaker 1: So one of them is that we actually got a
Speaker 1: manager who shared the vision. Was the manager experienced or
Speaker 1: not at all? So how did you find the manager?
Speaker 1: He found us. Yeah, he came and we played in
Speaker 1: surf pubs. We started just occupying a hotel. We'd play
Speaker 1: in the corner and we just set up on a
Speaker 1: Friday or Saturday night and to be booked the Publican
Speaker 1: was happy because people would come in and by beer,
Speaker 1: and eventually the numbers just grew and grew and grew,
Speaker 1: and then eventually started charging people more and more and
Speaker 1: we'd have lines out around the block. And he was
Speaker 1: one of those people who started to come. He was
Speaker 1: a real estate agent, he was a surfer, and he said,
Speaker 1: you need a manager, which of course we did because
Speaker 1: Rob and I were doing it at that stage, and
Speaker 1: you know, we had other things that we wanted to
Speaker 1: do and he had. He was crazy and wild, but
Speaker 1: he also had a great spirit of let's let's do
Speaker 1: something really in a very different way. In some ways,
Speaker 1: we're a very conventional band, you know, we play, we rehearse,
Speaker 1: we write songs, We used bespoke instruments. If you come
Speaker 1: and see us play live, you're going to see a
Speaker 1: performing band. But in other ways we're completely the opposite
Speaker 1: of that. We're very different and we essentially no one
Speaker 1: wanted to know about us. No one wanted to you know,
Speaker 1: Columbia when they first heard us passed on us. You
Speaker 1: know they said no, not with that guy singing, no way.
Speaker 1: Uh So, having having a manager that did that was
Speaker 1: I think that's our first break and our second break
Speaker 1: really is here in Australia. We have a public broadcasting network.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like National Public Radio, but it's
Speaker 1: much bigger, and it's run by the supported by the government,
Speaker 1: and they established a youth station just fortuitously at the
Speaker 1: same time as ourselves and other bands like In Excess
Speaker 1: and Men at Work and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: We're just starting to emerge and we got played on
Speaker 1: the radio, which we never were getting played on commercial
Speaker 1: radio or FM radio. There's just no way. So we
Speaker 1: got played, So give them what happened. Crowds got bigger. Okay,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, once you say we're going pro
Speaker 1: I'm giving our practicing law, and you're playing what percentage
Speaker 1: of the materials original? What percentages covers it? By that
Speaker 1: stage is original? Yeah, and so, and we're going out
Speaker 1: to places, you know, let's just call them, like a
Speaker 1: redneck tavern or something like that on a Tuesday night
Speaker 1: and we're just setting up, you know, and we're playing too.
Speaker 1: You know, fifty people a hundred people are two hundred
Speaker 1: people all original material and political material too. Sometimes that
Speaker 1: starts to creep in. And to begin with, audiences here
Speaker 1: in Australia didn't you know, they like the fact that
Speaker 1: we were there and I would talk a lot on stage.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to people and you're talking about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world and politics and culture and what
Speaker 1: have you. But they didn't necessarily like the music to
Speaker 1: begin with. But but we threw ourselves into it. You know,
Speaker 1: we were sort of half punks as well. So we
Speaker 1: were tearing out the stage at nine and playing loud
Speaker 1: and fast and furious, and the energy of the band
Speaker 1: draw drew people back, and then eventually more and more
Speaker 1: people kept on coming. I mean, it's literally the classic
Speaker 1: thing and that you know, many stories like this. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what's the dream at that point, can we make
Speaker 1: a record? Can we actually survive off being musicians? So
Speaker 1: you get on the youth radio station audience to get bigger,
Speaker 1: and then what happens, Well, we we eventually we do
Speaker 1: make a record. So we couldn't find a major that
Speaker 1: we could agree with. So okay, so you had offers,
Speaker 1: but the deals were not good or they yeah, they
Speaker 1: wanted to change what we were doing whatever, and they
Speaker 1: just weren't talking our language. So we formed our own label,
Speaker 1: but it was put out by actually a television company
Speaker 1: here that actually happened to have a pressing plant. They
Speaker 1: just had acquired a pressing plant and they were pressing
Speaker 1: country music and um sort of gimmick records. So we
Speaker 1: formed a label which we had control over. What you're
Speaker 1: in n seventy six Yeah, okay, where was the money
Speaker 1: to make the record? They advanced us a bit of
Speaker 1: money to make it, and we had we had a
Speaker 1: loan from the bank and we we we found a
Speaker 1: bank manager. Surprisingly, and this fellow is very important minight
Speaker 1: Olds history, as it would be for any band who
Speaker 1: didn't tell his superior officers that he was loaning money
Speaker 1: over drafting a band. It took us about seven years
Speaker 1: from when we first went professional to get out of debt.
Speaker 1: How much did you borrow? Not a lot, maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred grand, but those days exactly. Okay, So when you
Speaker 1: would go back to the big manity would continue to
Speaker 1: give your money. Yeah, just honored us. What was the pitch.
Speaker 1: He'd been to see us, and he could see the
Speaker 1: people there, you know, and he didn't really understand anything
Speaker 1: about it, but he just knew there was something going on.
Speaker 1: And see importantly here, unlike modern era, we've got no
Speaker 1: social media. We're not in the city darlings, were not
Speaker 1: the culture darlings, and we're playing in the suburbs too
Speaker 1: as well. And we're hardheaded and doing it our own way.
Speaker 1: But we're not talking about it. We're not trumpeting it
Speaker 1: to anybody, we're not self proseitize it. So it was
Speaker 1: just happening. Okay. Who owns the record today? We do
Speaker 1: with them? Okay. And so how many currents through which
Speaker 1: we license back into Sonny? Okay? So how many copies
Speaker 1: do you press? I think five thousand? Yes, so I'm
Speaker 1: at the Gigger in stores through stores, yeah, distributed in stores.
Speaker 1: So if you press five thousan in yourself five thousand
Speaker 1: M feel pretty good about yourself, absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 1: and I heard the song on the radio. I heard
Speaker 1: one of it. We didn't get anything on the charts,
Speaker 1: but of course that station we got played. And I
Speaker 1: drove home and my grandmother was still alive, and I
Speaker 1: was taking it down. You know, used to take her
Speaker 1: out on a Sunday just to have a little lunch
Speaker 1: thing and then take her back to where she was living.
