It was four decades ago when a little known-band called Farm, hailing from the northern beach suburbs of Sydney, decided to change their name. They could have been called Sparta, Television or Southern Cross, but as luck of the draw would have it, the first name randomly picked out of the hat was Midnight Oil. That was in late 1976.
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A year earlier, Farm band drummer Rob Hirst had placed an advertisement in The Sydney Morning Herald in search of a new singer to team up with Andrew James on bass and Jim Moginie on guitar. Peter Garrett, then studying law at the Australian National University, drove from Canberra to audition. The rest, as many music observers would later write, is Australian rock folklore.
The list of band accolades is long. Midnight Oil released 14 albums, and two EPs. In 1982, they opened for rock legends the Who in Birmingham, England. They had been invited to play at the Glastonbury Rock Festival on two separate occasions. In July 1987, on the final episode of Countdown, host Molly Meldrum told a national audience he had always regretted that Midnight Oil never appeared on the program. The band's 1987 acclaimed album, Diesel and Dust, sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. They played on the Late Show with David Letterman in the United States, won 11 ARIA awards, and in 2006, were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.
Canberra folk will soon have the opportunity to relive many Midnight Oil moments when the Tuggeranong Arts Centre hosts the nationally acclaimed exhibition, The Making of Midnight Oil.
It has been years in the making. Exhibition curator Ross Heathcote recalls meeting Hirst at the Manly Museum and Gallery in late 2012.
"Rob already had the idea that he'd like to exhibit some of the things collected from Midnight Oil's career. We started talking about the scope of an exhibition at that point," he says.
The two spent the next several months ruminating on what such a show would look like, and began to physically put it together in 2013, beginning with Hirst's private collection of band material, and moving onto public collections such as the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.
"We then looked at what other members of the band had, and also what fans had," he says.
But the show would never have come together had it not been for the fact that Hirst is a self-confessed hoarder, keeping everything from band merchandise and touring ephemera to song lyrics and recordings.
"Basically, I kept everything," Hirst says. "I'm a terrible hoarder, and it was a real joy to get it out of the attic and to finally get it all in one place at one time. The original exhibition started with the idea of some song lyrics, badges, stickers, T-shirts and posters. In the Manly Art Gallery and Museum, it was going to occupy one room. Then it was going to occupy two rooms, but it eventually occupied the entire space. It's incredible just how much Midnight Oil stuff is there."
The show includes stage props, musical instruments, protest banners, film footage, posters and costumes, and many are displayed in the band's old road cases, rescued in the nick of time from the throw-out pile by the exhibition's designer, Wendy Osmond. It's an innovation that adds to the show's ambience.
"As you go through the exhibition, you kind of wind your way through these road cases," Hirst says.
"It also takes it out of a kind of clinical museum quality and puts it way back into the rock area, which is what we wanted to do. We didn't want a sanitised or clinical version of what the band was, which was first and foremost a live band, a pub band."
In the early years, Midnight Oil were by no means the darlings of commercial radio, which at the time refused to play the band's alternative music. This didn't hinder the band's determination. If anything, talk of their already legendary live performances in Sydney pubs had travelled far, and this built an ever-increasing groundswell elsewhere in Australia with punters eager to see them. Between 1976 and 1980, Midnight Oil performed a staggering number of live shows on the east coast.
"For new bands that have come in to see the exhibition in Sydney, Newcastle or Melbourne, I think they've been quite startled by how you had to promote gigs back then, and how you had to go about it before your Facebook sites, and before the internet," Hirst says.
"We had to play hundreds and hundreds of gigs. The only way we could get to people was to do it live. We were desperately looking for a way around the lack of air play, particularly in the first four to five years the band was around."
Heathcote says some of the best parts of the display are the lyric sheets, "with original scribble, scratches and corrections. You'll see a famous song like Dead Heart, and there will be the original words written down, and then someone else coming in adding some new words, and making a change here and there. So you see the collaboration, and you see the original ideas that become a song that everyone knows."
