Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Peter Garrett

Transcript

Peter Garrett · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Barbed Left Sets podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm here down Under with the legendary Peter Garrett. Peter Hi, Bob. Well,
0:18
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. If people call you Pete,
0:20
Speaker 1: is that fine? Are you definitely a Peter? No? No,
0:22
Speaker 1: I take I take either. I'm an assie. So we're
0:24
Speaker 1: pretty easy about those things. Well, you know, I'm Robert.
0:26
Speaker 1: I was never called Robert. I've been bobbed from like
0:29
Speaker 1: day one. Okay, So what are we going to do
0:30
Speaker 1: about climate change? Well, a bunch of different things. The
0:35
Speaker 1: first one would be to make sure that we have
0:38
Speaker 1: an economic instrument in every economy. The best way we
0:42
Speaker 1: can fix it quickly is to put a penalty on
0:45
Speaker 1: carbon pollution. So that's like a carbon tax. Use the
0:49
Speaker 1: money that you get from the carbon tax to essentially
0:52
Speaker 1: recycled dollars into zero emissions technologies, renewables, energy efficiency, the
0:59
Speaker 1: new stuff, the hydrogened cells and the like that are
1:01
Speaker 1: going to make the world continue to go without putting
1:05
Speaker 1: more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Do it in a
1:09
Speaker 1: way which essentially encourages first mover companies and innovators to
1:14
Speaker 1: do their job well. And those who are going to
1:16
Speaker 1: dig their heels in and don't want to change, and
1:19
Speaker 1: are essentially writing a suicide note for for subsequent generations
1:23
Speaker 1: pay the price. Okay, let's be very specific. The day
1:28
Speaker 1: we're recording this, Trump says he's pulling out of the
1:31
Speaker 1: Paris Accords. Those that plan sounds great, But in the
1:36
Speaker 1: world we live in, can we enact that plan? Well?
1:40
Speaker 1: I think we can, and I think the fact that
1:43
Speaker 1: Trump's pulling out is in some ways not unexpected, but
1:47
Speaker 1: it is not fatal to the Paris Accords essentially being
1:51
Speaker 1: the next big stepping stone to the world community reducing emissions.
1:55
Speaker 1: There's a couple of technical and political issues in the
1:59
Speaker 1: Paris Accord which are challenging. One is that up to now,
2:03
Speaker 1: countries are simply pledging. They're not promising to enact their
2:09
Speaker 1: reductions in legislation or by a mandate or a feared
2:13
Speaker 1: or a regulation or whatever that has to happen. And
2:17
Speaker 1: a second thing is that, from what the science is
2:20
Speaker 1: telling us, even if those countries who have already made commitments, say,
2:24
Speaker 1: for example, to reduce their emissions down to a certain
2:28
Speaker 1: figure in the next twenty or thirty years, unless they
2:31
Speaker 1: all do it, unless we all do it, then the
2:33
Speaker 1: chances of us holding warming to a level that makes
2:37
Speaker 1: the planet habitable become less. So I think what's going
2:40
Speaker 1: to happen is that when they next go the country's
2:44
Speaker 1: next go to the Conference of the Parties as it's called,
2:48
Speaker 1: America will still probably be an observer, even if they're
2:51
Speaker 1: talking about pulling out. Those countries that have committed to
2:54
Speaker 1: do it, mainly the European countries, China, India in particular,
3:00
Speaker 1: and the South American block, will have more information in
3:03
Speaker 1: front of them saying, you know what, we need to
3:05
Speaker 1: accelerate reductions. So we can't go in with the business
3:09
Speaker 1: as usual, let's play around at the edges approach. We
3:12
Speaker 1: will have to do more. Some countries will then make
3:16
Speaker 1: specific additional commitments. As they do that, the pressure then
3:19
Speaker 1: comes on bad neighbors to to follow suit. And of
3:23
Speaker 1: course the outliers are countries, particularly like Saudi Arabia and Russia,
3:28
Speaker 1: who aren't playing ball at this point in time. Okay,
3:32
Speaker 1: what will be the incentive to the people to become
3:34
Speaker 1: more aggressive? I think there are two. One is that
3:37
Speaker 1: the cost of inaction on dealing with climate change is
3:42
Speaker 1: rising exponentially, whether it's insurance costs, infrastructure destruction, population movements,
3:49
Speaker 1: effects on agriculture. I mean, look at your home state
3:53
Speaker 1: now as we speak, can California I mean like seriously
3:58
Speaker 1: becoming an extremely difficult place to even because of wildfire, etcetera.
4:02
Speaker 1: And that, whilst maybe not necessarily each time caused by
4:06
Speaker 1: climate change, certainly global warming intensifies wildfires as it does
4:11
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of other things. So that's the first
4:13
Speaker 1: incentive is economies aren't going to be able to pay easily,
4:17
Speaker 1: particularly economies that are in debt, which many world economies are,
4:20
Speaker 1: for all of the infrastructure repair, emergency services and the like.
4:24
Speaker 1: So that's the first incentive. The second incentive is that
4:28
Speaker 1: if we're serious about a future for our kids, then
4:30
Speaker 1: we have to be able to envisage a future where
4:33
Speaker 1: there's they've still got jobs, have still got opportunities, and
4:35
Speaker 1: of course all of those are in the new technologies,
4:39
Speaker 1: in the new areas of low emissions, solar, wind, energy efficiency,
4:44
Speaker 1: electric cars. I mean, you name it. There's there's a
4:47
Speaker 1: whole world of zero economy out there for us, but
4:50
Speaker 1: we need to get going on it. So you're optimistic, Yes,
4:55
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic, although I've been in this issue on and
4:57
Speaker 1: off for many, many years, Bob, and I think the
5:01
Speaker 1: current political developments, particularly in your country, but in others
5:06
Speaker 1: where you have rogue right wing governments who either don't
5:09
Speaker 1: believe in it or don't want to do anything about it,
5:11
Speaker 1: makes it more difficult. And additionally, I think in many cases, industry,
5:16
Speaker 1: particularly the fossil fuel industries, the oil and gas companies
5:19
Speaker 1: and others, have really played hardball with this issue and
5:24
Speaker 1: are deeply culpable for knowing, as the tobacco companies did
5:28
Speaker 1: thirty or forty or fifty years ago, that what they
5:31
Speaker 1: were doing was imperiling the planet, but not being prepared
5:35
Speaker 1: to scale back their activity. So I see the most
5:38
Speaker 1: recent amount of citizens activities in different countries, including ours,
5:45
Speaker 1: and more so in Europe perhaps than yours, but also
5:47
Speaker 1: in yours extinction rebellion, this grassroots movement that's starting to build.
5:51
Speaker 1: I see that as part of a new response two
5:54
Speaker 1: people being absolutely frustrated that we're not getting enough done,
5:58
Speaker 1: and on the other side, the potential for social democrat
6:02
Speaker 1: parties eventually to reclaim some ground and enact things like
6:05
Speaker 1: a green New Deal type thing, which you've seen in
6:08
Speaker 1: your country well It's interesting because Greta Thunberg has been
6:11
Speaker 1: put down by all the right wing. It shows the
6:13
Speaker 1: power of one individual. Oh amazing, It's just you know,
6:17
Speaker 1: people are playing in the background, just like one one
6:19
Speaker 1: rock performer, one band can make such a difference. So
6:23
Speaker 1: how do you become so politicized? To begin with? Oh? Gee,
6:27
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's the way I am as a person. No, no, no,
6:29
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. You and I are
6:32
Speaker 1: the same age. I'm trying to think whether I'm here
6:35
Speaker 1: with an area nite man with actually you and me?
6:37
Speaker 1: But in any event, uh, okay, you you grew up where? So?
6:43
Speaker 1: I grew up in a suburb of Sydney, which is
6:47
Speaker 1: the biggest city in Australia on the East Coast, and
6:49
Speaker 1: I grew up basically in a middle class a little
6:53
Speaker 1: bit slower. How many generations has your family been in Australia.
6:58
Speaker 1: So on my mom's side, uh, four and on my
7:04
Speaker 1: dad yeah, four, and on my dad's side, I think
7:07
Speaker 1: three or four have Do you have any idea where
7:08
Speaker 1: they came from and what their incentive was? Yes, I
7:11
Speaker 1: do so. On my mom's side they come from the
7:17
Speaker 1: United Kingdom, from England, excuse me. And on my dad's
7:20
Speaker 1: side they come from Belgium and the United Kingdom. You
7:25
Speaker 1: have any idea why they came, Yes, we know that
7:28
Speaker 1: they came looking for a better life, as most immigrants do,
7:33
Speaker 1: and that when they arrived. On my dad's side, they
7:38
Speaker 1: were very involved in politics actually as it turned out,
7:41
Speaker 1: and business and sport and all of those things. Unfortunately
7:45
Speaker 1: on the wrong side, on the right wing side. But yeah,
7:51
Speaker 1: so so I'm not from convict stock in Australia and
7:54
Speaker 1: obviously our Aboriginal on island of people are the first Australians.
7:57
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a iterational Australian
8:00
Speaker 1: in Okay, So you grew up in a suburb, your
8:04
Speaker 1: parents work outside the home. Yes, so my my dad
8:08
Speaker 1: is a business manager in English. That's like sort of
8:12
Speaker 1: a like a managing director of a company, but a
8:16
Speaker 1: small but a big German company. But the Sydney office
8:19
Speaker 1: was the company they used to make tapes b a
8:23
Speaker 1: SF really okay yea, so maybe the first chrome teams
8:26
Speaker 1: you remember, I know, cause that's love to talk about them. Uh.
8:32
Speaker 1: And my mom was who was a big influence onthing,
8:34
Speaker 1: actually was one of the first generations of women here
8:38
Speaker 1: in Australia to graduate from university. It was at the
8:42
Speaker 1: end of World War Two. Of course, many men had
8:45
Speaker 1: lost their lives, women had gone into the workforce. They
8:48
Speaker 1: were working from America were completely uneducated. What was Australia's
8:54
Speaker 1: rule in World War two? So in World War two
8:58
Speaker 1: we were um basically followed the English into the war,
9:04
Speaker 1: and in the middle of the war, after Pearl Harbor
9:07
Speaker 1: was bombed by the Japanese, we of course we're on
9:10
Speaker 1: the same side as you were, the Americans. And it
9:14
Speaker 1: was during that time, in early nine in forties that
9:18
Speaker 1: as a colony, which is previously what the country had
9:20
Speaker 1: been a British colony, we pivoted to use an Obama term,
9:26
Speaker 1: and our Prime Minister at the time said, up to
9:29
Speaker 1: this point in time, we've been an English colony, and
9:32
Speaker 1: we love the Queen and all of that, but we
9:34
Speaker 1: are now going to become close friends with America and Americans,
9:37
Speaker 1: and we need to because our survival depends on it.
9:41
Speaker 1: And we fought with the Americans against the Japanese as
9:44
Speaker 1: they proceeded to get closer and closer to Australia, I
9:47
Speaker 1: mean Japanese actually bombed not only Pearl Harbor, but Darwin,
9:51
Speaker 1: a city to the north of Australia, and sent submarines
9:53
Speaker 1: down this side. The country was never physically invaded. And
9:57
Speaker 1: was your father in the war? No, my father was,
10:00
Speaker 1: and actually he was very unwell. In fact, he was
10:02
Speaker 1: unfortunately suffered ill health for most of his life. But
10:05
Speaker 1: my mother was. So she served in the Women's Air
10:09
Speaker 1: Force Regiment and along with many other young women, when
10:13
Speaker 1: they were discharged or demobilized at the end of the war,
10:16
Speaker 1: they went to university. And so she became a social worker.
