After finishing the Blackfella/Whitefella tour we’d taken stock. Of the many things that stood out from that experience, a desire to keep it simple was one, and that meant taking finished songs into the studio and getting them down without too much fuss.
Diesel was an album where the band didn’t have to strain. The anchor was the desert experience so the themes were clear. The loping, even rhythms we’d fallen into while driving across the open spaces established a base. We had too much energy to swing as a band, but it was our own kind of groove, and the songs were flowing.
It was difficult to know if we’d nailed something special, and opinions were typically varied. Yes, we could hear something in the grooves, and ‘Beds Are Burning’ was super-singable, memorable, but no one really knew how it would translate to the outside world. In the end, it was partly by design—getting the sound and the feel to sit right—and partly by accident, that we finally got there.
Europe had already shown some interest in the Oils, and that interest intensified. The pared-back songs and the bushman look of the photos and videos that accompanied the album, which was pretty much how we’d togged up on tour, proved popular among people for whom Australia was still a far-off exotic land.
In the US, ‘Beds’ snuck onto radio by virtue of a momentary halt in a scam that was common at the time, whereby record companies, via an intermediary known as a plugger, paid radio stations to play certain songs. Called ‘payola’, the practice was illegal and completely distorted the charts, and it never went away. As recently as 2005, major record companies in the US—Sony, Warner and Universal—were fined millions of dollars for this dodge. Those who could afford to bribe rarely took risks with anything that sounded or looked different, and it favoured the labels with big budgets. The lull in payola in the late 1980s saw ‘Beds Are Burning’ get a run in its own right. We charged through and into the bright lights. All of a sudden Midnight Oil was in the mainstream with a worldwide hit about giving land back to the Indigenous people of the most ancient continent on earth.
The success of Diesel and Dust saw the audience grow rapidly, although at home there was initially a degree of ambivalence about what some people saw as a preoccupation with Aboriginal issues. Once ‘Beds’ became a radio staple these doubts faded away. In Europe and the States, the stages and the crowds got bigger. One day we were squeezing onto the set of Late Night with David Letterman for the first in a series of performances, the next we were playing at an open-air show in Central Park for the UN. Getting popular in a country of over 240 million people meant we could now do a few things that might turn heads and start a conversation.
Throughout the rising tide that followed the success of Diesel and Dust, our peculiar polarities remained; one was the desire to stay grounded at home versus a burgeoning international career, the other, pursuing our music and issues without interference, which meant butting heads with a record company focused on exploiting our ‘overnight’ success. It was a set of tensions we could never completely reconcile, and over the next fifteen years the Oils morphed into a cottage industry that didn’t reach the heights our manager, agents and some fans thought possible, but at least our marriages and sanity would remain (mostly) intact.
In between we got through as much touring, music-making and activism together as we could manage. There was never a question in our minds, although it was interminably asked, as to what came first—the music or the message? Of course it had to be the music. It was the juice that started the engine, the spur that got me going in the first place.
If you took a careful look, Midnight Oil’s message wasn’t in the songs by themselves, which varied, ranging over topics and with different expression depending on when they were recorded, and which person or combination of band members had written the particular track. The message was in joining the music and its lyrics with actions that matched what was being sung. This endeavour was a form of social/political outreach that consumed us for more than two decades. Were we earnest and self-righteous? Yes, we surely were. But we were yoked in the service of an idea bigger than success: the integrity of the work that was being produced, and the legitimacy of the issues that we supported. This stance remained forever the opposite of the dream factory and infantile rebellion that was rock’s constant leitmotif—this was our message.