Speaker 1: And I heard this, heard our song, you know, for
Speaker 1: the first time, first time I ever heard my verse
Speaker 1: on the radio. As far as I was concerned, I
Speaker 1: had a record my gran and could see that I
Speaker 1: you know, I was I was an artist who was
Speaker 1: making a living out of it. Out of it. That
Speaker 1: was it. We'd made it. Anything since then has been green. Okay.
Speaker 1: And how long did the original manager last? A decent time?
Speaker 1: You know, he was with us for probably fifteen to
Speaker 1: twenty years. Okay, So you put out the record independently
Speaker 1: than what happens, I've just kept on going more touring. Okay.
Speaker 1: How many deeds can someone play in Australia. It's a
Speaker 1: big country, but there aren't that many people know. But
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't want to be nostalgic about
Speaker 1: the Australian music scene at that time, because I think
Speaker 1: it's probably a little bit the same in other countries,
Speaker 1: certainly in the States, which has got a very healthy
Speaker 1: scene in different ways. But at this point in time,
Speaker 1: for a variety of different reasons, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of places to play if you wanted to, or you
Speaker 1: created your own places to play and then essentially invited
Speaker 1: people to come and share the space with you. So
Speaker 1: we would play a hundred and fifty to two hundred
Speaker 1: gigs a year, and all over the country. All over
Speaker 1: the country, so in the big cities, driving up and
Speaker 1: down the coast, country towns, pubs, working men's clubs, university halls,
Speaker 1: sometimes surf clubs, and just relentlessly play and play and play. Okay,
Speaker 1: at this point some Australian bands, not that this even
Speaker 1: happened the sixties, but certainly in the mid seventies they're
Speaker 1: starting to make it on a worldwide basis. Do you
Speaker 1: see that as an avenue from midnight Oil? We always
Speaker 1: had our eye on going further than Australia, only because
Speaker 1: we realized that there's a limited number of times that
Speaker 1: you can run around the country and we were students
Speaker 1: of music. We've all got different tastes, but you know,
Speaker 1: whatever we were listening to, was it was the Clash,
Speaker 1: was it Red Hot Chili Peppers, was it lou Reed?
Speaker 1: It didn't matter. We were just listening to everybody and
Speaker 1: we knew there was a bigger world out there. How
Speaker 1: that would happen and how we would make that work.
Speaker 1: I don't think we had any idea. So what's the
Speaker 1: next step? After the independent record? Another one, and then
Speaker 1: another one, and then Glenn John's comes to Australia who
Speaker 1: formally produced The Who and the Stones, and various people
Speaker 1: leverage legend. Again, he gets asked out here by the
Speaker 1: record companies. I think it's a music conference of some kind,
Speaker 1: and sees the band playing live in one of these
Speaker 1: big surf pubs with sweat pouring off me and a
Speaker 1: bunch of wild At what point do you shave your head?
Speaker 1: That's happened long ago? What was the That wasn't really
Speaker 1: a show of this thing, particularly because I'm still surfing
Speaker 1: at the time and it was just getting in the way. Also,
Speaker 1: my brother and I used to love taking going out
Speaker 1: in the water and taking in the water photography of
Speaker 1: big waves, big surf here and the professional surface. So
Speaker 1: we used to love going out. You know, you sometimes
Speaker 1: see them there's the people with the flippers stucking under
Speaker 1: in the way, so that's what we were doing. But
Speaker 1: you pop up to take the photo and I had
Speaker 1: long hair at the time and would be this wisp
Speaker 1: of hairt yeah, literally said in my way, I'm cutting
Speaker 1: it off? Correct And did you ever grow it after that? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: but that was when no one that's right, no one
Speaker 1: at all. But you're you're that kind of a kind
Speaker 1: of classic guy says if everybody's going one way, I'm
Speaker 1: going a different way. Probably didn't even enter my mind
Speaker 1: to be okay. So Glenn John sees you, he sees us,
Speaker 1: and he convinces A and M that that we're worth it.
Speaker 1: Uh and says, look, come to England and record. You've
Speaker 1: got a couple of records under your belt, but I
Speaker 1: think we can do better than that. And A and
Speaker 1: M were interested in and had seen us, and we
Speaker 1: actually I think we may have traveled once, just briefly,
Speaker 1: and done a few shows in London, then came back
Speaker 1: with our tae between our legs. In any event, we
Speaker 1: record with glint A and m pass on the album
Speaker 1: all together. They decided they don't want to put it out,
Speaker 1: but they paid for it, correct. Yeah, he goes across
Speaker 1: the l A and New York to try and shop it,
Speaker 1: and you know he's proud of it, to his great credit,
Speaker 1: but no one's interested. So we come back to Australia
Speaker 1: and yeah, your ego must have been pretty crushed. Well. No, actually,
Speaker 1: the judgment of record company people on the value of
Speaker 1: our music has never meant much for me, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't disrespect them, and I've got some
Speaker 1: great friends in the business now, but they're always looking
Speaker 1: and hearing it through a certain prison. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: always had confidence always, Okay. So you come back to Australia.
Speaker 1: What ultimately happens with that record? That record is released
Speaker 1: here in Australia and it does well well eventually on Columbia.
Speaker 1: So here in Australia. Columbia then become interested and they
Speaker 1: essentially pick up that record. So CBS picks it up.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of negotiation because we want to
Speaker 1: maintain control over everything pretty much as we can. So
Speaker 1: they pick it up here and they get the opportunity
Speaker 1: to license it in other territories. We continue touring, we
Speaker 1: continue playing, but we start making little for as we
Speaker 1: save up in that money. So we too here, you know, work, work, work,
Speaker 1: and then head across to San Francisco or l A
Speaker 1: on your own money, no label money, correct, all on
Speaker 1: our own money. Okay. So the drummer basically finds places
Speaker 1: to play there. No, he's not doing all the business now.
Speaker 1: So Gary Morris, who manages us at that stage, our manager,
Speaker 1: and we get an agent and we we invite people
Speaker 1: to see us, and if they like the band and
Speaker 1: they want to support the band, they become part of
Speaker 1: the Midnight or family and we enjoy working with people
Speaker 1: like that. And so yeah, they find places for us
Speaker 1: to play. Okay. So it was their idea to go
Speaker 1: to these places. Now we wanted to go, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to help us. Okay. So you you go. You
Speaker 1: have this one album? Is it even out in another territories?