10:21
Speaker 1: And before you get there, her family, Yes, did her appearance.
10:25
Speaker 1: Did her father go to university? Her father was a dentist, Okay,
10:29
Speaker 1: so he was a professional. Yeah, he was a professional,
10:31
Speaker 1: and he would probably feel positive about her going to university. Yeah,
10:34
Speaker 1: I imagine so, although I think in those days they
10:38
Speaker 1: were still pushing the boat out a little bit to
10:41
Speaker 1: do those things. First generation. Really do you think about
10:44
Speaker 1: him nine in forty seven? Probably your mother is a
10:48
Speaker 1: social worker, correct, and working with who so working with
10:54
Speaker 1: poor people, the underclass paid by the government. Correct. She
11:00
Speaker 1: actually was the first social worker to be employed here
11:05
Speaker 1: in Sydney, the city that we're in the one with
11:07
Speaker 1: the harbor Bridge and the Opera House. And to establish
11:11
Speaker 1: what was essentially a community center in a working class
11:15
Speaker 1: area down by the docks, which had many retired seamen
11:19
Speaker 1: merchant seamen who had been at sea and who had
11:22
Speaker 1: done this, that and the other, and then who had retired.
11:25
Speaker 1: And they built community centers of which there are now
11:28
Speaker 1: many in Australia, and it's really an opportunity for older
11:31
Speaker 1: people just to come. They play cards that have sing alongs.
11:35
Speaker 1: On Friday. I'd come down from my school and and sing,
11:38
Speaker 1: you know, it's a long way to Tipperary or all
11:40
Speaker 1: those old songs to these people. And she did that
11:43
Speaker 1: for a while and then she moved further up the
11:44
Speaker 1: food chain, so she became a senior social worker in
11:47
Speaker 1: a big mental hospital here and basically working in the
11:52
Speaker 1: areas of health and aged care. So how did your
11:55
Speaker 1: parents meet. They met on the North Shore, Sydney, which
12:01
Speaker 1: is the area that we come from, where mutual friends
12:06
Speaker 1: gathered at a boarding house. In those days, young people
12:09
Speaker 1: when they left home didn't go off and you know,
12:12
Speaker 1: share flats or houses or things like that. That they
12:14
Speaker 1: would go to a boarding house which was run by
12:17
Speaker 1: you know, somebody and an old couple or whatever. There
12:19
Speaker 1: were a couple of spinster aunts that ran a board
12:22
Speaker 1: run a really nice old fashioned boarding house out in
12:24
Speaker 1: the suburbs. And of course the men could visit the
12:28
Speaker 1: girls that were in the boarding house, or the boys
12:29
Speaker 1: could visit the girls, but only you know, for between
12:32
Speaker 1: six and eight, and they'd have to sip tea while
12:34
Speaker 1: they were watched over by some martinette. But that's anyway
12:38
Speaker 1: they met up there. So they just bumped into each
12:40
Speaker 1: other and someone set them up. Look, I don't know
12:43
Speaker 1: the full story. Yeah, so your mother didn't used to
12:45
Speaker 1: talk about the good old days? Not really, Okay, So
12:48
Speaker 1: how many kids in your family? So on their side
12:52
Speaker 1: or on my side? So I'm I'm the oldest of
12:55
Speaker 1: three boys, and the other two were how much younger?
13:00
Speaker 1: So five years to my next brother who is in Brisbane,
13:05
Speaker 1: and then another three years to the youngest brother. Okay,
13:09
Speaker 1: and a lot of times the oldest kid has a
13:12
Speaker 1: lot of pressure on them, but it's also the favorite
13:14
Speaker 1: of what was it like being the oldest boy? Look,
13:18
Speaker 1: I think I conform, you know, pretty much to the
13:20
Speaker 1: letter to the responsible eldest child. Look, I actually had
13:24
Speaker 1: a very happy childhood. My mom and dad passed away
13:28
Speaker 1: in my late teens, but up to that point in time,
13:32
Speaker 1: I never felt I never had that into sort of
13:34
Speaker 1: parent to kid tension that quite often arrives. I think
13:39
Speaker 1: I enjoyed taking on extra responsibilities as a kid and
13:42
Speaker 1: looking after my younger brothers, which I did, and both
13:44
Speaker 1: my parents worked so they were quite often away a lot. Okay,
13:47
Speaker 1: so you didn't test the limits or your parents were
13:49
Speaker 1: very you know, lenient, and I think there was so
13:52
Speaker 1: much lenient. I think, no, I didn't test the limits,
13:55
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in it. It seemed to me to be
13:57
Speaker 1: completely unnecessary. I loved being kid, and from my perspective
14:02
Speaker 1: when I was a kid is that I didn't want
14:03
Speaker 1: to grow up. I could see the responsibilities that had
14:06
Speaker 1: olds had, and I thought that there's plenty of time
14:08
Speaker 1: for that to happen later on. And I still feel
14:11
Speaker 1: this even more strongly now today, that we deny children
14:15
Speaker 1: and young people the opportunity just to have those wonderful, open,
14:20
Speaker 1: almost aimless periods of in their life where they're not
14:23
Speaker 1: under social appression, they're not trying to meet somebody, they're
14:25
Speaker 1: not trying to start their career. You know, it's kind
14:28
Speaker 1: of weird because now if someone says they're board, you know,
14:31
Speaker 1: I don't know what world they're living and not so
14:33
Speaker 1: much input. But certainly in america's a result of incommittee quality.
14:37
Speaker 1: The elite, so to speak, are so busy scheduling their children,
14:41
Speaker 1: trying to get them in a better educational system that
14:43
Speaker 1: they have. No, they don't even fear for themselves. The
14:46
Speaker 1: other thing, of course, is the fear. I mean, I
14:48
Speaker 1: would come home from school, I change into my play clothes,
14:50
Speaker 1: I go off on my bike, and that would be
14:52
Speaker 1: yet exactly same, no concept of a play date. Okay,
14:55
Speaker 1: so how old were you? Well, how did your parents
14:57
Speaker 1: pass away? So my dad add basically had a big
15:02
Speaker 1: asthma attack. He was he worked pretty hard, and when
15:06
Speaker 1: I was seventeen, and then four years later our family
15:11
Speaker 1: home burnt down and my mom was in the family
15:13
Speaker 1: home at the time and she perished. Yeah, it's hard
15:18
Speaker 1: to have a response to that. So your father dies
15:22
Speaker 1: at seventeen, doesn't that mess with the family's economics? Yeah,
15:27
Speaker 1: a little bit. I mean we a he It's an
15:30
Speaker 1: interesting story, Bob, because I think, like most parents, he
15:33
Speaker 1: wanted the best for his kids. One of one of
15:35
Speaker 1: the things he wanted to do was to send us
15:36
Speaker 1: to a good school and inverted commas. So he worked
15:40
Speaker 1: extra hard to enable us to do that. But in
15:43
Speaker 1: so doing, I think he put his already not too
15:46
Speaker 1: good health at jeopardy. We were, but my mom was
15:51
Speaker 1: a successful professional by that stage, so you know, even
15:54
Speaker 1: once he died, she was able to support us. And
15:57
Speaker 1: by that stage I had left home and gone to university,
15:59
Speaker 1: so my two brothers were still at home. And then
16:02
Speaker 1: your mother dies tragically, yes, and you're an orphan. So
16:07
Speaker 1: what's that like. Well, I mean, at the time, it was,
16:10
Speaker 1: it was. It was traumatic and an extremely difficult period
16:15
Speaker 1: for us, and it took all of us quite some
16:17
Speaker 1: time to recover from it. And I think, I mean,
16:20
Speaker 1: but they were slack, you know, they didn't have an
16:22
Speaker 1: insurance or anything like that. That was it. But on
16:26
Speaker 1: reflection now and I look back on it, I think,
16:29
Speaker 1: even even though of course I terribly missed my mom
16:31
Speaker 1: and we were close, but it made us in some
16:34
Speaker 1: ways in other ways because we went back literally to nothing,
16:38
Speaker 1: and we looked after one another. And of course, you know,
16:41
Speaker 1: I started even though I was at Uni, doing law
16:45
Speaker 1: and I'm a lawyer by professional training, but I'm really
16:47
Speaker 1: a musician and an activist, and music had started to
16:50
Speaker 1: come into my life. And so I think when I
16:53
Speaker 1: got onto stage and some one of my closest, oldest
16:55
Speaker 1: friends sort of said to me, who knew the family before,
17:00
Speaker 1: when you got on stage, you you definitely it seemed
17:02
Speaker 1: like you definitely had to expunge some of the heart
17:07
Speaker 1: smashes that you had. But for me, it was a
17:09
Speaker 1: case of making every minute. I just knew how precious
17:12
Speaker 1: life was by that stage because I lost my mom. Okay,
17:15
Speaker 1: so you were twenty three, you say when your mother died. Yeah,
17:17
Speaker 1: I think, but in anything, your your brothers were much younger,
17:22
Speaker 1: that's right. How did they manage? Well? We all we
17:25
Speaker 1: all we all camped together. I was back in Sydney
17:27
Speaker 1: and we just got a little flat somewhere and we started.
17:31
Speaker 1: My brother and I got a contract cleaning out um
17:34
Speaker 1: taxis that did the midnight shift on taxis here in
17:38
Speaker 1: Sydney from twelve in the morning till five am. And
17:42
Speaker 1: that's what we did to survive. How long did you
17:44
Speaker 1: do that for? Oh, a year or two? Yeah, with
17:48
Speaker 1: other jobs as well, thrown in whilst music was starting. Okay,
17:52
Speaker 1: so let's go back to school. Were you a popular
17:54
Speaker 1: kid at school? Um? Yeah, Look, I wouldn't have been unliked.
17:57
Speaker 1: I think reasonably popular, but I wasn't sort of head
18:01
Speaker 1: of the gang or anything like that. Do you have friends? Yeah? Yeah, no,
18:04
Speaker 1: I had some friends. Okay. Now, you're obviously a tall gentleman.
18:07
Speaker 1: How how tall are you? Six four and a half
18:10
Speaker 1: in socks? Yeah? So what is it like were you
18:13
Speaker 1: tall as a young kid? Yeah? I was tall and gorky,
18:15
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So how does that affect your personality? Well?
18:19
Speaker 1: I think it probably means that you're a little aware
18:23
Speaker 1: of social settings. Look, I'm I'm quiet and polite in
18:28
Speaker 1: one way. This is just the character that I have.
18:31
Speaker 1: But in another way, I'm not insecure about myself at all,
18:34
Speaker 1: and I don't think I really ever have been, even
18:36
Speaker 1: as a teenager. And I put that down to my
18:39
Speaker 1: parenting inasmuch as, um, I had parents who encouraged us.
18:45
Speaker 1: They weren't indulging us and saying, oh aren't you fantastic
18:49
Speaker 1: little Pete? You know you can see you know you're
18:51
Speaker 1: going to be a pop star. There's none of that.
