Underrated Favorites Vol 3: Midnight Oil

tl;dr: They deserve better than being reduced to the Uriah Heep of the 80's.

When I was a tween¹ , one of our neighbors must’ve run through all of the eligible Good Babysitters and made calls to all of the eligible Decent Babysitters before finally, desperately calling the Jacobsen home and inquiring about semi-eligible Introverted Nonsocial Paul’s availability for Friday night. They had never called me before. They didn’t call me ever again. Not because anything catastrophic happened; we got by just fine. There were better options. We all knew it.

Once I got the kids to bed, there was that Empty Time. I had been taught that Good Babysitters clean up, so I did that, making sure the dishes were done and the house was basically tidy. The parents still weren’t home and this was pre-smartphone, so I kinda drifted around the house, making sure it was all picked up before finally going downstairs.

I remembered that the dad, an advisor to the young men in our local congregation, had a record collection. So I went downstairs to investigate.

OK, to judge.

He had a lot of the usual classic rock radio suspects you’d expect from his era: some Led Zeppelin, some Crosby Stills & Nash, a little Jethro Tull, a handful of Rolling Stones records. And in there, with all these giants I knew, all these names that—to me at least—were pantheon artists, were 3-4 records by a band I didn’t know:

Uriah Heep².

Not a very encouraging group of album covers, just design-wise.

I had never even heard of them at the time. The local classic rock station Z93 never played Uriah Heep, that I can remember. They didn’t sell Uriah Heap t-shirts at The Keyhole (the store in the local mall that sold black light posters and Grateful Dead or Led Zeppelin t-shirts and bongs and nunchucks³) Uriah Heep did not make the classic rock cut, in Salt Lake City at least. I still can’t name a song by the band.

Why am I talking about Uriah Heep?

To make the point that, for reasons fair and unfair, reasons obvious and mysterious, history tends to narrow the field, to thin the herd. If someone as deeply invested in classic rock as I was at the time had never heard Uriah Heep (or even OF them), what does that say?

It says that, as decades roll on, collective memory makes room for fewer and fewer of the artists from that era.

In the early days of the blues (let’s say the 20s and 30s, I’m not historian so don’t quote me), there were all kinds of artists exploring/pioneering the genre. Mamie Smith, Lonnie Johnson⁴, Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton⁵, Tampa Red⁶, Bessie Smith⁷, Tommy Johnson⁸, Blind Lemon Jefferson, to name a handful. Over the last century, though, a whole movement of music has kind of been reduced to….Robert Johnson and his crossroads myth (it pays to have a good story) and perhaps Leadbelly. You might hear about Big Bill Broonzy or Son House too, but they don’t get half the love and adoration of Robert Johnson (thanks, Led Zeppelin) or Leadbelly (thanks, every folk artist ever and Kurt Cobain).

Think of the prominent athletes of any era and you’re likely, the farther back you go in decades, to name 1-2 names at best. By the way we talk about sports, you would think that Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain played the entirety of their NBA seasons 1-on-1, with Bob Cousy showing up here or there, Johnny Havlicek stopping in to iconically steal the ball.

Year by year, certain acts/names get lost to the footnotes (or the Indiana Jones warehouse) of time. Collective memory only makes room for the few. If you’re lucky, you’re seen as a Mount Rushmore⁹ figure and you become one of the 3-4 artists remembered from your era.

Talk to a kid today and they may never have even heard of, say, Huey Lewis. But you could argue that Huey Lewis, from 1983-86, was as big a megastar as it gets: one of the best-selling albums of all time (Sports), a hit from one of the biggest movies of the era (Back To The Future), a featured slot on the multi-star-featuring single “We Are The World”, a sound so ubiquitous that he won a lawsuit when another gigantic movie (Ghostbusters) hired someone (Ray Parker Jr) to ape his sound (“Ghostbusters” the song). Lewis had a case for being on the Mount Rushmore of the 80s for at least two of the years.