Speaker 1: It's got limited release in other territories. Okay, So you've
Speaker 1: got to San Francisco to what happens. We played under
Speaker 1: fifty people in a club and you're building an audience
Speaker 1: and they say, hey, though that's nice. Yeah, we're building
Speaker 1: an audience. It's intermittent, but we're building it. We're meeting
Speaker 1: people in the business. We met David Frick from Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone comes to see us, and people who are watching
Speaker 1: what's going on. We play colleges, start to play a
Speaker 1: few colleges, get played a bit on college radio, but
Speaker 1: essentially still come back again. And then we realize that
Speaker 1: we're at that junction point, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: really figure out what the next step for us can be.
Speaker 1: So we go back to London with a bunch of
Speaker 1: songs under our belt. We meet a young producer, a
Speaker 1: guy called Nick Laurna who has produced Public Image and
Speaker 1: Gang of Youth and now produces Nick Cave and various
Speaker 1: other people. And we go to the Townhouse Studios in
Speaker 1: Shepherd's Bush where lots of different people have recorded, including
Speaker 1: Phil Collins's famous big drum sound in the Air Tonight,
Speaker 1: and we really work hard to create a record which
Speaker 1: is three to one record tender one um a record
Speaker 1: which was our door di you know, we've we've reached
Speaker 1: that point. Who pays for it? I can't remember the details,
Speaker 1: but I think we may have got some advance for it,
Speaker 1: and we may have coughed up a bit ourselves and
Speaker 1: we came back. That record then goes onto the Australian charts.
Speaker 1: We have a number of big radio songs here. We've
Speaker 1: had a little bit of radio we play before. It
Speaker 1: stays on the charts in our own country for over
Speaker 1: two years and it breaks us essentially into as a
Speaker 1: mainstream artist. We've become a mainstream artist essentially, even though
Speaker 1: lots of people knew about us, but it was always
Speaker 1: a cult. It was an underground you know. And then
Speaker 1: that some of those songs gets picked up mainly by
Speaker 1: college radio and some alternate Columbia in the state. Correct.
Speaker 1: It's a big record for us, but it makes no
Speaker 1: indent really in other parts of the world. We then
Speaker 1: continue to make records, we keep doing what we're doing.
Speaker 1: I'm now getting increasingly drawn into political activism as well,
Speaker 1: so our careers get a little stretched because I am
Speaker 1: now in a situation where I stand for public office here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where's uh beds are burning? It's coming so okay, So
Speaker 1: what's your motivation to go sideways and become running for
Speaker 1: political office? Well, it was the nuclear disarmed issue, and
Speaker 1: we we'd actually recorded an album after tender one. We
Speaker 1: went and record in Japan, and after we finished recording,
Speaker 1: a bunch of us said, well, look, we're here, why
Speaker 1: don't we go and have a bit of a look
Speaker 1: at the country. I went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I
Speaker 1: saw what happened when the atomic bomb was dropped, and
Speaker 1: I thought, it's crazy that we've got, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: thousand of these things sitting in each of the warheads
Speaker 1: America and Russia. We can't use them. That's got a change.
Speaker 1: And there was a party that sprung up here in
Speaker 1: Australia and I ran for the Senate. I nearly, I
Speaker 1: nearly became a senator. Okay, well yeah, theoretically if you've
Speaker 1: got elected, that will put it in the being correct absolutely,
Speaker 1: So what the rest of the be a member of
Speaker 1: saying well, you know, I think it's something about midnight
Speaker 1: or you know, we we've always given one another enough
Speaker 1: space and respect to what they knew. I wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, you know, to go where we want to go.
Speaker 1: And was the band going to fall apart? Well, no,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they'd go off and do stuff themselves.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could join them on the weekends. We didn't okay,
Speaker 1: just a little bit slow. What was the process of
Speaker 1: saying of throwing your hat in the ring? At what
Speaker 1: point did you say, you know what caused that? There's
Speaker 1: a party, etcetera. Yeah, look at a small grassroots party
Speaker 1: that forms and they're looking for candidates. They had different candidates.
Speaker 1: They had a possible candidate here, but a bunch of
Speaker 1: people came to me and said, look, what don't you
Speaker 1: be our candidate? You know, tender one was a really
Speaker 1: strong record at the time, anti nuclear record, I'd spoken
Speaker 1: out about those things already. You're very well known. Sort
Speaker 1: of have a go and I said, yeah, look, I'm
Speaker 1: more than happy to do that. Okay, so you run,
Speaker 1: you go door to door. Do you really push it? Yep?
Speaker 1: We run up. Well, it's for the Senate here, so
Speaker 1: you're not campaigning as you were, say, in a district
Speaker 1: or something like that, like a congressman or woman. We're
Speaker 1: written off by the media and the major parties as
Speaker 1: a novelty act and belittled and criticized. But what but
Speaker 1: many young people, particularly respond and our we start to
Speaker 1: become more and more popular. What happens next is a
Speaker 1: technical issue, but essentially in our system party's preference other
Speaker 1: candidates when they use up their existing number of votes,
Speaker 1: and here the major parties decided not to preference me
Speaker 1: at all. So essentially, even though I got a lot
Speaker 1: of primary votes, many many, many primary votes, I just
Speaker 1: missed out on getting into the Senate on primary votes
Speaker 1: alone and received So look, I think the shorthand of it, Bob,
Speaker 1: is that it was an incredible experience and we we
Speaker 1: created something quite special here. We had artists and writers
Speaker 1: and filmmakers and other musicians all involved. It was it
Speaker 1: was it was small people's movement, and we shifted the
Speaker 1: foreign policy of the country a little bit, not as much,
Speaker 1: perhaps as we would have liked, but more than we
Speaker 1: would have if we hadn't done anything. I ran a campaign,
Speaker 1: but I didn't get in, and that was a blessing
Speaker 1: for Midnight Oil and for our audience because we could
Speaker 1: resume the career. Okay, so how do we get to
Speaker 1: their hit? So by that stage I have been approached
Speaker 1: to become the president of one of the big national
Speaker 1: environment organizations here in Australia, it's called the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Speaker 1: Who We've done a little bit of benefit concerts and
Speaker 1: things for in the past, and I could see through
Speaker 1: my lawyer eyes that they needed, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: possibility of someone to work with them. And the fellow
Speaker 1: who became their executive director, who was also a lawyer
Speaker 1: like me, had been working with Aboriginal people in the
Speaker 1: middle of this country near the Big Red Rock or
Speaker 1: who are about to get their land back given back
Speaker 1: to them, has been stolen essentially by the British, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to make a little film. And he said,
Speaker 1: he called me up and called Gary up, and he said, look,
Speaker 1: do you think they oars would write a couple of
Speaker 1: songs for this film? That the traditional elders, the older
Speaker 1: people in the tribes would like them to write a
Speaker 1: song on some songs. And we said, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: we'd love to do that. And so Dead Heart and
Speaker 1: Beds are Burning in their initial phases, songs that Rob
Speaker 1: Herst brought to us in difference um finished in different ways.