18:53
Speaker 1: They just treat you with respect. But say, you've got
18:55
Speaker 1: if you want to do something, you've got the potential
18:57
Speaker 1: to do. Whatever it is you choose to do, you
18:59
Speaker 1: can do, and you get a good hearing here. And
19:02
Speaker 1: we don't judge people, we don't label people. We don't
19:06
Speaker 1: spend our time comparing ourselves against others. I never heard
19:08
Speaker 1: my parents talk about the people next door and wishing
19:11
Speaker 1: I had more or less money than that. Listen, my
19:13
Speaker 1: parents were the exact opposite. My mother. My older sisters
19:17
Speaker 1: still traumatized by, you know, my father and mother talking
19:20
Speaker 1: about a girl in the neighborhood and enough great she was, etcetera.
19:23
Speaker 1: And my mother would you know if I called her
19:24
Speaker 1: up and I was gonna do something, you know, as
19:26
Speaker 1: she would say, you know, essentially, why you I'm still
19:29
Speaker 1: dealing with that, so so certainly. And then I grew
19:32
Speaker 1: up on the eastern coast of the United States, and
19:36
Speaker 1: the transistor came along, and we were listening to the sports, baseball,
19:40
Speaker 1: the Yankees, and then I had certain singles. Then of
19:44
Speaker 1: course the Beatles hit and all hell broke loose. What
19:46
Speaker 1: was it like for you being here? Well, so, yeah,
19:50
Speaker 1: I can count my equanimity, I said, because I think
19:54
Speaker 1: I was pretty decent parenting, uh and my mom my
19:57
Speaker 1: parents loved the Beatles. So the parents loved the Beatle.
20:00
Speaker 1: So let's go back to the beginning. In my house,
20:03
Speaker 1: my parents were avid music lovers, but they played the
20:06
Speaker 1: show tunes, right, how about your parents same? So yeah,
20:10
Speaker 1: I grew up on a diet of show tunes Crosby, Sinatra, Elvis.
20:16
Speaker 1: But they kept going and they enjoyed parties. And so
20:19
Speaker 1: the Beatles came and that sort of first British pop
20:25
Speaker 1: invasion so rolled through the suburbs of Sydney and came
20:28
Speaker 1: into our living room. But by that stage as well,
20:32
Speaker 1: I had years for music too. I did a stand
20:35
Speaker 1: a boarding school. You talk about transis, I did a
20:37
Speaker 1: boarding school. I distinctly remember having my little transistor under
20:42
Speaker 1: the pillow at night, listening to the Kinks, you know,
20:46
Speaker 1: listening to the Who, listening to whatever. Doors. So, if
20:49
Speaker 1: your parents are Beatles fans, that doesn't square with the
20:55
Speaker 1: generational revolution that we experienced, and people talk about where
20:59
Speaker 1: people are finding against their parents. Your parents were they hipsters?
21:03
Speaker 1: Were most other people's parents like that? I wouldn't say
21:06
Speaker 1: they were hipsters. I just think they were relatively broad minded.
21:09
Speaker 1: And open, and I think they just enjoyed music, and
21:12
Speaker 1: I think they were civil sort of people, so they
21:15
Speaker 1: weren't trying to impose their strictures and their views on
21:18
Speaker 1: their kids. They taught us good manners and you know,
21:22
Speaker 1: how to treat other people. But it was pretty basic stuff. Okay,
21:25
Speaker 1: So you have three kids yourself, that's what I have
21:27
Speaker 1: three daughters. And how old are they? Thirty three, thirty two,
21:32
Speaker 1: and thirty Okay? Well there, they've been out of the
21:34
Speaker 1: house for a while and they never leave anymore. No,
21:39
Speaker 1: I'm noticing. Yeah, I love that. Okay, So how do
21:43
Speaker 1: you feel about their music? Well, I think it's incredible
21:46
Speaker 1: for them, because it's incredible for them. How do you
21:50
Speaker 1: feel your parents were Beatles fans? Are you a hip
21:52
Speaker 1: hop fan? Yeah? I don't mind a little bit bits
21:55
Speaker 1: of hip hop? Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm selective, I think,
21:59
Speaker 1: am I listening? The reason I said incredible though, is
22:01
Speaker 1: that their palettes so much wider than mine. Of course,
22:04
Speaker 1: it's just massively wider. And if you listen to their playlists,
22:07
Speaker 1: you know what they curate. It's crazy. I mean, I'm
22:10
Speaker 1: hearing stuff I never knew. But I'm also hearing things
22:13
Speaker 1: that I loved, but I thought they would never actually
22:15
Speaker 1: ever listen to. Okay, so you're in boarding school. What
22:18
Speaker 1: age do you got a boarding school? I only did
22:20
Speaker 1: a brief stinting boarding school, but I was in boarding
22:21
Speaker 1: school when I was fifteen and a half. So what happened?
22:25
Speaker 1: Why was a brief? My parents went away and they
22:28
Speaker 1: just stuck us in there, you know, for a period
22:30
Speaker 1: of time. Where did they go? So my dad had
22:33
Speaker 1: to go to work in Germany because and my mom
22:36
Speaker 1: had relatives in actually North America and Canada, so she
22:39
Speaker 1: took off as well. So that you parked you in
22:42
Speaker 1: boarding school? Thanks mom and dad. So how long was that?
22:45
Speaker 1: Not very long? Okay? So are you a record collector
22:49
Speaker 1: when you're before you go to university? Look, I think
22:53
Speaker 1: I fall into the category of someone who loves their
22:55
Speaker 1: music a lot and who is a bit of a
22:59
Speaker 1: bou bird. But I'm not an avid collector. I'm not
23:01
Speaker 1: one of these fans. I'm not a musician who can
23:05
Speaker 1: tell you every B side that their favorite band forgetting
23:08
Speaker 1: the music. Yeah, when you're in in the mid sixty
23:11
Speaker 1: six four to seventy or so, when you graduate from
23:14
Speaker 1: high school, are you listening to the radio, going to shows,
23:17
Speaker 1: doing all that stuff. No, not really going to shows,
23:20
Speaker 1: listening to the radio and pop radio and just starting
23:26
Speaker 1: to get a little bit of interest. I mean I went,
23:28
Speaker 1: I went to a show, but I couldn't afford to
23:30
Speaker 1: go in, so I stood outside with my ear up
23:32
Speaker 1: against the brick wall to hear what was going on inside.
23:34
Speaker 1: You remember what show that was? Yeah, it was. It
23:36
Speaker 1: was a band called um Tamim Shudd who were actually
23:41
Speaker 1: almost a sixty psychedelics band, surf band, and but they
23:45
Speaker 1: were a big band in our area. And uh, yeah, amazed.
23:49
Speaker 1: Were you the type of guy who would dance when
23:51
Speaker 1: the music played at shows? No, I'm standing back and
23:56
Speaker 1: listening and trying to figure out what's going on, you know, Okay,
23:59
Speaker 1: and you someone who has girlfriends in that era, yes,
24:03
Speaker 1: but more so at university. So for me it really came.
24:06
Speaker 1: So I left home in seventy and instead of going
24:10
Speaker 1: to university in my hometown in the city of Sydney,
24:12
Speaker 1: I essentially went to the Quill of Washington. I went
24:14
Speaker 1: to Canberra and we have a national university there and
24:19
Speaker 1: I was on the college there and it was there
24:22
Speaker 1: that and but people came from all over Australia and
24:24
Speaker 1: actually from other parts of the world as well. It's
24:26
Speaker 1: interestingly mainly Africa. And there was a lot of music,
24:30
Speaker 1: A lot of new music was pouring through. People were
24:32
Speaker 1: reading the New Music Express, Rolling Stone. We were seeing
24:36
Speaker 1: that explosion of music which washed through sixty six to
24:40
Speaker 1: seventy in the States, in particular San Francisco at All
24:44
Speaker 1: washes into Australia. Really, yeah, what acts do you remember
24:49
Speaker 1: from that era? Well, I guess to begin with on
24:54
Speaker 1: the on the English side, all of the big classic
24:58
Speaker 1: acts that you and I both know. And then additionally,
25:01
Speaker 1: what more widely people like UM Fairport Convention, Robert Wyatt's
25:06
Speaker 1: Soft Machine at All. On the American side, um again
25:12
Speaker 1: the classic bands of that era, but the Birds would
25:15
Speaker 1: be the one that really sort of hits me quite hard,
25:18
Speaker 1: and I liked a lot. And then you go to
25:20
Speaker 1: the doors. You've got the Mummers and the Pappas, You've
25:22
Speaker 1: got the explosion of San Francisco bands, Moby Grape and
25:25
Speaker 1: so on and solf. Okay, so was this your number
25:27
Speaker 1: one interest once you're in university or I've always surfed
25:32
Speaker 1: and always yeah yeah, So I mean, you know, I'm
25:35
Speaker 1: an American. I don't know the the geography of Australia,
25:39
Speaker 1: but camera is not by no, it's not not correct.
25:43
Speaker 1: But but I grew up here, and yeah, I mean
25:45
Speaker 1: I think it's something like of Australians live within fifty
25:48
Speaker 1: kilometers of the coast. When did you start surfing? We
25:51
Speaker 1: all start young here, Yeah, like four or five. You
25:56
Speaker 1: still surf now, unfortunately not as much as I do,
25:58
Speaker 1: but I get in the water. But the point being,
26:01
Speaker 1: I still love to serve. But I was listening to
26:03
Speaker 1: music I was interested in. I sang in the choir
26:06
Speaker 1: at school, and I sang in a few little folky things.
26:10
Speaker 1: And when I got to the university, the roys bands playing,
26:14
Speaker 1: you know, in the colleges on the weekends, and I
26:17
Speaker 1: fell in with a bunch of people who liked music.
26:20
Speaker 1: And I got a job actually as a volunteer on
26:23
Speaker 1: the university radio station because they didn't have anyone to
26:26
Speaker 1: to sort of do the night shifts. And I always
26:29
Speaker 1: been a nighttime person, so I started playing music on
26:32
Speaker 1: the radio at night, and then I started playing music
26:36
Speaker 1: at night in bands. Okay, when you were on the radio,
26:38
Speaker 1: how many days a week we are on the radio,
26:40
Speaker 1: I think two or three nights a week. Okay, what
26:42
Speaker 1: would you play well, the whole side of you know,
26:45
Speaker 1: Adam Hart mother by people. You know, I've like that.
26:48
Speaker 1: I never really got into it, but whatever. Okay, So
26:54
Speaker 1: at what point do you say, shoul I could be
26:57
Speaker 1: a performer. Well to two points really. The first is
27:02
Speaker 1: that there was you know, SI had some mates and
27:04
Speaker 1: they had a band and they were writing songs or
27:07
Speaker 1: trying to and they were running around and I went
27:09
Speaker 1: to see them because I had a truck driving license
27:12
Speaker 1: and I was driving trucks as well. Let's start for
27:15
Speaker 1: a second. Let's go back here. You say you're trained
27:18
Speaker 1: in law. You know, every country is different. That means
27:21
Speaker 1: if you and me, if I, you know, smashed the
27:25
Speaker 1: window here, could you defend me in court? Uh? Well
27:28
Speaker 1: I could? Yeah, I mean I are you licensed to
27:31
Speaker 1: do that? No, not at this point in time, and
27:33
Speaker 1: I've let that pass over. Okay, But but at one
27:35
Speaker 1: time you were licensed at one At one time I
27:39
Speaker 1: had gone and past my barrister's admission, So I could
27:42
Speaker 1: have appeared for you in a quarter. Okay. What was
27:45
Speaker 1: your drive to be an attorney? I think partly that
27:50
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of anything else. I could do, or
27:52
Speaker 1: I could talk. You know that this is a talking job,
27:55
Speaker 1: and I'm not mathematically or technically minded. And as I
27:58
Speaker 1: got a little older, I realized is that the legal
28:02
Speaker 1: system was pretty important. I studied air and space law
28:06
Speaker 1: and pennology penology, which is the law of prisons and criminals.