Same goes for Lionel Richie. DID YOU KNOW! Did you know that Lionel Richie had a #1 hit every year for TEN YEARS?!?! That’s absolutely bonkers. From 82-86, he was massive¹⁰. But would the average person in 2024 put him—or Mr. Lewis— as one of the seminal stars of the 80s? Doubtful.

Maybe you have to treat the Mount Rushmore of 80s Pop Stars more like a yearly award¹¹, where the faces change yearly, not unlike the All-NBA teams. Maybe that makes it more manageable?

What I was trying to get at, before I got sideswiped by getting too literal about an actual Mount Rushmore of 80s Pop Stars was this: I think most people, especially those who weren’t there, would say the four biggest pop stars of the 80s were:

-Madonna
-Michael Jackson
-Prince
-And then a wild card here, depending on your angle (U2 or the Police for the rock kids, Whitney Houston or Phil Collins or George Michael for the pop folks, Run DMC if you’re going to bat for cultural significance).

---

The reason I’ve gathered you all here today—800+ words later, not counting the TEN footnotes—is that one of those bands that’s slipping through the cracks of history’s memory deserves some love. And that band that seems to be fading like Marty McFly’s siblings in the photo in Back To The Future? (Or like Hector in Coco, if that’s more your thing.)

Midnight Oil.

The time has come to say fair’s fair, to give Midnight Oil their due, to give them their share.

---

It’s hard to believe that a guy that looks like this.

And sings like this.

“OWWWT WHHHHAAAYAAAAAH THE REEVAH BROH-UUUUK…”

Which is to say with, um, peculiar enunciation. He would sing the word “enunciation” like so:

“EEEE-NAHHHN-SEE-AYYYYYYYEEEEEEE-SHUN-NAHHHHHHHHHH…”

And I would love every unnecessary extra syllable.

It’s hard to believe that that particular long tall bald Australian gentleman would have been a famous pop musician.

And here’s the even bigger kicker. What’s this guys singing about? Some transcendent love song? Girl troubles? Drugs? Sex? The unbearable inconvenience of fame?

Nope.

This one’s about the theft of native aboriginal land in Australia.

And the song was a big hit. And still is, at nearly 250 million plays on YouTube and 310 million on Spotify.

Singer Peter Garrett was sincere, earnest, enormous heart beating from his sleeve. His brand of open, unironic sincerity was soon to fall far out of fashion, as alt-rock (with its angst, think Nirvana) and indie rock (with its irony, think Pavement) took over the rock world. Garrett was also a fearless advocate. Never once worried about losing fame or alienating potential fans by speaking out about causes that mattered to him. To the contrary, he used his platform to raise big questions and talk about important things.

Behold the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Midnight Oil, as one of the biggest Australian bands ever, gets asked to play the ceremonies. And what song do they play? The song about the theft of native aboriginal land, while wearing all black outfits with the word “Sorry” on them, advocating for reparations to the native Australians. Obviously, the politicos weren’t happy. “Stick to the music” was the gist of their response. As if Midnight Oil wasn’t playing their most popular song¹².

From the environmental causes to nuclear disarmament, Midnight Oil never shied away from speaking up. This is decidedly NOT music intended to score chicks. “Hey, babe, let’s make out to this song about the tragedy of the Wittenoon asbestos mines” may be a pickup line that’s worked for someone, but not many, for certain.

That activist streak didn’t seem that crazy at the time, when artists like Bono and Sting were often seen pushing anti-apartheid or stop world hunger or whatever. But today you’ll see the biggest artists often ducking controversy and backlash, staying in their lane (or, rather, the commercially viable and wildly lucrative lane).

And Midnight Oil wasn’t just weaponizing the cause du jour to boost record sales. They weren’t bandwagoning or sloganeering. This stuff was at the core of their work, inextricable from the band. You can hear their punk roots in some of the earlier albums, full of belief and angst. Garrett eventually became the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and became a Labour Party MP. He walked the walk. Not content to just have hit songs about making a difference; he wanted to make a difference.