Speaker 1: Why don't we use these songs. So we recorded Dead
Speaker 1: Heart long before we made Diesel and Dust long before
Speaker 1: Beds are Burning. And we said, and we send it
Speaker 1: to them and said do you like it, you know,
Speaker 1: would you like to use this fear film? Yes, they
Speaker 1: would and Beds was another song that we had which
Speaker 1: we were mucking around with. We then thought like it's
Speaker 1: time to make an album. We went into the studio.
Speaker 1: It was Beds about what it was about? Then, correct,
Speaker 1: it's not the same subject absolutely, yeah, And and and
Speaker 1: potentially a song to be used for this film a
Speaker 1: little film, right, I got it. It's like American Indian
Speaker 1: people from Flagstaff as putting together like a mini film
Speaker 1: which two people are going to see. So we went
Speaker 1: into the studio. So Warre Livesey who had produced an
Speaker 1: English artist called the Matt Johnson Yeah, an epic had
Speaker 1: come over to produce, and we had the songs. We
Speaker 1: had most of the songs written, and we went into
Speaker 1: Albert studio. The c d C guys had a little
Speaker 1: that their publishing house had a small studio in Sydney
Speaker 1: and the Northern Beaches and we started to record the songs,
Speaker 1: including Beds of Burning, which once we'd finished with it,
Speaker 1: we knew it was hummable and all of that, and
Speaker 1: it was a strong song, but we had no idea
Speaker 1: that it would eventually become that sort of breakthrough song
Speaker 1: for us. How does it become the breakthrough song in
Speaker 1: part because at the same time you had MTV is
Speaker 1: starting to show videos, and we made some videos a
Speaker 1: little bit slower. So you have a deal, you have
Speaker 1: a deal with CBS, which at some point becomes Sony,
Speaker 1: but this is before that, and you make Diesel and Dust.
Speaker 1: Is it put out simultaneously in the US as it
Speaker 1: is in Australia. Yes, Now that the company is ready
Speaker 1: for who decides to make the video? We do, okay,
Speaker 1: And so you know, the video ultimately gets airplay all
Speaker 1: over the world whatever. But how much money is spent
Speaker 1: on that video? Well, Sony paid paid. Of course, you
Speaker 1: ultimately paid for it exactly. But they answer the money, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think it was jointly agreed. You know. I
Speaker 1: think that we've always done our made our own videos
Speaker 1: and done our own artwork and all that stuff. The
Speaker 1: record company will will will come to the party and
Speaker 1: lend us, as you say, some money, perhaps depending on
Speaker 1: what the budget are. But we decided what we wanted
Speaker 1: to do and we shot some of it here in
Speaker 1: Sydney and some of it out in the bush. And
Speaker 1: people have heard the record by that stage. And you know,
Speaker 1: obviously the A and R people and others were excited
Speaker 1: about it and thought, wow, you know, we've got some
Speaker 1: songs here that that might get onto radio that's important
Speaker 1: for them at the time in the States. As I
Speaker 1: understand it, you probably know more about this than I.
Speaker 1: So this is what we gleaned. The payola thing was
Speaker 1: was starting to be had risen up its head again,
Speaker 1: certainly on radio on radio, and it seemed like there
Speaker 1: was a little bit more openness for people just to
Speaker 1: play other music. And we started to get played on
Speaker 1: radio and some there were some big stations that started
Speaker 1: to run the song, and so the radio play came
Speaker 1: before the video play. I think, so yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: to be honest, it's a bit of a blur to me.
Speaker 1: So I'm assuming it did, but I'm not. But at
Speaker 1: what point do you realize you're on the ricord ship here?
Speaker 1: I think when we go back to play and we've
Speaker 1: been playing big clubs and college is and then our
Speaker 1: agent says to us, actually, we're playing amphitheaters and they've
Speaker 1: sold out, so we might even play some bigger places.
Speaker 1: But I look, here's the thing for us. You know,
Speaker 1: for most many musicians, they literally do have a kind
Speaker 1: of overnight success and they're scratching themselves a bit, and
Speaker 1: then you know they can hang onto it or they
Speaker 1: build on it or whatever. From what I've been telling you,
Speaker 1: you know, we've been plugging away in a country on
Speaker 1: the other side of the world forever, right exactly. Well
Speaker 1: that's you know, the old But okay, you make the video.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm on the other side of the ocean.
Speaker 1: But it starts to really blow up. So at one
Speaker 1: point to Sony and New York say, or CBS New
Speaker 1: York say, you've gotta come here. We're gonna do this,
Speaker 1: you know, they well they're saying it pretty quickly and
Speaker 1: fairly readily, and so away we go. So what was
Speaker 1: it like, Well, you know, it's one of those funny things.
Speaker 1: Everything starts to move that much more quickly when that
Speaker 1: happens in your career, and you will have talked to
Speaker 1: other artists like this. You know, they'll say, I actually
Speaker 1: can't remember what happened between, you know, because you know
Speaker 1: we were going fast and furious. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: I can't not remember it because we were we were
Speaker 1: lying on our backs in some nightclubs somewhere. It's just
Speaker 1: that we never based ourselves overseas we always based ourselves
Speaker 1: in Australia and we've always marched the beat of our
Speaker 1: own drum. Plus we're not that fast about popular culture
Speaker 1: and whether we're in or out or who's who in
Speaker 1: the zoo, So for us it was more a case
Speaker 1: of what can we get done whilst insane and remaining
Speaker 1: connected to home. You go on the road to partake
Speaker 1: of the rock star lifestyle. Not really, I mean we're
Speaker 1: we're no, you are me. I don't know which part.