28:10
Speaker 1: And I thought I'd go to the bar potentially, or
28:13
Speaker 1: I'd work in the international field in the area of
28:17
Speaker 1: space law and international agreements and things like that. Now,
28:20
Speaker 1: in America, you've got a college for four years, then
28:22
Speaker 1: you got to law school for three years. How does
28:24
Speaker 1: it work in Australia. Yeah, so we don't have a
28:26
Speaker 1: college system here. You go straight to university essentially when
28:29
Speaker 1: you finished high school, and the law degree will take
28:33
Speaker 1: you four years if you do it by your by itself.
28:35
Speaker 1: I actually did an arts degree in politics as well,
28:38
Speaker 1: so double degree. So that's by the time you've done
28:40
Speaker 1: it six years, okay, and then you have an exam
28:43
Speaker 1: but you know, for a law but you never practiced law.
28:47
Speaker 1: I practiced very briefly, and so I just like me. Yeah, no, no,
28:50
Speaker 1: we're quite similar. How briefly did yous? Six months? And
28:54
Speaker 1: what kind of law did you practice? I was providing
28:56
Speaker 1: advice to companies a out the different laws in different states.
29:02
Speaker 1: Australia is a federation, so we know nothing. The federation
29:06
Speaker 1: means what, Yeah, a bit like Canada. So when Australia
29:10
Speaker 1: was first occupied by the British, they occupied at state
29:14
Speaker 1: by state and they constituted laws in each of those states,
29:17
Speaker 1: and the country didn't come together as a whole nation
29:20
Speaker 1: until nineteen one, even though you know, the English had
29:24
Speaker 1: been here since the mid seventies, seventies and early eight hundreds.
29:27
Speaker 1: So the states had to agree to become a federated
29:31
Speaker 1: nation and they've all got different laws. The states do
29:34
Speaker 1: their own things still to this day. So it was
29:36
Speaker 1: very dry, very boring stuff, and I quickly left. Okay,
29:41
Speaker 1: but were you working for yourself? How are you getting
29:43
Speaker 1: working for myself? How did you get to work? I
29:45
Speaker 1: think you know. A solicitor who had been at law
29:49
Speaker 1: school with me said, I'll look, these companies need to
29:51
Speaker 1: know what they can do with their labeling. Do you
29:54
Speaker 1: want to have a go at it? And I said, yeah, okay.
29:56
Speaker 1: Did you quit because music was becoming successful or because
29:59
Speaker 1: you just could stand doing it? No? I did it
30:02
Speaker 1: and I didn't do it for very long. I didn't
30:04
Speaker 1: mind it. But by that stage I had met Rob
30:08
Speaker 1: Hurst and Jim mcgeanie from who had started a band
30:13
Speaker 1: at school really and it started writing songs, and we
30:16
Speaker 1: had become Midnight or by that point, and we agreed
30:21
Speaker 1: that if we were going to do anything with it,
30:22
Speaker 1: then we would stop what we were doing otherwise and
30:25
Speaker 1: just throw ourselves out all time. Let's go back to
30:27
Speaker 1: the earlier story. You were a truck driver. Yeah, looks
30:29
Speaker 1: so I drove trucks in my dad's company when I
30:32
Speaker 1: was when I was last year of school, Like how
30:35
Speaker 1: big a truck but not not a massive semi trailers,
30:38
Speaker 1: but the next one is now. And I kept that
30:40
Speaker 1: license and when I was at at university in the
30:43
Speaker 1: National University, pay my way through and of course by
30:47
Speaker 1: this stage my dad's passed away and then then so
30:50
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to not be a drain on
30:52
Speaker 1: my mom, so I used to work on the weekends
30:54
Speaker 1: driving trucks. And then I actually took a year off
30:57
Speaker 1: where I had worked for a big trucking company just
31:00
Speaker 1: to pay off debts and you know, sort out money.
31:03
Speaker 1: And I started because I had the truck driving license.
31:06
Speaker 1: Of course I was the guy that could be the
31:07
Speaker 1: roadie exactly, and you know, big and strong in those days.
31:11
Speaker 1: So I was loading the boxes in and out and
31:13
Speaker 1: helping these people just so I know. Usually I would
31:17
Speaker 1: think of a trucking company. You drive there, you drop
31:19
Speaker 1: off your car, you drive, you leave the truck back.
31:21
Speaker 1: How did you have the truck to work for? Used
31:24
Speaker 1: to let the used to let us have the truck,
31:27
Speaker 1: which was quite novel in those stuff. I'm sure it
31:29
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen to that, especially if they knew what was
31:32
Speaker 1: happening to it. But I heard the band and I
31:34
Speaker 1: liked it, and I was listening to lots of music
31:36
Speaker 1: and playing music at night in the college station. But
31:39
Speaker 1: the singer wasn't really that good, and I said something like,
31:43
Speaker 1: you know, look, and they said, how are we going?
31:45
Speaker 1: You know? I said, wow, I'm not too bad, but
31:47
Speaker 1: the singers maybe well classic Australian response, I suppose you
31:51
Speaker 1: could do better and I said yeah, I'm sure. Okay.
32:01
Speaker 1: Wait two things, Um, how long you slept in the
32:05
Speaker 1: gear before this conversation? Not very long, okay? And did
32:09
Speaker 1: you say the singer was bad because in your horror
32:12
Speaker 1: you knew you wanted the gig no, I didn't actually
32:14
Speaker 1: think I'd end up singing with them at all. They
32:16
Speaker 1: just asked me the question. I just answered it honestly. Okay,
32:19
Speaker 1: Then what happened? Then they said, well, do you want
32:21
Speaker 1: to come along and sing? I said, yeah, sure, I'll
32:23
Speaker 1: do that, which I did. So we were we were
32:25
Speaker 1: a university band made up mainly of students, and we
32:31
Speaker 1: were not very good. We were playing covers, we were
32:35
Speaker 1: playing a lot of rock and roll. We were playing
32:37
Speaker 1: you know, roadhouse blues, little Stone songs and so on.
32:42
Speaker 1: But eventually we also had a fellow that came to
32:46
Speaker 1: join us who was someone who got onto synthesizes very
32:49
Speaker 1: early on, who was a huge fan of enos as
32:52
Speaker 1: it turned out, and he built for himself a little
32:55
Speaker 1: primitive noise generator. So we used to play rock and
32:58
Speaker 1: roll with since the size this going on in the background,
33:02
Speaker 1: and we just toured relentlessly in and around Canberra, but
33:06
Speaker 1: only on the weekends. Okay, you have a unique vocal style.
33:11
Speaker 1: Were you singing in that style when you were doing covers?
33:14
Speaker 1: Probably probably not very very well, but yeah, okay, same style. Okay,
33:19
Speaker 1: just but what is the Australian personality? Because you're self deprecating.
33:23
Speaker 1: Is that because of your success or is that Australians.
33:27
Speaker 1: I think it's partly Australians. We tend not to blow
33:31
Speaker 1: our own trumpet to that's changing a little bit. You
33:33
Speaker 1: do get people that blow their trumpets a bit louder now,
33:36
Speaker 1: But I think it's part of our our national culture
33:39
Speaker 1: to some extent. But it's probably also part of my nature.
33:43
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't know what what it is, but
33:46
Speaker 1: I tend not to want to shout too loudly about
33:50
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I mean, I'm proud of what I do,
33:52
Speaker 1: but it's yeah, I think it's just the way we are. Okay,
33:56
Speaker 1: So you're playing with this band, you're you're talking about
33:59
Speaker 1: it in a very negative way, even though you ultimately
34:02
Speaker 1: had great success. You're playing on the weekends. What kind
34:05
Speaker 1: of gigs, what kind of money you make? And not
34:08
Speaker 1: much so? And it's not midnight oil. And this comes
34:11
Speaker 1: in a in a second or two time. So I'm
34:12
Speaker 1: in Canberra where students and we we are reliable because
34:17
Speaker 1: we had a van that we won't and a p
34:20
Speaker 1: A and we're heading off to say a hotel like
34:24
Speaker 1: a pub in a country town, maybe an hour's drive
34:28
Speaker 1: from Canberra and we're playing on a Friday night to
34:31
Speaker 1: maybe one or two hundred people, and we're getting a
34:34
Speaker 1: couple hundred bucks to do that. We're playing at Unis
34:38
Speaker 1: balls and dances. We could we would actually play anything,
34:42
Speaker 1: you know, play anywhere, and we played out in paddocks
34:43
Speaker 1: for farmers and you know who would always be shouting,
34:47
Speaker 1: you know, play a C D C, you know, and
34:48
Speaker 1: we have to play some more. Okay. So what was
34:50
Speaker 1: the thought at the time just having a lark or
34:52
Speaker 1: was it, well, maybe this will turn into something for me.
34:55
Speaker 1: It was a little bit of both. Actually, such a
34:57
Speaker 1: good question, because I intended to finish my my law,
35:00
Speaker 1: but I actually found I knew I would like performing
35:04
Speaker 1: and I love singing, and even though we weren't that good,
35:07
Speaker 1: it was still good fun and we were meeting girls
35:09
Speaker 1: and carrying on and doing whatever. And I thought at
35:13
Speaker 1: the time I loved this and I understand how it works,
35:19
Speaker 1: but I don't know that it can go that far
35:20
Speaker 1: with these people, even though they were good friends. And
35:24
Speaker 1: actually what ends up happening is I go back to
35:26
Speaker 1: see my mom before she passes away, and I'm up
35:29
Speaker 1: in Sydney in holidays. I'm looking for a job, and
35:31
Speaker 1: normally I would work as a labor or a truck driver.
35:34
Speaker 1: And there's an ad in the paper singer wanted for
35:37
Speaker 1: tour on the coast. And I answered the ad and
35:41
Speaker 1: showed up and there were these younger guys in a
35:44
Speaker 1: room but they could really play. And that was midnight
35:47
Speaker 1: Oil or the beginning of midnight Oil. And so I
35:50
Speaker 1: auditioned as it were no one else auditions, so I
35:54
Speaker 1: was it, and off we went. Well, let's go back
35:56
Speaker 1: a little bit. You see the ad, Yeah, you might
36:00
Speaker 1: have been looking for something. Yeah, yeah, well I had
36:02
Speaker 1: to work over the summer period, you know. Well, I
36:04
Speaker 1: mean in Los Angeles there's a famous rag called the Recycler. Okay,
36:08
Speaker 1: so in Australia was it? Were there commonly ads for
36:12
Speaker 1: bands in this paper? No, it's complete. It was. It
36:15
Speaker 1: was one of those really strange that this is like
36:16
Speaker 1: an ad in the l A Times. Yeah, underneath you know,
36:20
Speaker 1: car washing and but also, okay, if you're looking for
36:24
Speaker 1: a job for money, one doesn't necessarily think they can
36:27
Speaker 1: make the kind of money in a band, correct then
36:30
Speaker 1: as opposed to a straight gig. No, that's right. But
36:34
Speaker 1: it looked like fun and uh, I thought, Leah, I
36:37
Speaker 1: should do it. Okay, So how far away is the
36:40
Speaker 1: band from where you're living? Well, they all roughly the
36:46
Speaker 1: north shore areas, okay, so they're they're close. You get there,
36:49
Speaker 1: you get the gig. And they had a tour book. Yeah,
36:51
Speaker 1: they had a tour book. How many dates which they
36:53
Speaker 1: worked out themselves, so they were quite enterprising. I think
36:57
Speaker 1: probably about fifteen or six really, yeah, So you go
37:00
Speaker 1: on the road with them, yes, how long after the
37:03
Speaker 1: ad about three or four weeks? It was a rehearsal, Yeah,
37:07
Speaker 1: lots of rehearsal okay, and you go out on the road.