And I personally love that Garrett never once doubted the intelligence of his audience. He wouldn’t overexplain in the lyrics, knowing that even if he just piqued a listener’s curiosity, that was a victory. He was dropping very regionally specific references that some internet-less teenager in Salt Lake City wasn’t gonna get. Maralinga¹³? Jimmy Sharman’s boxers¹⁴? Kosciusko? Shipyards of New Zealand? Truganini? Garrett felt strongly enough that he could make his point and, if someone didn’t get it, they could certainly look it up. I admire that creative (and storytelling) confidence.

---

But none of it—the songwriting, the iconic look, the punkness, the politics—would make them memorable if the songs weren’t good¹⁵.

Or great. Which they are.

The sound of Midnight Oil starts, of course, with the unmistakable vocals and cause-centric and emotive lyrics¹⁶ of Peter Garrett. But the next piece, for me, is the interplay of two great tasteful, song-first guitarists Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey. There’s a little of R.E.M.’s Peter Buck’s arpeggiated jangle and a little bit of U2’s The Edge’s postpunk echoey shimmer in there. Always complementary. Never trying to wrest control of the song, but always keeping the song moving and engaging, sharp and kinetic, electric and human.

One of the minor tragedies of Midnight Oil’s rise and commercial (I say commercial because creatively they still had their fastball) decline is that both Moginie and Rotsey became vastly better and more interesting guitarists post-“Beds Are Burning” (the moment the world cared the most about Midnight Oil). Not that that album (Diesel & Dust) doesn’t have some wonderful guitar-playing. Just that the two of them got even more creative and interesting when the broader world had turned its fleeting attention elsewhere. 1993’s Earth and Sun and Moon and 1996’s Breathe both have several moments where Moginie and Rotsey play off of each other in cool ways that remind me why I love playing guitar with other guitarists. It’s as much about listening to the other guy as it is about getting your own point across. And, like I said earlier, they positively never capsize the careful balance with the singer and the song.

Midnight Oil’s secret weapon¹⁷, though, might be drummer Jim Hirst, whose driving reliability propels the songs forward and keeps them just poppy enough to be singable anthems about aboriginal rights and asbestos mines. Listen to the driving beat behind “The Dead Heart” and think about how it could just be a downer minor key dirge if not for Hirst’s insistent backbeat. It’s like he refused to let the songs wallow¹⁸.

But that’s not the only thing Hirst does. Along with guitarist Moginie, Hirst (I think) is responsible for the band’s iconic background vocals. Of course, the vocals are prominent in the chorus of “Beds Are Burning.” But it’s everywhere. On their best songs, the background vocals do so much lifting—whether it’s a simple soaring harmony or a countermelody¹⁹ or secret hook²⁰ or a huge unison singalong²¹….a lot of the buoyancy and, honestly, a lot of the “we're all a gang” and “we all believe in these things Peter wrote²²” feeling comes from the chorus-like quality of the songs. I can only imagine what it would’ve felt like to hear those live, with the entire audience joining in²³. The background vocals, in each spot, provide a beauty to counter the stark in-your-face-ness of Garrett’s voice. The Mike Mills to Garrett’s Stipe. The Jerry Cantrell to Garrett’s Staley. A little cream, a sweetener to his stark black coffee.

---

And I’m writing because this incredible band, with something to say, is slipping through history’s fingers, getting sifted out via the cruel colander of time.

So…LISTEN, that’s all.

1. We didn’t call ourselves tweens. That would be ridiculous. I think the term tween was probably invented after I had passed through, anyway. But I was probably 12 to 14 at this point.

2. The poor man’s Deep Purple?

3. I had to look this one up. My first attempt was “numbchuks.”

4. Maybe the best guitarist of all of them

5. Maybe the biggest star of the Delta blues in the 20’s and a huge influence on the style of the more-remembered Robert Johnson.