Speaker 1: But let's start with the alcohol and the drugs. No,
Speaker 1: that's not. I mean we enjoy our having a beer
Speaker 1: and a glass of wine and all of those things.
Speaker 1: And people will have you know, had whatever interaction with
Speaker 1: recreational drugs as young person, teenagers and young adults. But
Speaker 1: Midnight Idol has got a very strong work ethic and
Speaker 1: we enjoy ourselves, I mean our idea of partaking the
Speaker 1: rock and roll. So we couldn't actually believe that when
Speaker 1: we played a show there was a bottle of wine
Speaker 1: there in the green, there was a writer. Wow. When
Speaker 1: we finished, someone would drive us into a car to
Speaker 1: a club where we could hear another band, and we
Speaker 1: would sit around having a beer and talking to other musicians.
Speaker 1: I mean that was heaven on a stick. And what
Speaker 1: about sex? Most of us are settled with our permanent
Speaker 1: girlfriends wives, so by time it hit, yeah, you already
Speaker 1: had your girlfriend, We already had kids, were more. Really
Speaker 1: most of us are married men, okay with children before
Speaker 1: the success? And what's paying for that lifestyle? Correct? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean the music is enough money to make this
Speaker 1: all work? Yeah? Well, we worked hard, you know, and
Speaker 1: and we did our own deals, and we had a
Speaker 1: manager and an agents that people that shared our vision.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were the ultimate do it yourself outfit.
Speaker 1: In some ways, we didn't have you know, safety pins
Speaker 1: in our genes, but we had that attitude. But also
Speaker 1: we weren't ripped off by people. You know, we we
Speaker 1: were thoughtful about Okay, everybody is married. Are they still
Speaker 1: married to those people? Uh? Three of us are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's pretty good for rock and roll. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you have this big success, to what degree do you
Speaker 1: feel pressure you gotta follow it up? Well, the precious
Speaker 1: inevitably going to come, uh, simply because you're you're aware
Speaker 1: of it. And the Blue Sky Mining is the next record,
Speaker 1: and there are a couple of songs on there, that
Speaker 1: that also with Shart songs, but those were successful songs.
Speaker 1: But when you're sitting there in the studio and you
Speaker 1: know you've had a hit album, to what degree you say,
Speaker 1: I've got to write something, I'm worried about whether it's
Speaker 1: going to be a good video good not at all. No,
Speaker 1: it's not in our dialogue. We don't. We don't think
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, and if okay, so then you continue
Speaker 1: to have success. At what point do you get back
Speaker 1: into the politics. I should qualify my last answer to you,
Speaker 1: Bob when I said we don't think like that. Of course,
Speaker 1: when people are writing songs, they'll think about whether this
Speaker 1: is the kind of song that might get played on radio,
Speaker 1: because we're students of music and we're musicians, but it's
Speaker 1: not our predominant sort of thought. Our thinking space is
Speaker 1: always around what works for us. What is midnight Oil?
Speaker 1: Is it going to fly or not? We don't really know.
Speaker 1: This one sounds like it, maybe it won't. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter here it is. So that's how that works. Blue
Speaker 1: sky Mine. Well, we then have the career that sort
Speaker 1: of settles and then stagnates a bit, you know, big
Speaker 1: in anybody, Yeah, doing doing okay, not heaps of and
Speaker 1: we give a fair bit away. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: our own sharable things happening, and I mean we're not saints.
Speaker 1: We look after ourselves, but we also like to support people.
Speaker 1: So how do you get into the politics thing ultimately
Speaker 1: full time? Well, by the early naughties, I think, from
Speaker 1: my perspective, at least, we reached the point where if
Speaker 1: we don't relocate and re transform what we're doing, we're
Speaker 1: really going around in a kind of a circle, which
Speaker 1: for midnight all is not healthy. And at that stage,
Speaker 1: I've done two terms as the a c F President,
Speaker 1: I've spent quite a bit of time in the National Parliament.
Speaker 1: I've been negotiating political deals and legislations and all those
Speaker 1: sorts of things. And I wasn't sure what I would do,
Speaker 1: but I thought, I want to do more politics, whether
Speaker 1: it's in an energeo capacity or whether it's in a
Speaker 1: formal capacity. And as it turned out, it became a
Speaker 1: formal capacity. So I get invited to join the Labor Party,
Speaker 1: which is the equivalent of the Democrats here, and by
Speaker 1: a confluence of events, there's a seat which I can
Speaker 1: win if if I stand for it. And so I
Speaker 1: say to the oils at that point, when when I
Speaker 1: finished with the oils at that stage, to them too.
Speaker 1: I hadn't decided on politics, although everyone thought it would happen,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know what would happen anyway. Eventually it
Speaker 1: does happen and I become a member of parliament. I
Speaker 1: get elected here to a seat here in Sydney, a
Speaker 1: place where we played a lot, where I went to UNI,
Speaker 1: had good close connections with the community, and my life
Speaker 1: changes completely for ten years. What does the band say
Speaker 1: about all this? Look mixed feelings. I think some would
Speaker 1: have liked kept on doing what we were doing, maybe
Speaker 1: with people doing solo albums and we regroup occasionally. Others
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, that's that makes sense, that's you've always
Speaker 1: been that kind of person. So well, you're doing the
Speaker 1: political thing for ten years. What are they living on?
Speaker 1: What are they doing? They just do different things, you know.
Speaker 1: They well, it's funny. They thought they'd get another singer
Speaker 1: for a while. That proved a little bit right, so
Speaker 1: they form about It ends up being an instrumental band
Speaker 1: called The Break and they play arts festivals and around
Speaker 1: and about a bit. They do their own solo albums.