37:10
Speaker 1: What was it like, yes, so it was it was
37:11
Speaker 1: a tour during summer, in our summer season where everybody
37:14
Speaker 1: is on the coast, So it was a tour of
37:16
Speaker 1: the coast. So we're playing in surf clubs, in hotels
37:21
Speaker 1: on the beach, in little halls on the beach, we're
37:24
Speaker 1: sleeping on the beach, and it was It was great fun.
37:30
Speaker 1: Um a little wild and willie at times, but really
37:33
Speaker 1: good fun. But for me, I was older than they
37:36
Speaker 1: were two years maybe when that makes a difference, it
37:41
Speaker 1: does at that age, and I thought that was fun,
37:44
Speaker 1: And they said yeah, look, it's been great to have you.
37:46
Speaker 1: But I was going back to Canberra, back to the university,
37:49
Speaker 1: finished my lawd degree and they were doing their own thing.
37:52
Speaker 1: They were students as well, but younger than me, and
37:56
Speaker 1: you know, I think they didn't really necessarily think I
37:59
Speaker 1: was going to hang round, and so they went off
38:01
Speaker 1: to look for another singer in Sydney and I went
38:03
Speaker 1: back to Canberra, okay, just to stop for a second.
38:07
Speaker 1: So if they booked the Twit themselves, somebody in the
38:09
Speaker 1: band was very enterprise. Yeah, so that would have been
38:13
Speaker 1: Rob Hurst, the drummer. It's always the drummer. The drummer
38:17
Speaker 1: is always a business guy. Just say Metallica. Okay, okay,
38:22
Speaker 1: really so, but I could admit it's always the business guy.
38:25
Speaker 1: So the drummer. So you go back to Canberra. Then
38:28
Speaker 1: what happens. I do another year studying and you don't
38:31
Speaker 1: have any contact with at all, very little And are
38:34
Speaker 1: you playing with your other band? Yeah? Okay, and it
38:37
Speaker 1: starts to fall apart. Yeah, And actually when I get
38:39
Speaker 1: back to play with them, I think it's not as
38:41
Speaker 1: good as it could be. And I've been with a
38:43
Speaker 1: band that was how can you keep him down on
38:46
Speaker 1: the farm. Yeah, no, exactly. So at the end of
38:49
Speaker 1: that year, of course, I'm going to come back up
38:50
Speaker 1: to city again to visit my mom and see my
38:53
Speaker 1: friends and so on, and so we're in touch. And
38:56
Speaker 1: they said, well, look, actually we haven't found another singer.
38:58
Speaker 1: Do you want to come and just you know, do
39:00
Speaker 1: some shows and we we we we want to keep playing.
39:03
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, sure, I'll do that, and eventually that
39:06
Speaker 1: became the genesis of Midnight. All okay, you play for
39:10
Speaker 1: the summer. Don't you have to go back to school again. Yeah. Well,
39:13
Speaker 1: by that stage I thought, you know what this is.
39:16
Speaker 1: This band really is a worthwhile. You know, I really
39:20
Speaker 1: loved what I heard, and I thought we could do something.
39:24
Speaker 1: I wasn't quite sure what it would be, so I
39:26
Speaker 1: transferred to finish my lawd degree up here, which is
39:29
Speaker 1: what I did. Okay, and what happens with the band.
39:33
Speaker 1: We rehearse at night, we start playing on the weekends.
39:37
Speaker 1: I finished my LAWD degree, I said to them, I
39:39
Speaker 1: want to finish it and get it done. I've gone
39:40
Speaker 1: this far. I did just sit more throw and they
39:44
Speaker 1: some of them had degrees as well, but they were
39:46
Speaker 1: not long as mine. So we most of us finished
39:50
Speaker 1: our unithing as we were rehearsing and writing songs and
39:53
Speaker 1: just trying to get ourselves sorted out. Now, when you
39:55
Speaker 1: were playing the Beach the first summer, you weren't doing
39:57
Speaker 1: original material very little. So did the original material come
40:01
Speaker 1: to be? Rob Hearst and Jim mcgeannie, who was the
40:05
Speaker 1: guitarist keyboard player, had met at school and they started
40:09
Speaker 1: to write songs and had fiddle around writing songs and
40:12
Speaker 1: discarding songs and writing songs, and they started to bring
40:15
Speaker 1: songs in it. We started to play them, And what
40:18
Speaker 1: was your involvement to begin with? I'd say, yeah, let's
40:22
Speaker 1: see if we can sing it. And then after a
40:23
Speaker 1: while I started throwing in ideas. And then eventually where
40:26
Speaker 1: Martin Rossi joins the band and we start writing together.
40:29
Speaker 1: But they're still bringing most of the ideas, the melodic
40:32
Speaker 1: ideas and the musical structures and things like. Okay, so
40:34
Speaker 1: let's jump ahead. You practice law for six months, if that,
40:39
Speaker 1: if that, and then you say okay. The band says
40:42
Speaker 1: we're either going to throw in seriously or whatever. But
40:45
Speaker 1: no one has any money, right correct, So what do
40:47
Speaker 1: you do for money? Well, we we just decided to
40:51
Speaker 1: play you know, we we thought, I mean, it's actually
40:55
Speaker 1: it's actually me saying. You know, at this point in life,
40:58
Speaker 1: if you're going to do anything, you've got to really
41:00
Speaker 1: throw yourself out it. You can't pretend. We can't be
41:02
Speaker 1: mucking around on the weekends. We are going to play
41:04
Speaker 1: no matter what, anywhere, anytime anyone will give us a
41:07
Speaker 1: dollar to play, We'll go and play, which is what
41:10
Speaker 1: we did. So we and we started creating our own shows.
41:14
Speaker 1: They had done some of that themselves, and I'd done
41:16
Speaker 1: that when I was at at university. Right, well, why
41:19
Speaker 1: don't we plan that room over there? They don't have bands.
41:21
Speaker 1: Go and talk to the guy that runs it. It's
41:23
Speaker 1: his bar. Yeah, all right, whatever, you know, I'm not
41:27
Speaker 1: going to give you any money, but if we make,
41:28
Speaker 1: you know, fifty bucks on the bar, you get five bucks,
41:31
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. You just go and do it. Okay?
41:34
Speaker 1: How will we all? Were you at this point? So
41:35
Speaker 1: I'm twenty yeah, two and a half, twenty three at
41:38
Speaker 1: this okay? And what are you living on while this
41:42
Speaker 1: is going on? Burgers? Okay? And so at what point
41:49
Speaker 1: what's the big brick so to speak? Even though there's
41:51
Speaker 1: a lot of little bricks but what what is the
41:52
Speaker 1: turning point? Well, look, I think you know, in a
41:55
Speaker 1: career this long, Bob, there's obviously quite a few of those.
41:58
Speaker 1: So one of them is that we actually got a
42:01
Speaker 1: manager who shared the vision. Was the manager experienced or
42:05
Speaker 1: not at all? So how did you find the manager?
42:08
Speaker 1: He found us. Yeah, he came and we played in
42:10
Speaker 1: surf pubs. We started just occupying a hotel. We'd play
42:14
Speaker 1: in the corner and we just set up on a
42:17
Speaker 1: Friday or Saturday night and to be booked the Publican
42:20
Speaker 1: was happy because people would come in and by beer,
42:22
Speaker 1: and eventually the numbers just grew and grew and grew,
42:25
Speaker 1: and then eventually started charging people more and more and
42:27
Speaker 1: we'd have lines out around the block. And he was
42:29
Speaker 1: one of those people who started to come. He was
42:32
Speaker 1: a real estate agent, he was a surfer, and he said,
42:36
Speaker 1: you need a manager, which of course we did because
42:38
Speaker 1: Rob and I were doing it at that stage, and
42:40
Speaker 1: you know, we had other things that we wanted to
42:42
Speaker 1: do and he had. He was crazy and wild, but
42:45
Speaker 1: he also had a great spirit of let's let's do
42:49
Speaker 1: something really in a very different way. In some ways,
42:52
Speaker 1: we're a very conventional band, you know, we play, we rehearse,
42:56
Speaker 1: we write songs, We used bespoke instruments. If you come
43:01
Speaker 1: and see us play live, you're going to see a
43:03
Speaker 1: performing band. But in other ways we're completely the opposite
43:06
Speaker 1: of that. We're very different and we essentially no one
43:09
Speaker 1: wanted to know about us. No one wanted to you know,
43:12
Speaker 1: Columbia when they first heard us passed on us. You
43:15
Speaker 1: know they said no, not with that guy singing, no way.
43:20
Speaker 1: Uh So, having having a manager that did that was
43:23
Speaker 1: I think that's our first break and our second break
43:26
Speaker 1: really is here in Australia. We have a public broadcasting network.
43:30
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like National Public Radio, but it's
43:32
Speaker 1: much bigger, and it's run by the supported by the government,
43:35
Speaker 1: and they established a youth station just fortuitously at the
43:40
Speaker 1: same time as ourselves and other bands like In Excess
43:43
Speaker 1: and Men at Work and so on and so forth.
43:46
Speaker 1: We're just starting to emerge and we got played on
43:51
Speaker 1: the radio, which we never were getting played on commercial
43:53
Speaker 1: radio or FM radio. There's just no way. So we
43:57
Speaker 1: got played, So give them what happened. Crowds got bigger. Okay,
44:02
Speaker 1: just to be clear, once you say we're going pro
44:05
Speaker 1: I'm giving our practicing law, and you're playing what percentage
44:08
Speaker 1: of the materials original? What percentages covers it? By that
44:13
Speaker 1: stage is original? Yeah, and so, and we're going out
44:15
Speaker 1: to places, you know, let's just call them, like a
44:18
Speaker 1: redneck tavern or something like that on a Tuesday night
44:22
Speaker 1: and we're just setting up, you know, and we're playing too.
44:25
Speaker 1: You know, fifty people a hundred people are two hundred
44:27
Speaker 1: people all original material and political material too. Sometimes that
44:31
Speaker 1: starts to creep in. And to begin with, audiences here
44:34
Speaker 1: in Australia didn't you know, they like the fact that
44:37
Speaker 1: we were there and I would talk a lot on stage.