At its heart, music works primarily at an emotional level. It’s obvious in jazz or classical pieces that summon up feelings without any narrative map. ‘I second that emotion’ is all over popular music; just think of the Crystals’ ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ or John Lee Hooker’s ‘Boom Boom’. If you have words that mesh or a story to tell or a point to make, then well and good: you’ve got more meat on the bone. Yet one listener relates to Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’ as a gritty tale of injustice whereas another just likes that song about hurricanes with the great fiddle line. Once it’s out in the open, floating in the ether, a song is no longer the writer’s, nor is it necessarily taken as the writer intended. It’s now a tiny particle in the cosmos, an infinitesimal bit of soundtrack for anyone, anywhere to feed off. But if you get out and do something concrete with it, then that adds value to the song and the issue in question.
…
Inevitably, with the release of a new album—and an album that was going gangbusters, at that—we were back on the road again. Our touring family was usually five white males (the band) and a tour manager. Sometimes we carried other players, like trombonist Glad Reed from Sydney band Just a Drummer; Charlie (Hook) McMahon, who by now had established himself with Gondwanaland; and, on the bigger concert tours that followed, Chris Abrahams on piano. Chris was a masterful keyboardist who went on to great acclaim in the Necks. I don’t ever recall him playing anything approaching an off note. His phrasing was nuanced and deft, arriving at the changes at exactly the right moment.
It wouldn’t have been that easy coming on tour with the Oils, at least at the start. The foundation members had already been together for so long we could go days without talking. Our characters were set, but there was a larger composite character—the band—that could answer for any of us if needed. If the collective mind was made up on an issue, then there was little need to explain. Midnight Oil talked a lot, especially about music and how to keep our nose in front, but we weren’t talkative. We knew each other so well, we were, as I’ve said, more like brothers than best mates. Sharing a career, and seeing more of one another than our partners and families, calls for a certain kind of detachment to be sustainable. It’s not about the small stuff, so long as the big stuff—the band—is still in motion.
Life on the road ultimately took its toll on Giffo, wrestling with his demons and veering to the political right; not long after Diesel’s release in the middle of 1987, he made an abrupt exit. No sooner was he out the door than Bones Hillman just as quickly walked in.
Originally from Kiwi band the Swingers, at the time Bones was working as a house painter in Melbourne and living with Neil Finn from Crowded House and his wife Sharon. Bonesy not only took up the bass-playing role and sang back-up without breaking into a sweat, he also brought an easygoing approach that lightened the mood in the camp. Unlike the rest of us, Bones—single and without kids—was happiest on tour. In the bus, curtains down, careering through the dead of the night after a show, he’d settle in for a movie, get out the playing cards or play DJ with the stacks of CDs that were always flying around the galley. His pleasure at being on this self-contained ship out on the ocean, cut off from the fisticuffs of society, was only equalled by my frustration at being out of range, unable to dip into the swirl of current events washing around in a different time zone.
The others coped with touring in their own ways. I always thought of Jim and Martin—Jim whimsical and gentle, Martin dry and level—as creatures of music through and through, immersed in a parallel universe of guitars, amps and sound gadgets. They were aural architects throwing up the musical base where needed and, in Jim’s case, the supplier of mountains of music: songs, extende
d passages, chords and textures that could turn random ideas into finished songs. This preoccupation framed their daily lives and everything the band did when we hit the studio, and when we played live.
Rob, usually tapping on something, riven by nervous energy, was always at it, reading, writing and working the angles; he was interested in the history of places and got out more to museums and galleries. And he could crack light about the various absurdities and indignities of the road when the occasion called for it.
Gary Morris rarely travelled with the band. The monotony of touring—sound check, quick bite and shower, show, after-show meet-and-greet, overnight on the bus, hotel check-in, morning radio interviews, afternoon breakfast, promo duties, sound check, show, in endless repetition—held little attraction for his restless, fertile mind.