Speaker 1: Both Jim and Rob prolific writers, so there's lots of
Speaker 1: music coming out. Jim produces people and they play with
Speaker 1: other people, so they live the life of working musicians,
Speaker 1: and they're going to be pissed at you. Yes and no,
Speaker 1: I think that. I don't know. I mean, we've talked
Speaker 1: about it a bit. The attitude seems to be, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know you've got to We're not We're not the
Speaker 1: kind of person we can hold back. Okay, what about
Speaker 1: your mind? You're leaving the circus. Are you cool with that? Yes,
Speaker 1: very much so, Okay, you go into politics now at
Speaker 1: the end of it, Okay, what do you think about
Speaker 1: it of having been in politics? Did not regret it
Speaker 1: for a second. Well, you have an experience, But to
Speaker 1: what degree we're your goals fulfilled? Some goals were fulfilled
Speaker 1: to the extent that I hoped for, and others fell short.
Speaker 1: My major feeling about it, Bob, is that I probably
Speaker 1: should have done it earlier. What would have happened if
Speaker 1: you've done it earlier. I think if I had done
Speaker 1: it earlier, I may have had a longer career, and
Speaker 1: maybe even a more senior career. Even though I was
Speaker 1: a cabinet minister. I was very senior by the end.
Speaker 1: So I, for example, I'm very interested in foreign airs. Um,
Speaker 1: so perhaps you know that that I might have ended
Speaker 1: up as a Minister for Foreign Affairs if I had
Speaker 1: a start earlier. So I herded is, how does it end? Well,
Speaker 1: we have a leader at the time, he's the Prime Minister.
Speaker 1: I'm the Environment Minister under him, but he's a difficult
Speaker 1: person to be let I only ever had one boss.
Speaker 1: One was enough. But he's then replaced by a woman
Speaker 1: leader who becomes Australia's first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
Speaker 1: When that changeover happened, she gives me all of her portfolios,
Speaker 1: or most of them. So I become the Education Minister,
Speaker 1: and I work as the Education Minister and the Youth Minister,
Speaker 1: and we pass laws to improve education. But the party
Speaker 1: is not traveling well in the polls, and he, the
Speaker 1: first Prime Minister, stages that come back and I privately
Speaker 1: decide if he comes back, I'm not staying. So he
Speaker 1: comes back and I say to my colleagues, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: They want me to stay and stay in that role,
Speaker 1: but I resigned from that role. And then when the
Speaker 1: next election comes, I don't stand again. What was the thought?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, what were you planning to do
Speaker 1: if you were no longer having that career? Well, I
Speaker 1: could do anything, you know. I could spend some time
Speaker 1: with my my dearly beloved wife, you know, and she's
Speaker 1: been hanging in for me for a long time. Because
Speaker 1: I've obviously been working really hard and long hours and
Speaker 1: all of those things. I understand how the country works.
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of experience, you know, big levels
Speaker 1: of government. I've been an activist. Now I can add
Speaker 1: value to someone. Okay, So once you don't stand for
Speaker 1: a re election, at what point do you say, fuck,
Speaker 1: we'll get the band together. Well that's the good question,
Speaker 1: isn't it. So I thought I'd be working essentially as
Speaker 1: a lawyer, come activists with community groups. That's what I thought.
Speaker 1: I'd been doing, and playing a bit of music on
Speaker 1: the side, you know. I thought, well, we'll play a
Speaker 1: club and we'll raise a bit of money, you know,
Speaker 1: for for for whatever, and have some fun. But I
Speaker 1: finish and then as I wrote my autobiography, and as
Speaker 1: I'm writing my biography, there's a guitar sitting in the
Speaker 1: corner of my study, and I'm I'm an average guitarist,
Speaker 1: but I can play the guitar and I'm a musician,
Speaker 1: so I know, with the chords and this guitar, as
Speaker 1: you know, it's starting to move and it's quite weird,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, am I seeing things? It's not really moving,
Speaker 1: but it's calling me. Pick me up, you know, So
Speaker 1: I start picking the guitar up. At the end of
Speaker 1: each day, i'd try and write eight hundred words, you
Speaker 1: know what it's like, And then I pick up the
Speaker 1: guitar and I'm just playing some simple chords and I
Speaker 1: end up with a dozen or so what I call
Speaker 1: folk songs. So I played these folks songs just like
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old. You know. I've got a few
Speaker 1: folks because I've always been in a band with people
Speaker 1: who are great songwriters, and they're always writing songs and
Speaker 1: playing guitar. You should record the songs have some fun.
Speaker 1: So inevitably I do go and record those songs with
Speaker 1: Martin Rozzi from Midnight or but with other people as well.
Speaker 1: We turn them into electric folks songs. And I loved it,
Speaker 1: you know, I really I just re encountered that part
Speaker 1: of my life, which makes me feel good. And in
Speaker 1: doing that, Martin and I were chatting, and of course
Speaker 1: we said it would be interesting to see what happened
Speaker 1: if we got in a room together. Shall we do it?
Speaker 1: And I said to the oils, do you want to
Speaker 1: get in a room together? Because I've loved making music
Speaker 1: by myself A little different when you're back with your
Speaker 1: colleagues again, with the promise that we made to one another,
Speaker 1: which we weren't going to break, get in the room
Speaker 1: and if everybody doesn't feel, literally, as an older musician
Speaker 1: who's been around the block ninety times, that we're blowing
Speaker 1: one another's heads off, then you've got to walk out
Speaker 1: the door. But as it turned out, it sounded alarmingly
Speaker 1: better than I remembered, and we thought, well, let's play
Speaker 1: some shows. And it was literally little steps like that
Speaker 1: ended up to today. Okay, So what what year do
Speaker 1: you stop running for re election? Two thousand and twelve? Okay?