44:39
Speaker 1: I'm talking to people and you're talking about what's going
44:42
Speaker 1: on in the world and politics and culture and what
44:44
Speaker 1: have you. But they didn't necessarily like the music to
44:47
Speaker 1: begin with. But but we threw ourselves into it. You know,
44:50
Speaker 1: we were sort of half punks as well. So we
44:52
Speaker 1: were tearing out the stage at nine and playing loud
44:54
Speaker 1: and fast and furious, and the energy of the band
44:58
Speaker 1: draw drew people back, and then eventually more and more
45:01
Speaker 1: people kept on coming. I mean, it's literally the classic
45:03
Speaker 1: thing and that you know, many stories like this. Okay,
45:06
Speaker 1: so what's the dream at that point, can we make
45:09
Speaker 1: a record? Can we actually survive off being musicians? So
45:14
Speaker 1: you get on the youth radio station audience to get bigger,
45:18
Speaker 1: and then what happens, Well, we we eventually we do
45:22
Speaker 1: make a record. So we couldn't find a major that
45:26
Speaker 1: we could agree with. So okay, so you had offers,
45:29
Speaker 1: but the deals were not good or they yeah, they
45:32
Speaker 1: wanted to change what we were doing whatever, and they
45:35
Speaker 1: just weren't talking our language. So we formed our own label,
45:39
Speaker 1: but it was put out by actually a television company
45:41
Speaker 1: here that actually happened to have a pressing plant. They
45:44
Speaker 1: just had acquired a pressing plant and they were pressing
45:46
Speaker 1: country music and um sort of gimmick records. So we
45:52
Speaker 1: formed a label which we had control over. What you're
45:56
Speaker 1: in n seventy six Yeah, okay, where was the money
46:02
Speaker 1: to make the record? They advanced us a bit of
46:05
Speaker 1: money to make it, and we had we had a
46:07
Speaker 1: loan from the bank and we we we found a
46:09
Speaker 1: bank manager. Surprisingly, and this fellow is very important minight
46:13
Speaker 1: Olds history, as it would be for any band who
46:15
Speaker 1: didn't tell his superior officers that he was loaning money
46:18
Speaker 1: over drafting a band. It took us about seven years
46:23
Speaker 1: from when we first went professional to get out of debt.
46:27
Speaker 1: How much did you borrow? Not a lot, maybe a
46:31
Speaker 1: hundred grand, but those days exactly. Okay, So when you
46:36
Speaker 1: would go back to the big manity would continue to
46:37
Speaker 1: give your money. Yeah, just honored us. What was the pitch.
46:42
Speaker 1: He'd been to see us, and he could see the
46:43
Speaker 1: people there, you know, and he didn't really understand anything
46:47
Speaker 1: about it, but he just knew there was something going on.
46:49
Speaker 1: And see importantly here, unlike modern era, we've got no
46:53
Speaker 1: social media. We're not in the city darlings, were not
46:56
Speaker 1: the culture darlings, and we're playing in the suburbs too
46:59
Speaker 1: as well. And we're hardheaded and doing it our own way.
47:03
Speaker 1: But we're not talking about it. We're not trumpeting it
47:05
Speaker 1: to anybody, we're not self proseitize it. So it was
47:09
Speaker 1: just happening. Okay. Who owns the record today? We do
47:15
Speaker 1: with them? Okay. And so how many currents through which
47:18
Speaker 1: we license back into Sonny? Okay? So how many copies
47:24
Speaker 1: do you press? I think five thousand? Yes, so I'm
47:29
Speaker 1: at the Gigger in stores through stores, yeah, distributed in stores.
47:33
Speaker 1: So if you press five thousan in yourself five thousand
47:35
Speaker 1: M feel pretty good about yourself, absolutely, And you know,
47:37
Speaker 1: and I heard the song on the radio. I heard
47:38
Speaker 1: one of it. We didn't get anything on the charts,
47:40
Speaker 1: but of course that station we got played. And I
47:43
Speaker 1: drove home and my grandmother was still alive, and I
47:45
Speaker 1: was taking it down. You know, used to take her
47:47
Speaker 1: out on a Sunday just to have a little lunch
47:50
Speaker 1: thing and then take her back to where she was living.
47:52
Speaker 1: And I heard this, heard our song, you know, for
47:55
Speaker 1: the first time, first time I ever heard my verse
47:56
Speaker 1: on the radio. As far as I was concerned, I
47:58
Speaker 1: had a record my gran and could see that I
48:01
Speaker 1: you know, I was I was an artist who was
48:03
Speaker 1: making a living out of it. Out of it. That
48:04
Speaker 1: was it. We'd made it. Anything since then has been green. Okay.
48:09
Speaker 1: And how long did the original manager last? A decent time?
48:13
Speaker 1: You know, he was with us for probably fifteen to
48:18
Speaker 1: twenty years. Okay, So you put out the record independently
48:21
Speaker 1: than what happens, I've just kept on going more touring. Okay.
48:26
Speaker 1: How many deeds can someone play in Australia. It's a
48:29
Speaker 1: big country, but there aren't that many people know. But
48:32
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't want to be nostalgic about
48:34
Speaker 1: the Australian music scene at that time, because I think
48:37
Speaker 1: it's probably a little bit the same in other countries,
48:39
Speaker 1: certainly in the States, which has got a very healthy
48:41
Speaker 1: scene in different ways. But at this point in time,
48:45
Speaker 1: for a variety of different reasons, there were a lot
48:47
Speaker 1: of places to play if you wanted to, or you
48:49
Speaker 1: created your own places to play and then essentially invited
48:53
Speaker 1: people to come and share the space with you. So
48:55
Speaker 1: we would play a hundred and fifty to two hundred
48:57
Speaker 1: gigs a year, and all over the country. All over
49:00
Speaker 1: the country, so in the big cities, driving up and
49:03
Speaker 1: down the coast, country towns, pubs, working men's clubs, university halls,
49:11
Speaker 1: sometimes surf clubs, and just relentlessly play and play and play. Okay,
49:16
Speaker 1: at this point some Australian bands, not that this even
49:19
Speaker 1: happened the sixties, but certainly in the mid seventies they're
49:22
Speaker 1: starting to make it on a worldwide basis. Do you
49:24
Speaker 1: see that as an avenue from midnight Oil? We always
49:30
Speaker 1: had our eye on going further than Australia, only because
49:34
Speaker 1: we realized that there's a limited number of times that
49:36
Speaker 1: you can run around the country and we were students
49:40
Speaker 1: of music. We've all got different tastes, but you know,
49:43
Speaker 1: whatever we were listening to, was it was the Clash,
49:46
Speaker 1: was it Red Hot Chili Peppers, was it lou Reed?
49:49
Speaker 1: It didn't matter. We were just listening to everybody and
49:52
Speaker 1: we knew there was a bigger world out there. How
49:54
Speaker 1: that would happen and how we would make that work.
49:56
Speaker 1: I don't think we had any idea. So what's the
49:58
Speaker 1: next step? After the independent record? Another one, and then
50:04
Speaker 1: another one, and then Glenn John's comes to Australia who
50:09
Speaker 1: formally produced The Who and the Stones, and various people
50:12
Speaker 1: leverage legend. Again, he gets asked out here by the
50:15
Speaker 1: record companies. I think it's a music conference of some kind,
50:19
Speaker 1: and sees the band playing live in one of these
50:21
Speaker 1: big surf pubs with sweat pouring off me and a
50:25
Speaker 1: bunch of wild At what point do you shave your head?
50:28
Speaker 1: That's happened long ago? What was the That wasn't really
50:32
Speaker 1: a show of this thing, particularly because I'm still surfing
50:35
Speaker 1: at the time and it was just getting in the way. Also,
50:38
Speaker 1: my brother and I used to love taking going out
50:41
Speaker 1: in the water and taking in the water photography of
50:44
Speaker 1: big waves, big surf here and the professional surface. So
50:48
Speaker 1: we used to love going out. You know, you sometimes
50:50
Speaker 1: see them there's the people with the flippers stucking under
50:53
Speaker 1: in the way, so that's what we were doing. But
50:55
Speaker 1: you pop up to take the photo and I had
50:57
Speaker 1: long hair at the time and would be this wisp
50:58
Speaker 1: of hairt yeah, literally said in my way, I'm cutting
51:02
Speaker 1: it off? Correct And did you ever grow it after that? No? Okay,
51:06
Speaker 1: but that was when no one that's right, no one
51:09
Speaker 1: at all. But you're you're that kind of a kind
51:11
Speaker 1: of classic guy says if everybody's going one way, I'm
51:14
Speaker 1: going a different way. Probably didn't even enter my mind
51:17
Speaker 1: to be okay. So Glenn John sees you, he sees us,
51:21
Speaker 1: and he convinces A and M that that we're worth it.
51:25
Speaker 1: Uh and says, look, come to England and record. You've
51:30
Speaker 1: got a couple of records under your belt, but I
51:31
Speaker 1: think we can do better than that. And A and
51:34
Speaker 1: M were interested in and had seen us, and we
51:36
Speaker 1: actually I think we may have traveled once, just briefly,
51:38
Speaker 1: and done a few shows in London, then came back
51:40
Speaker 1: with our tae between our legs. In any event, we
51:42
Speaker 1: record with glint A and m pass on the album
51:46
Speaker 1: all together. They decided they don't want to put it out,
51:49
Speaker 1: but they paid for it, correct. Yeah, he goes across
51:53
Speaker 1: the l A and New York to try and shop it,
51:55
Speaker 1: and you know he's proud of it, to his great credit,
51:59
Speaker 1: but no one's interested. So we come back to Australia
52:03
Speaker 1: and yeah, your ego must have been pretty crushed. Well. No, actually,
52:09
Speaker 1: the judgment of record company people on the value of
52:11
Speaker 1: our music has never meant much for me, you know.
52:15
Speaker 1: I mean I don't disrespect them, and I've got some
52:17
Speaker 1: great friends in the business now, but they're always looking
52:19
Speaker 1: and hearing it through a certain prison. Okay, So you
52:21
Speaker 1: always had confidence always, Okay. So you come back to Australia.
52:25
Speaker 1: What ultimately happens with that record? That record is released
52:28
Speaker 1: here in Australia and it does well well eventually on Columbia.
52:35
Speaker 1: So here in Australia. Columbia then become interested and they
52:39
Speaker 1: essentially pick up that record. So CBS picks it up.
52:43
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of negotiation because we want to
52:46
Speaker 1: maintain control over everything pretty much as we can. So
52:50
Speaker 1: they pick it up here and they get the opportunity
52:54
Speaker 1: to license it in other territories. We continue touring, we
52:58
Speaker 1: continue playing, but we start making little for as we
53:01
Speaker 1: save up in that money. So we too here, you know, work, work, work,
53:05
Speaker 1: and then head across to San Francisco or l A
53:09
Speaker 1: on your own money, no label money, correct, all on
53:11
Speaker 1: our own money. Okay. So the drummer basically finds places
53:15
Speaker 1: to play there. No, he's not doing all the business now.
53:18
Speaker 1: So Gary Morris, who manages us at that stage, our manager,
53:23
Speaker 1: and we get an agent and we we invite people
53:26
Speaker 1: to see us, and if they like the band and
53:28
Speaker 1: they want to support the band, they become part of
53:30
Speaker 1: the Midnight or family and we enjoy working with people
53:34
Speaker 1: like that. And so yeah, they find places for us
53:36
Speaker 1: to play. Okay. So it was their idea to go
53:38
Speaker 1: to these places. Now we wanted to go, but we
53:40
Speaker 1: wanted to help us. Okay. So you you go. You
53:43
Speaker 1: have this one album? Is it even out in another territories?