There had to be a lynchpin, someone to coordinate and control the assembly. In our case we got lucky when tour manager Willie McInnes fronted for a US tour around 1986 and stayed almost to the end of 2002. Willie bore a striking resemblance to cartoon character Yosemite Sam: stocky, moustache and boots, with a winning smile, and at least one bottle of bourbon stashed in his briefcase. He wore a whistle around his neck, which he used to round up the entourage and get us back on the treadmill—i.e. the bus—and, if needed, corral us like sheep and hustle us out the back door in times of strife or fan overload. Rob named his tragicomic book about the US tours of 2001 and 2002, Willie’s Bar & Grill: A rock ’n’ roll tour of North America in the age of terror, after him.
Like Connie ‘Boogie Queen’ Adolph, Willie had plenty of showbiz cred. He’d begun with West Coast outfit the Doobie Brothers and worked the spectrum from the Beach Boys to George Michael. He’d seen it all and more. A little out of our price range when we first met, he eventually agreed to come across to, as he put it, ‘escape the A-grade prima donnas, and besides, I can’t really understand what you guys are saying so that makes things more tolerable’.
Willie knew every trick of the trade, and his experience, honed over a lifetime on the road, made touring bearable and even occasionally a pleasure. With an address book to rival Bill Clinton’s, he could charm a club owner, a snobby maître d’ or a snarling New York cop if need be—as he had plenty of times in the past. If we were after a quiet place to play pool and wind down late at night, ‘No problem.’ And if we needed to find a hotel close to bookstores and in which you could actually open the windows, or the only vegetarian restaurant in town—the kind of staples that kept us on track—again, ‘No problem.’
I am often asked what it’s like to be in front of a crowd of 100,000 people, all cheering and chanting your name. My answer is that, while it feels amazing, it’s not about you. It’s a kindred celebration between you—with your band partners—and a bigger bunch of part-time friends joining up on songs that mean something to people at the time. Of course you’re elated, but the dancing on air doesn’t last, and you can’t take it to heart—at least that’s my take.
The desire to create, to perform, to get into the limelight, draws different types of personalities. Some expel their demons every night in the glare of the spotlight as everyone cranes to look at them. This can make for irresistible entertainment. But when the demons are fuelled by drugs or alcohol, or the performer’s mental and emotional state is out of kilter, then welcome to the slow-moving car crash—a tragic but familiar story.
Some performers never grow up. Look no further than Jagger, chasing ever-younger women around his various penthouses, Michael Jackson or, from an earlier era, Judy Garland. This arrested development sees these children/adults often frozen in their greatest moment, repeating their signature moves. Sooner or later they fall—or, if the gods are smiling, they push on as pale imitations of their former glorious selves. The roar of the crowd, with its truckloads of momentary unconditional love, lifts performers to dizzy heights. But it’s a cruel illusion, because when the fall back to earth comes, with a bone-shaking thud, it hurts.
While I was writing this memoir, Doc Neeson, lead singer for the Angels, died. He’d been sick for a while and had gone at it hard for years, so his body wasn’t as strong as he needed it to be. He was open about his troubles, which involved alcohol, prescription drugs, divorce and band break-ups. At one point, along with other supporters like former army chief and current Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, I provided a character reference to help him avoid jail for a driving-under-the-influence conviction. It worked. But I was saddened that someone who had achieved so much, a real musical force and a great stage presence, had reached this nadir. When word came through in early 2013 that a benefit show was being organised in his last months to help cover his medical expenses, I wanted to be there, even though my day job was now as a politician. On Monday, 15 April, I took a flight out of Canberra, arrived late in Sydney and changed out in the back street behind the Enmore Theatre. With Mark McEntee from the Divinyls and Jim on guitars, Rob on drums and Don Walker playing piano—what a band!—we tore through a version of ‘We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place’.
This was the best side of the music industry, joining hands and rallying for its own. I hived off to the side of the stage to give this giant of the scene, now standing in the wings, a big hug. ‘Hang in there, Doc, lots of people love you—look at tonight . . .’ was all I could muster. Six months later I was among a crowd of family and music-industry friends and colleagues crammed into a chapel to bid him a final farewell.