6. Maybe the first-ever person to be called a “guitar wizard.”

7. “Empress of the Blues!” The most commercially successful of the era’s singers.

8. The Coen Brothers based a character on Tommy, a literal footnote in the history of the blues, in their movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?

9. Sidenote: does Mount Rushmore represent the United States’ four best presidents? Even at the time? Was there any drama about a president who thought he was Top 4? Were there Mt. Rushmore snubs in the same way we see Oscar snubs or All-Star snubs today? Was there, like, a Franklin Pierce fandom hive that rioted? Inquiring minds want to know.

10. One critic called Can’t Slow Down, his gigantic album, “mini-Thriller.” Another called the album an example of “if you can’t innovate, imitate and imitate well.” So maybe he was the Stone Temple Pilots of the 80s. Which, as you know, is not a knock in my book.

11. If this was the case, solving for musical ubiquity and at-the-time unavoidableness, then each year might look like this:

1980: John Lennon (assassinated this year), Angus Young (AC/DC’s Back In Black), Joe Strummer (The Clash’s London Calling), Roger Waters (Pink Floyd’s The Wall was the best-selling album of 1980)…so still very 70’s-dominant.

1981: Debbie Harry (Blondie was the only band with TWO songs in the year-end top 20), whoever sings in REO Speedwagon (Hi Infidelity was the best-selling album of ‘81 and they had two singles in the top 50), Kenny Rogers (two songs in the year-end top 50), Mick Jagger (Tattoo You was huge)

1982 John Cougar Mellencamp (#1 album for 9 straight weeks, two songs in the year-end Top 10), Steve Howe (I just love the idea of Steve Howe’s radically angular face carved into stone and he was the guitarist for Asia, whose self-titled album was the best-selling album of the year), Olivia Newton John (“Physical” owned 1982), J Geils (“Freeze Frame” and “Centerfold” were everywhere). 20 extra points if you know what J Geils looks like without googling.

1983 Michael Jackson (Thriller, baby), Sting (The Police’s Synchronicity was the only thing that could temporarily dislodge MJ from the top), Lionel Richie, and maybe Colin Hay (whose Men At Work won the charts at the end of’ 82 and beginning of ‘83 until Thriller staged a hostile coup)

1984: Michael Jackson (also had a hit with The Jacksons this year), Prince (Purple Rain), Bruce Springsteen (Born In The U.S.A.), Kenny Loggins (Footloose) but maybe Lionel Richie (“Hello”) and David Lee Roth (Van Halen’s “Jump!”), Huey Lewis (Sports was only #1 for one week…)

1985: Madonna (“Like A Virgin”), George Michael (Wham!—their exclamation point, not mine—had two songs in the top THREE end of year singles), maybe Jan Hammer (Miami Vice soundtrack was the #1 album for 8 weeks), Springsteen (Born in the USA was the best-selling album of the year), and then maybe Tears for Fears (“Shout”) or Dire Straits (“Money For Nothing”)

1986 Whitney Houston (self-titled), Lionel Richie, Van Halen, Madonna, maybe Kenny Loggins (Top Gun)

1987 Bon Jovi (Slippery When Wet was the biggest album of ‘87), Bono (U2’s Joshua Tree was huge), Michael Jackson (Bad, though maybe it should be his sister Janet for Control), Whitney Houston (Whitney), Madonna (four songs in the top 100)

1988 George Michael (Faith), Axl Rose (Appetite for Destruction), Michael Huthence (INXS’ Kick was giagantic), maybe Def Leppard or Bon Jovi (New Jersey)

1989 Madonna (“Like A Prayer”), Bobby Brown (Don’t Be Cruel was the best-selling album of ‘89), Janet Jackson? Prince? Fine Young Cannibals? Ugh, I’m tired of trying to figure this out.