53:47
Speaker 1: It's got limited release in other territories. Okay, So you've
53:49
Speaker 1: got to San Francisco to what happens. We played under
53:53
Speaker 1: fifty people in a club and you're building an audience
53:58
Speaker 1: and they say, hey, though that's nice. Yeah, we're building
54:01
Speaker 1: an audience. It's intermittent, but we're building it. We're meeting
54:05
Speaker 1: people in the business. We met David Frick from Rolling
54:08
Speaker 1: Stone comes to see us, and people who are watching
54:10
Speaker 1: what's going on. We play colleges, start to play a
54:13
Speaker 1: few colleges, get played a bit on college radio, but
54:15
Speaker 1: essentially still come back again. And then we realize that
54:20
Speaker 1: we're at that junction point, you know, we need to
54:22
Speaker 1: really figure out what the next step for us can be.
54:26
Speaker 1: So we go back to London with a bunch of
54:29
Speaker 1: songs under our belt. We meet a young producer, a
54:31
Speaker 1: guy called Nick Laurna who has produced Public Image and
54:36
Speaker 1: Gang of Youth and now produces Nick Cave and various
54:39
Speaker 1: other people. And we go to the Townhouse Studios in
54:42
Speaker 1: Shepherd's Bush where lots of different people have recorded, including
54:46
Speaker 1: Phil Collins's famous big drum sound in the Air Tonight,
54:49
Speaker 1: and we really work hard to create a record which
54:52
Speaker 1: is three to one record tender one um a record
54:58
Speaker 1: which was our door di you know, we've we've reached
55:00
Speaker 1: that point. Who pays for it? I can't remember the details,
55:04
Speaker 1: but I think we may have got some advance for it,
55:07
Speaker 1: and we may have coughed up a bit ourselves and
55:10
Speaker 1: we came back. That record then goes onto the Australian charts.
55:16
Speaker 1: We have a number of big radio songs here. We've
55:19
Speaker 1: had a little bit of radio we play before. It
55:21
Speaker 1: stays on the charts in our own country for over
55:23
Speaker 1: two years and it breaks us essentially into as a
55:27
Speaker 1: mainstream artist. We've become a mainstream artist essentially, even though
55:30
Speaker 1: lots of people knew about us, but it was always
55:32
Speaker 1: a cult. It was an underground you know. And then
55:35
Speaker 1: that some of those songs gets picked up mainly by
55:37
Speaker 1: college radio and some alternate Columbia in the state. Correct.
55:43
Speaker 1: It's a big record for us, but it makes no
55:46
Speaker 1: indent really in other parts of the world. We then
55:50
Speaker 1: continue to make records, we keep doing what we're doing.
55:54
Speaker 1: I'm now getting increasingly drawn into political activism as well,
55:58
Speaker 1: so our careers get a little stretched because I am
56:03
Speaker 1: now in a situation where I stand for public office here. Yeah,
56:08
Speaker 1: where's uh beds are burning? It's coming so okay, So
56:14
Speaker 1: what's your motivation to go sideways and become running for
56:17
Speaker 1: political office? Well, it was the nuclear disarmed issue, and
56:20
Speaker 1: we we'd actually recorded an album after tender one. We
56:23
Speaker 1: went and record in Japan, and after we finished recording,
56:26
Speaker 1: a bunch of us said, well, look, we're here, why
56:28
Speaker 1: don't we go and have a bit of a look
56:29
Speaker 1: at the country. I went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I
56:32
Speaker 1: saw what happened when the atomic bomb was dropped, and
56:37
Speaker 1: I thought, it's crazy that we've got, you know, thirty
56:40
Speaker 1: thousand of these things sitting in each of the warheads
56:43
Speaker 1: America and Russia. We can't use them. That's got a change.
56:48
Speaker 1: And there was a party that sprung up here in
56:50
Speaker 1: Australia and I ran for the Senate. I nearly, I
56:52
Speaker 1: nearly became a senator. Okay, well yeah, theoretically if you've
56:56
Speaker 1: got elected, that will put it in the being correct absolutely,
56:59
Speaker 1: So what the rest of the be a member of
57:00
Speaker 1: saying well, you know, I think it's something about midnight
57:02
Speaker 1: or you know, we we've always given one another enough
57:04
Speaker 1: space and respect to what they knew. I wanted to
57:09
Speaker 1: do it, you know, to go where we want to go.
57:11
Speaker 1: And was the band going to fall apart? Well, no,
57:14
Speaker 1: you know, maybe they'd go off and do stuff themselves.
57:16
Speaker 1: Maybe I could join them on the weekends. We didn't okay,
57:18
Speaker 1: just a little bit slow. What was the process of
57:20
Speaker 1: saying of throwing your hat in the ring? At what
57:22
Speaker 1: point did you say, you know what caused that? There's
57:25
Speaker 1: a party, etcetera. Yeah, look at a small grassroots party
57:28
Speaker 1: that forms and they're looking for candidates. They had different candidates.
57:33
Speaker 1: They had a possible candidate here, but a bunch of
57:35
Speaker 1: people came to me and said, look, what don't you
57:37
Speaker 1: be our candidate? You know, tender one was a really
57:39
Speaker 1: strong record at the time, anti nuclear record, I'd spoken
57:43
Speaker 1: out about those things already. You're very well known. Sort
57:46
Speaker 1: of have a go and I said, yeah, look, I'm
57:48
Speaker 1: more than happy to do that. Okay, so you run,
57:51
Speaker 1: you go door to door. Do you really push it? Yep?
57:53
Speaker 1: We run up. Well, it's for the Senate here, so
57:56
Speaker 1: you're not campaigning as you were, say, in a district
58:01
Speaker 1: or something like that, like a congressman or woman. We're
58:06
Speaker 1: written off by the media and the major parties as
58:09
Speaker 1: a novelty act and belittled and criticized. But what but
58:14
Speaker 1: many young people, particularly respond and our we start to
58:18
Speaker 1: become more and more popular. What happens next is a
58:21
Speaker 1: technical issue, but essentially in our system party's preference other
58:27
Speaker 1: candidates when they use up their existing number of votes,
58:31
Speaker 1: and here the major parties decided not to preference me
58:34
Speaker 1: at all. So essentially, even though I got a lot
58:37
Speaker 1: of primary votes, many many, many primary votes, I just
58:41
Speaker 1: missed out on getting into the Senate on primary votes
58:44
Speaker 1: alone and received So look, I think the shorthand of it, Bob,
58:50
Speaker 1: is that it was an incredible experience and we we
58:52
Speaker 1: created something quite special here. We had artists and writers
58:55
Speaker 1: and filmmakers and other musicians all involved. It was it
58:58
Speaker 1: was it was small people's movement, and we shifted the
59:01
Speaker 1: foreign policy of the country a little bit, not as much,
59:03
Speaker 1: perhaps as we would have liked, but more than we
59:05
Speaker 1: would have if we hadn't done anything. I ran a campaign,
59:09
Speaker 1: but I didn't get in, and that was a blessing
59:11
Speaker 1: for Midnight Oil and for our audience because we could
59:14
Speaker 1: resume the career. Okay, so how do we get to
59:17
Speaker 1: their hit? So by that stage I have been approached
59:23
Speaker 1: to become the president of one of the big national
59:27
Speaker 1: environment organizations here in Australia, it's called the Australian Conservation Foundation.
59:31
Speaker 1: Who We've done a little bit of benefit concerts and
59:33
Speaker 1: things for in the past, and I could see through
59:36
Speaker 1: my lawyer eyes that they needed, uh, you know, the
59:41
Speaker 1: possibility of someone to work with them. And the fellow
59:44
Speaker 1: who became their executive director, who was also a lawyer
59:47
Speaker 1: like me, had been working with Aboriginal people in the
59:51
Speaker 1: middle of this country near the Big Red Rock or
59:54
Speaker 1: who are about to get their land back given back
59:57
Speaker 1: to them, has been stolen essentially by the British, and
59:59
Speaker 1: they wanted to make a little film. And he said,
1:00:03
Speaker 1: he called me up and called Gary up, and he said, look,
1:00:06
Speaker 1: do you think they oars would write a couple of
1:00:07
Speaker 1: songs for this film? That the traditional elders, the older
1:00:10
Speaker 1: people in the tribes would like them to write a
1:00:12
Speaker 1: song on some songs. And we said, yeah, of course,
1:00:16
Speaker 1: we'd love to do that. And so Dead Heart and
1:00:19
Speaker 1: Beds are Burning in their initial phases, songs that Rob
1:00:23
Speaker 1: Herst brought to us in difference um finished in different ways.
1:00:29
Speaker 1: Why don't we use these songs. So we recorded Dead
1:00:31
Speaker 1: Heart long before we made Diesel and Dust long before
1:00:34
Speaker 1: Beds are Burning. And we said, and we send it
1:00:37
Speaker 1: to them and said do you like it, you know,
1:00:38
Speaker 1: would you like to use this fear film? Yes, they
1:00:40
Speaker 1: would and Beds was another song that we had which
1:00:43
Speaker 1: we were mucking around with. We then thought like it's
1:00:46
Speaker 1: time to make an album. We went into the studio.
1:00:48
Speaker 1: It was Beds about what it was about? Then, correct,
1:00:52
Speaker 1: it's not the same subject absolutely, yeah, And and and
1:00:56
Speaker 1: potentially a song to be used for this film a
1:00:58
Speaker 1: little film, right, I got it. It's like American Indian
1:01:02
Speaker 1: people from Flagstaff as putting together like a mini film
1:01:05
Speaker 1: which two people are going to see. So we went
1:01:13
Speaker 1: into the studio. So Warre Livesey who had produced an
1:01:20
Speaker 1: English artist called the Matt Johnson Yeah, an epic had
1:01:26
Speaker 1: come over to produce, and we had the songs. We
1:01:30
Speaker 1: had most of the songs written, and we went into
1:01:32
Speaker 1: Albert studio. The c d C guys had a little
1:01:35
Speaker 1: that their publishing house had a small studio in Sydney
1:01:39
Speaker 1: and the Northern Beaches and we started to record the songs,
1:01:42
Speaker 1: including Beds of Burning, which once we'd finished with it,
1:01:46
Speaker 1: we knew it was hummable and all of that, and
1:01:48
Speaker 1: it was a strong song, but we had no idea
1:01:50
Speaker 1: that it would eventually become that sort of breakthrough song
1:01:54
Speaker 1: for us. How does it become the breakthrough song in
1:01:57
Speaker 1: part because at the same time you had MTV is
1:02:01
Speaker 1: starting to show videos, and we made some videos a
1:02:04
Speaker 1: little bit slower. So you have a deal, you have
1:02:08
Speaker 1: a deal with CBS, which at some point becomes Sony,
1:02:11
Speaker 1: but this is before that, and you make Diesel and Dust.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: Is it put out simultaneously in the US as it
1:02:17
Speaker 1: is in Australia. Yes, Now that the company is ready
1:02:20
Speaker 1: for who decides to make the video? We do, okay,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: And so you know, the video ultimately gets airplay all
1:02:28
Speaker 1: over the world whatever. But how much money is spent
1:02:31
Speaker 1: on that video? Well, Sony paid paid. Of course, you
1:02:36
Speaker 1: ultimately paid for it exactly. But they answer the money, Yeah,
1:02:40
Speaker 1: So I think it was jointly agreed. You know. I
1:02:43
Speaker 1: think that we've always done our made our own videos
1:02:47
Speaker 1: and done our own artwork and all that stuff. The
1:02:49
Speaker 1: record company will will will come to the party and
1:02:51
Speaker 1: lend us, as you say, some money, perhaps depending on
1:02:53
Speaker 1: what the budget are. But we decided what we wanted
1:02:55
Speaker 1: to do and we shot some of it here in
1:02:57
Speaker 1: Sydney and some of it out in the bush. And
1:03:02
Speaker 1: people have heard the record by that stage. And you know,
1:03:04
Speaker 1: obviously the A and R people and others were excited
1:03:07
Speaker 1: about it and thought, wow, you know, we've got some
1:03:08
Speaker 1: songs here that that might get onto radio that's important
1:03:11
Speaker 1: for them at the time in the States. As I
1:03:13
Speaker 1: understand it, you probably know more about this than I.