Midnight Oil were always fiercely independent, and never compromised on their principles. Included in the show is the extra-large banner protesting about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, with the words, "Midnight Oil Makes You Dance, Exxon Oil Makes Us Sick", along with the famous "Sorry" overalls worn during the band's closing performance at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
Also on display are several trophies presented to the band over the years, although Hirst maintains they were never in thrall to awards or accolades.
"We never turned up to any of those ARIA awards or whatever. Gary used to collect them on our behalf, and he threw a lot of them in a big skip bin on his property on the Central Coast, and they all sort of melted down in the sun," he says.
But some have stayed in the band's collection, including a treasured piece of mangrove root presented by a group of Koori children in the Pilbara after the band played a show to raise money for breakfasts for schoolchildren.
"They're the ones I'd kept, as they meant something special to the band, rather than the stock standard awards by the record company or the industry," Hirst says.
His favourite item in the show is something that he actually spent six months helping to make.
"It's a huge road case that you can actually walk into," he says.
"On the front, as you walk in, you're aware that the carpet is sticky. You're aware that it's hot as hell in there, and you're aware that you're being elbowed in the ribs, as there's these plastic elbows that stick out on either side of the road case inside."
Inside are also headphones accompanying footage of the band, taking the viewer back to the late '70s and early '80s.
"It gives you an idea of what it was like to be crammed up against people, and watching a Midnight Oil show," he says.
For his part, Heathcote loves a recording by one of the band's very earliest incarnations, Schwampy Moose.
"[Founding Midnight Oil member] Jim Moginie had a recording of them as teenage boys, aged about 15," he says.
"Jim actually said, `I think people needed to know how we sound when we were shit', so he gave us the recording, and it's a little detail in the exhibition that's quite nice to have."
The Making of Midnight Oil opens at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre on March 11 and runs until May 14. Entry is free.
Exhibition events
Curator's tour
In this one-off intimate tour of the exhibition with curator Ross Heathcote and original band members Rob Hirst and Jim Moginie, you'll hear personal stories about items in the show, as well as anecdotes about some of the band's legendary tours. Friday, March 11, 11am. Entry is free, but places are limited. For more details, see tuggeranongarts.com.
Shortis and Simpson in The Power and the Passion
Much-loved musical duo Shortis and Simpson have been busy in the lead-up to the exhibition, crafting a cabaret show based on the stories, songs and politics linked to Midnight Oil. They will touch on "the political career of Peter Garrett and even the fact that Rob Hirst went to school with Malcolm Turnbull". Friday, March 18, 7.30pm. Tickets $45/$35. Information and bookings: tuggeranongarts.com.
The Colour Wheel
Former Midnight Oil songwriter and musician Jim Moginie invites you to discover the symbiotic relationship between colour and sound in his original multi-media performance combining music and art. "The show features Jim on stage with five other musicians and two painters. Moginie's imaginative use of space, provocative lighting, haunting guitar music and use of dramatic and reactive live painting, by two visual artists, combine to create an emotional and proactive experience. The Colour Wheel attempts to prove the connection between music and colour through the creation of a synaesthesia state through a combination of sound and colour." It's sure to be an immersive experience. Thursday, March 31, 7.30pm. Tickets $35/$25. For bookings and information, see tuggeranongarts.com.
Backslider in concert
Award-wining blues band Backsliders, whose line-up includes original Midnight Oil member Rob Hirst, will perform its blend of early jazz and swamp-rock influences at Tuggeranong Art Centre's intimate performance space. Friday, April 1, 7.30pm. Tickets $40. For more information, see tuggeranongarts.com.
Rocking the suburbs songwriters' workshop
Original Midnight Oil members Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst, along with south-coast singer-songwriter Paul Greene, will host a workshop on songwriting. It will be part conversation, part tutorial and part Q&A, with a lot of storytelling. Saturday, April 2, 1pm-2.30pm. Tickets $30/$20. Bookings essential. For more information, see tuggeranongarts.com.
