Rob Hirst was not the figurehead of Midnight Oil – but he was its backbone

The death of Rob Hirst from pancreatic cancer at the age of 70 is the close of a long and, in many ways, surprising career.

Hirst was the drummer and songwriter who, though far from the figurehead of Midnight Oil, was nonetheless an integral part – perhaps the backbone – of one of the most consistently adventurous and principled groups of the last half-century.

For most, Midnight Oil means Peter Garrett. But it was Garrett who answered an ad to join Farm, Hirst’s band with Jim Moginie and Andrew James, in 1972. Were it not for his arrival, the group might not have gone far beyond the northern beaches of Sydney: Garrett was striking as a performer and his singing was distinctive (though, like Jimmy Barnes, he did not sing all the great songs his band was famous for).

While Midnight Oil’s members recognised a common purpose and achieved an extraordinary amount on a range of fronts, Hirst’s memoir of their early 21st century United States tour shows there was always some measure of tension between them.

In 1980, Hirst told Toby Creswell of Rolling Stone he didn’t like Garrett’s taste, “and he doesn’t like mine […] You’re really putting together people who don’t get on socially or musically.”

Not there to compromise

Midnight Oil’s records were exceptionally high quality from the outset.

Their self-titled first album was what you’d expect from a group which took pleasure in Australian surfing “head” music bands like Tully and Kahvas Jute.

Their second, Head Injuries, was brash and stark: they had emerged, for better or worse, at the time of punk/new wave but fitted as uneasily with X or The Saints as with blunter, more traditional rock groups like AC/DC.

Their 12" EP Bird Noises was as fine a summation of their approach as could be imagined. The Hirst/Garrett cowrite No Time for Games has a social message, a distinctive vocal from Garrett and of course, extraordinary drums, restrained when they had to be but ever servicing the song’s dynamics.

From the very beginning, they made it clear that they were not available to undertake the usual compromises the record industry expected for career furtherance.

Famously, they refused to play Countdown. In hindsight, they would have been severely out of place there.

Nevertheless, they gave the major groups of the 70s their due; Hirst praised Skyhooks’ Greg Macainsh, for instance, for his use of Australian places and scenes, making it “possible for you to write about, in his case, Carlton and Balwyn […] [now] we’ve got this whole palette of Australian places we can use without a cringe factor.”

On their own terms

Sales and impact of subsequent Midnight Oil albums trace the rise of a group attaining international prominence on its own terms through hard work and consistent attention to detail.

The commercial peak came with the 1987 single Beds are Burning (a cowrite between Garrett, Hirst and Moginie): top ten in France, the US, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium – and number one in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

That it was a song on the world stage highlighting Australian Aboriginal dispossession was perhaps an even greater achievement.

Hirst’s memoir Willie’s Bar and Grill gives a good sense of a group finding the very common way down from the top: the trajectory of the one-hit wonder, in this case experienced while touring post-9/11 US.

They disbanded soon afterwards, not for this reason but because Garrett had been picked by Mark Latham to stand as Labor candidate for Kingsford-Smith in the 2004 federal election. They reunited 13 years later.

A varied career

Hirst had other irons in the fire as early as 1991 when he formed Ghostwriters with Rick Grossman. Perhaps the band’s name signalled a frisson of bitterness about the concentration of attention Garrett garnered in Midnight Oil, but paradoxically its first album was essentially an anonymous release.

Two others followed, and Hirst was also involved in the Backsliders and the Angry Tradesmen.

In 2020 he recorded an album with his daughter, Jay O'Shea, who he had put up for adoption in 1974. In 2025 he released the second of two albums recorded with noted songwriter Sean Sennett.

A 50-year career is almost impossible to sum up briefly, but one song speaks volumes about Hirst. Power and the Passion, the 1983 Midnight Oil hit, features a simple (if infectious) drum machine and what might almost pass for a rap from Garrett, listing a host of demons besetting the citizen at the end of the 20th century, not least from Americanisation and corporatisation.

Hirst plays along with the beat then engages it in an epic battle, executing a remarkable solo which enhances the song while making a statement about working with and against the pernicious machine.

In a career of great work, it’s one highlight that speaks louder than words.