Doc’s story wasn’t unusual. Lead singers seem to crumble and fall: Bon Scott, Marc Hunter, Chrissy Amphlett, George Rrurrambu, Michael Hutchence, Johnny O’Keefe—it’s a long rollcall and there are too many early departures.
I think part of the trick of hanging in there is not to get thrown off the scent: to remember to disrobe when the cheering stops. You can’t take yourself too seriously, even if people around you are treating you as a cross between a prophet and a gift from the gods. It helps if you’ve inherited tough genes, but the privilege of popularity doesn’t put off the day of reckoning. However you cut it, each of us is responsible for our own life, and everyone ultimately has to account for his or her actions. I’ve fallen for the fame factor a few times in the past, getting precious about little things, treating people around the band in an off-handed way—my excuse would be that my mind was on other things—but I needed to wake up to myself. Unless there’s someone there to remind you, or you pretty quickly figure this stuff out, it’s soon over.
…
There was no question that the Blackfella/Whitefella tour had changed the way we saw things—you could hardly not be affected by an experience like that.
We’d diverted some royalties to support Aboriginal reconciliation and one result of the tour was the Building Bridges project, hosted at our office. Other acts, like Goanna and Paul Kelly, were also making connections with Aboriginal musicians and starting to venture into communities. Building Bridges saw black and white bands and solo performers come together on a joint album release, with accompanying materials to make the case for reconciliation, and to show the public the depth of talent of Aboriginal musicians.
In 1988, we took Yothu Yindi across the Pacific to America and Canada for the Diesel and Dust to Big Mountain tour, which saw us joined by Graffiti Man, a Native American outfit led by activist and poet John Trudell. This was a satisfying trip, partly due to the excitement of presenting a band made up of balanda and Yolngu to an audience who had no idea about this facet of life in Australia. It was also a chance to give full recognition to the themes of the Diesel album in a way that couldn’t be ignored.
By the time we’d finished a second tour, the momentum for the band was still building and we’d been invited to appear at the Grammy Awards—a seriously big deal—but I’d committed to co-host the Long March of Freedom, Justice and Hope, a reconciliation event that was due to take place on 26 January 1988, Australia’s bicentennial year, and so we passed. This sent shock waves through the US record company, who wanted to maximise the publicity that cam
e with the occasion, but I don’t think the band even paused to discuss it.
The year started with the Australia Day march and rally in Sydney’s Hyde Park of Aboriginal people and supporters who’d travelled from all over the state to hold an alternative event to the extravaganza that was going on at the other end of town. Down at Circular Quay—where the English first pitched their tents—the First Fleet re-enactment had gone off without a hitch. Now ferry races were in full swing, with fighter jets flying over the Opera House in a spectacular display of firepower as the Windsors from Buckingham Palace sat in the front row, and the public gathered in massive numbers around the harbour to take in the sight.
It was true Australia had much to celebrate. We were a successful, democratic nation with a blue-sky future in front of us and the envy of the world—not only because of our great natural endowments, but because we were seemingly young and evidently free. The gaping hole in the yarn was the unfinished business of reconciliation: the accountability for the theft of another people’s country that couldn’t be swept under the carpet. The secret fear of thoughtful Australians was that at some future point we would have to account for our actions, and decide what we stood for.
The ghouls of the right fed false rumours, repeated over radio, that armed mobs of Aboriginal people were converging on Sydney to wreak vengeance on the populace. When Doris and I joined the rally in Hyde Park, people were sitting quietly, listening to speakers who called for compassion and some compromise at a difficult moment when the reality of dispossession was being shoved in Aboriginal people’s faces. They called too for an understanding of the past, for the proper resolution of land rights and for a positive future. The solemn quiet of the crowd was a stark contrast to the noisy celebration little more than a kilometre away.
There was no question that this was where I wanted to be, and what the Oils wanted to say. We knew whose side we were on. As the months and years sped by, we would try to pull back the white blindfold whenever the opportunity arose.
Big Blue Sky Page 20