That means you get multiple appearances from:

Madonna
Michael Jackson
Lionel Richie
Prince
Whitney Houston
George Michael
Van Halen

Which means some notable Rushmore snubs:

-no Phil Collins
-no Peter Gabriel
-no Motley Crue
-no Poison
-no Milli Vanilli
-no Paula Abdul
-no Tiffany
-no Aerosmith
-no Belinda Carlisle
-no Hall, even less Oates
-no Cyndi Lauper
-no Pet Shop Boys
-no a-ha
-no Billy Idol
-no Heart
-no Gloria Estefan
-no The Cars
-no ZZ Top
-no Tina Turner
-no Duran Duran, who seemed like the ruled the 80s to me…
-no Thompson Twins
-no Boy George
-no Billy Joel
-no Pat Benatar
-no Kool & The Gang
-no Dolly Parton
-no Eurythmics
-no Bowie
-no Queen
-no Pretenders
-no Journey
-no Stray Cats
-no Iron Maiden
-no Toto, Survivor, Foreigner, Night Ranger, .38 Special, Air Supply (the classic rock bands I can’t stand)

12. A song that I’ve seen called Australia’s version of “This Land Is Your Land.”

13. Via the interweb: “Maralinga is a remote region of South Australia. It is notable for having been the site of British nuclear weapon tests during the 1950s. The tests displaced the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples who lived on the land, and contaminated the area for many years into the future.”

14. Via the interweb: “Jimmy Sharman (1887-1965) ran a boxing tent in rural New South Wales from 1911 to 1955 before handing it to his son, who shut it down in 1971 due to new, more restrictive, boxing regulations. The song alleges that Sharman exploited his Aboriginal boxers, of whom there was a disproportionate number.”

15. Politicians making bad music is an oxymoron. Look no further than any of Orrin Hatch’s songs.

16. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. called Garrett’s lyrics brilliant, adding he’s “able to imagine a situation, put [himself] into it and write about it."

17. I realize I’ve now talked about the singer, his lyrics, and the guitar players, but run with me here…

18. A skill I would be well-served to learn.

19. The complementary melody around the 3:20 mark of “One Country” (my favorite Midnight Oil song for at least 8 months in 1992) is so pure and reminds me so much of the best parts of Mike Mills’ background vocal work in R.E.M.

20. The “do do do do do da-do”s in “The Dead Heart” could reasonably be called the song’s hook for sure.

One of my high school bands tried to cover “The Dead Heart” and realized very quickly that we were going nowhere without the group-singing. Those background vocals are elemental to the song, not unlike if you stripped the background vocals from, say, The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” We scrapped the idea and moved on to whatever grunge song we were concurrently working on.

21. The unison in the choruses of “Forgotten Years” gives me the chills. The Killers’ Brandon Flowers wishes he wrote it. (That’s not me being rude. He said so in an interview.)

22. NARRATOR VOICE: They didn’t always agree with Peter’s stance. They had plenty of ideological arguments. But they were smart enough to keep those in-house.

23. I never saw them live and now I never will. And, man, I hate that.

My best shots were:

June 16, 1990 at Park West when I was 14 so I would’ve had to have a ride from someone. I actually bet at least one of my older siblings was at this concert. THANKS FOR NOTHING, GUYS!

September 22, 1993 at Saltair?!?! I don’t honestly know how I missed this one. I had 1000% bought the album they were touring (Earth & Sun & Moon) and watched their performance of “Outbreak of Love” on Late Night With David Letterman only weeks before…maybe I couldn’t find anyone else to go? It’s boggling my mind that I missed this one.

May 16, 1997 in São Paulo but I was on my LDS mission and it wasn’t gonna happen because I was very much a rule follower and one of the rules was: No, You Can’t Go To Rock Concerts. I do remember seeing the posters around, though.

July 17, 2002 at UVSC in Orem, but I was in Jackson Hole working for my internship at an advertising agency during the day and at the video/music/book store at night.