Speaker 1: And at what point do you start running your autobiography
Speaker 1: straight away? Okay? So you really we never did all
Speaker 1: these other things working through whatever. You went straight to
Speaker 1: the bio autobiography. Okay, So then you're in the room together,
Speaker 1: you play the small shows. At what point do you say, funk,
Speaker 1: We're going to give it a run. Pretty much straight away? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much straight away. I think there's no point in
Speaker 1: doing it halfheartedly, and there's only one way of testing it,
Speaker 1: you know, to see if people are there. And I
Speaker 1: think that challenge, of course, is the one that you
Speaker 1: don't want to be a nostalgia act. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be past your best physically or obviously not as
Speaker 1: as young as you were. So what is it that
Speaker 1: makes it work well? For us? It's always been about
Speaker 1: the sound that we're creating on the stage. Is that
Speaker 1: still going to happen. We've got new management who shared
Speaker 1: the vision. We played here a little bit and people
Speaker 1: went beyond bananas. It was a little bit well okay,
Speaker 1: and so you could feel that the lightning, but really, well,
Speaker 1: let's go and play in the world and see if
Speaker 1: there's anyone there. But this was a really big deal, okay,
Speaker 1: because I would hear from people literally from Canada literally
Speaker 1: the you gotta go, you gotta go, and I you know,
Speaker 1: this was such a big deal okay, And and we
Speaker 1: views were great. Whatever you come back from that tour,
Speaker 1: now what well, we gotta make some music. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we've started writing and recording and we'll do that. And
Speaker 1: so if you went back on the road, where can
Speaker 1: you play? Where? Where does midnight oil mean something? Pretty
Speaker 1: much everywhere? Just Australia, United States, Canada. Now we could
Speaker 1: play uh so South America, Brazil, Europe, um scandinaving countries
Speaker 1: and on this last toury to go to all those places.
Speaker 1: Yes we did, we play most of them. It wasn't
Speaker 1: lucrative in some ways in some places that were certainly
Speaker 1: paid for itself and better. Okay, Yeah, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the political thing. Okay, what did you learn about
Speaker 1: the process? It's a little bit like making sausages. You
Speaker 1: don't want to get too close to it, you know,
Speaker 1: if you've got high ideals about it. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's the most important game in town. Okay,
Speaker 1: but to what degree by making the sausage does it
Speaker 1: teamp the individual? To what do we do you have
Speaker 1: to compromise? Well that the definition of politics is compromised.
Speaker 1: There is nothing happens politically, even the big steps in
Speaker 1: this world, without someone somewhere compromising to some extent. The
Speaker 1: question around that is always are you compromising the very
Speaker 1: thing that you're standing for. Are are you ultimately advancing it?
Speaker 1: And I think nine times out of ten my viewers
Speaker 1: that within the party we were always advancing it if
Speaker 1: there were things that you didn't agree with, which essentially
Speaker 1: is a compromise for you. That is part of the
Speaker 1: process of being a team player in a political party.
Speaker 1: In the Westminster system. One of the things that holds
Speaker 1: us back politically as a species people's egos and people's
Speaker 1: lust for power and the fact that they'll do anything
Speaker 1: for it, and the fact that they don't support their
Speaker 1: colleagues for the greater good. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I did when I went into politics was I
Speaker 1: essued the fact that I was really a very well
Speaker 1: known national person in Australia, celebrity if you like, not
Speaker 1: my my word, but probably definitely the most famous person
Speaker 1: ever to walk into the Parliament just like that. And
Speaker 1: anyone who's tried that before, whether it's been a football
Speaker 1: player or a sports star or someone has got smashed
Speaker 1: out of the park. And I wasn't going to show
Speaker 1: up on the weekend shows and crack jokes about midnight oil.
Speaker 1: And you know, we've played a big set, and now
Speaker 1: the legislation is star. I did it as a serious politician,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people here didn't quite figure that
Speaker 1: out to begin with, that, including my peers, couldn't quite
Speaker 1: understand that. But I felt that the Midnight Oha was
Speaker 1: too important for me to demean them in any way
Speaker 1: by using them. And I also felt the politics as
Speaker 1: too serious as a vocation to try and utilize show
Speaker 1: business to advance it. So I was a classic policy wonk.
Speaker 1: I'm the boring guy that reads everything you know and
Speaker 1: wants to get it done. Okay, So what was it
Speaker 1: like when people thought you compromised him? That angry at you?
Speaker 1: I'm talking about constituents, Uh, mostly predictable all part of
Speaker 1: the course. And what could you cope with it? Oh? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah okay? And then well what you know,
Speaker 1: you were a minister of education and you've in a
Speaker 1: perfect world. What would you like the educational system to
Speaker 1: be well as it should be in your country? You know?
Speaker 1: And I went to I went to your country. I
Speaker 1: spent time with the education secretary there, Obama's education secretary,
Speaker 1: and we just can't remember the guy's name, but you know,
Speaker 1: trying to do good stuff So here's here's the here's
Speaker 1: the deal as eventually, unless we have well rounded citizens
Speaker 1: emerging in our countries who have got the capacity to innovate,
Speaker 1: to empathize, to be creative, who've got a decent knowledge base,
Speaker 1: and who understand a bit about history, the world to
Speaker 1: be messy. In order to do that, you have to
Speaker 1: maximize the opportunity for any young boy or girl, whether
Speaker 1: they're living in the suburbs of Connecticut or they're out
Speaker 1: in the middle of wherever, and no matter how much
Speaker 1: money their parents or carera zone, to be the best
Speaker 1: student they can be. So we've got a Bell curve
Speaker 1: in our populations in America, and I've got a Bell
Speaker 1: curve in Australia. You want to make sure everybody gets
Speaker 1: the best opportunity, but you're bell curve. Kids are the
Speaker 1: ones who become the scientists, the designers, the leaders of
Speaker 1: the future. To do that, you have to make sure
Speaker 1: that every school is adequately resourced to do that job.
Speaker 1: The teachers are well trained and well remunerated, and that
Speaker 1: the leaders in this schools principles or head masters or mistresses,
Speaker 1: whatever you call them in your country, have got the
Speaker 1: capacity to lead and in our country. That means that
Speaker 1: everyone should get supported in education funding from the big
Speaker 1: budget according to need, not the loudest voices, not the
Speaker 1: richest schools according to need. And these other principles apply.
Speaker 1: If you think about when you and I went to school,
Speaker 1: and some people listening to this compared to my kids
Speaker 1: and then their kids. You don't need to be a
Speaker 1: brain in mass to be able to add up. You've
Speaker 1: got a pocket calculator. Nowadays you've got a computer. You
Speaker 1: don't need to be told how the world actually fits
Speaker 1: together in terms of geography, because you can ask Madam
Speaker 1: Google and Madam Google and enlighten you. But how do
Speaker 1: you become a well rounded citizen? How do become someone
Speaker 1: who learns to listen, who understands problem solving, who realizes
Speaker 1: the gaps in their own knowledge, and then goes off
Speaker 1: and make sure that they fill those gaps to do
Speaker 1: something with them, is imbued with a sense of concern
Speaker 1: for their fellow people. You can only do that by
Speaker 1: good education system in the primary level. And if you
Speaker 1: look at a country that does it well, Finland is
Speaker 1: of course as example, but there are others that's what
Speaker 1: they do and they don't do it they don't work harder,
Speaker 1: the kids aren't in class longer than they are in
Speaker 1: Australia or the States. They're not being coached at home
Speaker 1: by tutors more than other people are. At all. Their
Speaker 1: teachers are well remunerated effectively, their masters of education, and
Speaker 1: the schools are well supported. That's what you got. Okay,
Speaker 1: But in the United States, first reaction to what you're
Speaker 1: saying is who's going to pay for all this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well guess what. Everybody should pay, including the wealthy. Everybody
Speaker 1: should play, including the big companies. Know you're preaching in
Speaker 1: the converted here, but just you know, looking at the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean in America, tax is a dirty word. You
Speaker 1: can't even mention it. It's a third real topic. So
Speaker 1: so what is the hope for the world. Well, I
Speaker 1: can't talk about the hope of the world. The hope
Speaker 1: for America is it's got to get over its allergy
Speaker 1: to tax. You know, it's gotta there's gotta be a
Speaker 1: reconfiguration of language to enable that to happen. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: as I say, well, let me let me be more
Speaker 1: specific and broad. At the same time, we have all
Speaker 1: these nationalistic people around the world primarily a reaction to
Speaker 1: income inequality and globalization. You and me know the globalization
Speaker 1: is inevitable. You know, you don't want to make a
Speaker 1: flat screen. You don't want to be three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for a flat screen. But we can also say that
Speaker 1: the people were left behind globalization didn't get any help. Correct. Okay,
Speaker 1: but is the world going to move more towards Rexit,
Speaker 1: ward towards Trump or is there going to be an
Speaker 1: event that flips us back to what ones was in
Speaker 1: terms of globalization? What do you think? Okay? Uh, big question.
Speaker 1: But I think essentially that one component of nationalism Trump
Speaker 1: and Brexit, which if you like, a previous social democratic
Speaker 1: and progressive forces haven't fully understood, is the tribal nature
Speaker 1: of communities and nations, and that unless we are clear
Speaker 1: about how we essentially mediate globalism locally as opposed to, hey,
Speaker 1: just let it happen, people are going to be then
Speaker 1: it's going to be a very contested space politically. Having
Speaker 1: said that, I think that the most important awareness that
Speaker 1: we can have is the awareness that we got when
Speaker 1: NASA for NASA for sent people to the moon, you know,
Speaker 1: and we first saw the photos and so it's simple
Speaker 1: sounds like a very simplistic thing to say, but the
Speaker 1: truth of it is that, you know, it's eight and
Speaker 1: a half billion people and numbers growing, although eventually it
Speaker 1: will stabilize off and a world that where the ecology
Speaker 1: and the environment of the world is pretty much getting
Speaker 1: stretched to map to breaking point. We have to work
Speaker 1: out the cooperative mechanisms for allowing us to have national
Speaker 1: and international responses to these issues which are coherent and
Speaker 1: can work hand in hand. And that is essentially the
Speaker 1: vision that they had after World War Two when they
Speaker 1: set up the United Nations, and that vision was we
Speaker 1: cannot have a global war. Now the vision must be
Speaker 1: we must have absolute global cooperation whilst maintaining the sanctity
Speaker 1: of communities, local communities, regional communities and nation states to
Speaker 1: chart their own course within these much more broadly agreed parameters.
Speaker 1: And the obvious one around here, Bob, is climate change,
Speaker 1: because it's the ultimate economic issue, but it's also the
Speaker 1: ultimate global issue, and it's the ultimate environment issue. It
Speaker 1: affects us all and no rich person you know living
Speaker 1: in your state or this city who thinks they can
Speaker 1: escape it by having a better air conditioning system. And
Speaker 1: a world of state is going to escape. It's not
Speaker 1: going to happen. Okay, we're does music fit in with
Speaker 1: all this? Well, music is our soundtrack, you know. Music
Speaker 1: is the soundtrack about time of the zychi that whatever
Speaker 1: is happening at the moment, it's not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: lead the charge. Music doesn't change the world by itself.
Speaker 1: It can't. People do it. It's people that change the world.
Speaker 1: But they need their songs. I've got to have their songs,
Speaker 1: They've got to have their soundtracks. So I think that
Speaker 1: music has not even a role to play. I think
Speaker 1: it it does its thing in a most magical way.
Speaker 1: It crosses, if you like, the mind to the heart
Speaker 1: barriers very quickly. It goes straight to both and then
Speaker 1: it goes to your feet as well. What could be better?
Speaker 1: That's what you need? Okay, So you've achieved so much,
Speaker 1: You've had an internationally successful group that didn't sell out,
Speaker 1: you had a political career. What is the next dream? Well,
Speaker 1: I I just hope to be able to do each day. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think this is honestly, and I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to be falsely modest, but I really do
Speaker 1: think that one of the mistakes that is easily made,
Speaker 1: particularly in this profession, is to believe that you have
Speaker 1: the answers that you're the hero. You know. I don't
Speaker 1: buy the hero myth, you know. I think it's been
Speaker 1: a really dangerous myth for Western civilization. I buy the
Speaker 1: collective myth. Together working together, using our different skills and capacities,
Speaker 1: A believe we can get good stuff done. So I'll
Speaker 1: just continue to do that with my music friends and
Speaker 1: with anyone else who wants to do. Okay, did you
Speaker 1: have that same viewpoint before you got involved in politics
Speaker 1: or did you learn it as a results. I had
Speaker 1: the same view before I got involved in politics. My
Speaker 1: views haven't changed much over the last thirty years. Okay,
Speaker 1: so much food for thought. Peter Garrett certainly politician, lead, singer, charismatic.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for doing this well, Bob, has been
Speaker 1: a pleasure to talk to your mate. Okay, great, I
Speaker 1: have so much more to learn until next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left SA