1:03:15
Speaker 1: So this is what we gleaned. The payola thing was
1:03:19
Speaker 1: was starting to be had risen up its head again,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: certainly on radio on radio, and it seemed like there
1:03:28
Speaker 1: was a little bit more openness for people just to
1:03:30
Speaker 1: play other music. And we started to get played on
1:03:33
Speaker 1: radio and some there were some big stations that started
1:03:37
Speaker 1: to run the song, and so the radio play came
1:03:39
Speaker 1: before the video play. I think, so yeah, but you know,
1:03:43
Speaker 1: to be honest, it's a bit of a blur to me.
1:03:44
Speaker 1: So I'm assuming it did, but I'm not. But at
1:03:48
Speaker 1: what point do you realize you're on the ricord ship here?
1:03:52
Speaker 1: I think when we go back to play and we've
1:03:57
Speaker 1: been playing big clubs and college is and then our
1:04:02
Speaker 1: agent says to us, actually, we're playing amphitheaters and they've
1:04:05
Speaker 1: sold out, so we might even play some bigger places.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: But I look, here's the thing for us. You know,
1:04:12
Speaker 1: for most many musicians, they literally do have a kind
1:04:15
Speaker 1: of overnight success and they're scratching themselves a bit, and
1:04:18
Speaker 1: then you know they can hang onto it or they
1:04:20
Speaker 1: build on it or whatever. From what I've been telling you,
1:04:22
Speaker 1: you know, we've been plugging away in a country on
1:04:24
Speaker 1: the other side of the world forever, right exactly. Well
1:04:27
Speaker 1: that's you know, the old But okay, you make the video.
1:04:31
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm on the other side of the ocean.
1:04:34
Speaker 1: But it starts to really blow up. So at one
1:04:37
Speaker 1: point to Sony and New York say, or CBS New
1:04:39
Speaker 1: York say, you've gotta come here. We're gonna do this,
1:04:41
Speaker 1: you know, they well they're saying it pretty quickly and
1:04:45
Speaker 1: fairly readily, and so away we go. So what was
1:04:47
Speaker 1: it like, Well, you know, it's one of those funny things.
1:04:51
Speaker 1: Everything starts to move that much more quickly when that
1:04:53
Speaker 1: happens in your career, and you will have talked to
1:04:55
Speaker 1: other artists like this. You know, they'll say, I actually
1:04:57
Speaker 1: can't remember what happened between, you know, because you know
1:05:02
Speaker 1: we were going fast and furious. I mean, it's not
1:05:05
Speaker 1: I can't not remember it because we were we were
1:05:07
Speaker 1: lying on our backs in some nightclubs somewhere. It's just
1:05:10
Speaker 1: that we never based ourselves overseas we always based ourselves
1:05:13
Speaker 1: in Australia and we've always marched the beat of our
1:05:17
Speaker 1: own drum. Plus we're not that fast about popular culture
1:05:21
Speaker 1: and whether we're in or out or who's who in
1:05:23
Speaker 1: the zoo, So for us it was more a case
1:05:25
Speaker 1: of what can we get done whilst insane and remaining
1:05:30
Speaker 1: connected to home. You go on the road to partake
1:05:33
Speaker 1: of the rock star lifestyle. Not really, I mean we're
1:05:37
Speaker 1: we're no, you are me. I don't know which part.
1:05:41
Speaker 1: But let's start with the alcohol and the drugs. No,
1:05:44
Speaker 1: that's not. I mean we enjoy our having a beer
1:05:46
Speaker 1: and a glass of wine and all of those things.
1:05:48
Speaker 1: And people will have you know, had whatever interaction with
1:05:51
Speaker 1: recreational drugs as young person, teenagers and young adults. But
1:05:55
Speaker 1: Midnight Idol has got a very strong work ethic and
1:06:00
Speaker 1: we enjoy ourselves, I mean our idea of partaking the
1:06:02
Speaker 1: rock and roll. So we couldn't actually believe that when
1:06:04
Speaker 1: we played a show there was a bottle of wine
1:06:07
Speaker 1: there in the green, there was a writer. Wow. When
1:06:11
Speaker 1: we finished, someone would drive us into a car to
1:06:14
Speaker 1: a club where we could hear another band, and we
1:06:16
Speaker 1: would sit around having a beer and talking to other musicians.
1:06:18
Speaker 1: I mean that was heaven on a stick. And what
1:06:20
Speaker 1: about sex? Most of us are settled with our permanent
1:06:26
Speaker 1: girlfriends wives, so by time it hit, yeah, you already
1:06:30
Speaker 1: had your girlfriend, We already had kids, were more. Really
1:06:33
Speaker 1: most of us are married men, okay with children before
1:06:36
Speaker 1: the success? And what's paying for that lifestyle? Correct? Yeah?
1:06:40
Speaker 1: I mean the music is enough money to make this
1:06:42
Speaker 1: all work? Yeah? Well, we worked hard, you know, and
1:06:45
Speaker 1: and we did our own deals, and we had a
1:06:47
Speaker 1: manager and an agents that people that shared our vision.
1:06:50
Speaker 1: I mean, we were the ultimate do it yourself outfit.
1:06:52
Speaker 1: In some ways, we didn't have you know, safety pins
1:06:56
Speaker 1: in our genes, but we had that attitude. But also
1:07:00
Speaker 1: we weren't ripped off by people. You know, we we
1:07:04
Speaker 1: were thoughtful about Okay, everybody is married. Are they still
1:07:07
Speaker 1: married to those people? Uh? Three of us are. Yeah.
1:07:10
Speaker 1: Well that's pretty good for rock and roll. Okay, so
1:07:13
Speaker 1: you have this big success, to what degree do you
1:07:15
Speaker 1: feel pressure you gotta follow it up? Well, the precious
1:07:18
Speaker 1: inevitably going to come, uh, simply because you're you're aware
1:07:21
Speaker 1: of it. And the Blue Sky Mining is the next record,
1:07:24
Speaker 1: and there are a couple of songs on there, that
1:07:26
Speaker 1: that also with Shart songs, but those were successful songs.
1:07:30
Speaker 1: But when you're sitting there in the studio and you
1:07:32
Speaker 1: know you've had a hit album, to what degree you say,
1:07:34
Speaker 1: I've got to write something, I'm worried about whether it's
1:07:37
Speaker 1: going to be a good video good not at all. No,
1:07:40
Speaker 1: it's not in our dialogue. We don't. We don't think
1:07:43
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, and if okay, so then you continue
1:07:47
Speaker 1: to have success. At what point do you get back
1:07:49
Speaker 1: into the politics. I should qualify my last answer to you,
1:07:53
Speaker 1: Bob when I said we don't think like that. Of course,
1:07:55
Speaker 1: when people are writing songs, they'll think about whether this
1:07:58
Speaker 1: is the kind of song that might get played on radio,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: because we're students of music and we're musicians, but it's
1:08:03
Speaker 1: not our predominant sort of thought. Our thinking space is
1:08:07
Speaker 1: always around what works for us. What is midnight Oil?
1:08:10
Speaker 1: Is it going to fly or not? We don't really know.
1:08:12
Speaker 1: This one sounds like it, maybe it won't. It doesn't
1:08:15
Speaker 1: matter here it is. So that's how that works. Blue
1:08:19
Speaker 1: sky Mine. Well, we then have the career that sort
1:08:22
Speaker 1: of settles and then stagnates a bit, you know, big
1:08:25
Speaker 1: in anybody, Yeah, doing doing okay, not heaps of and
1:08:30
Speaker 1: we give a fair bit away. You know, we've got
1:08:31
Speaker 1: our own sharable things happening, and I mean we're not saints.
1:08:36
Speaker 1: We look after ourselves, but we also like to support people.
1:08:39
Speaker 1: So how do you get into the politics thing ultimately
1:08:42
Speaker 1: full time? Well, by the early naughties, I think, from
1:08:47
Speaker 1: my perspective, at least, we reached the point where if
1:08:49
Speaker 1: we don't relocate and re transform what we're doing, we're
1:08:55
Speaker 1: really going around in a kind of a circle, which
1:08:58
Speaker 1: for midnight all is not healthy. And at that stage,
1:09:01
Speaker 1: I've done two terms as the a c F President,
1:09:03
Speaker 1: I've spent quite a bit of time in the National Parliament.
1:09:07
Speaker 1: I've been negotiating political deals and legislations and all those
1:09:11
Speaker 1: sorts of things. And I wasn't sure what I would do,
1:09:16
Speaker 1: but I thought, I want to do more politics, whether
1:09:18
Speaker 1: it's in an energeo capacity or whether it's in a
1:09:21
Speaker 1: formal capacity. And as it turned out, it became a
1:09:24
Speaker 1: formal capacity. So I get invited to join the Labor Party,
1:09:27
Speaker 1: which is the equivalent of the Democrats here, and by
1:09:31
Speaker 1: a confluence of events, there's a seat which I can
1:09:34
Speaker 1: win if if I stand for it. And so I
1:09:38
Speaker 1: say to the oils at that point, when when I
1:09:41
Speaker 1: finished with the oils at that stage, to them too.
1:09:43
Speaker 1: I hadn't decided on politics, although everyone thought it would happen,
1:09:46
Speaker 1: but I didn't know what would happen anyway. Eventually it
1:09:49
Speaker 1: does happen and I become a member of parliament. I
1:09:52
Speaker 1: get elected here to a seat here in Sydney, a
1:09:54
Speaker 1: place where we played a lot, where I went to UNI,
1:09:56
Speaker 1: had good close connections with the community, and my life
1:09:59
Speaker 1: changes completely for ten years. What does the band say
1:10:03
Speaker 1: about all this? Look mixed feelings. I think some would
1:10:07
Speaker 1: have liked kept on doing what we were doing, maybe
1:10:11
Speaker 1: with people doing solo albums and we regroup occasionally. Others
1:10:14
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, that's that makes sense, that's you've always
1:10:17
Speaker 1: been that kind of person. So well, you're doing the
1:10:19
Speaker 1: political thing for ten years. What are they living on?
1:10:22
Speaker 1: What are they doing? They just do different things, you know.
1:10:25
Speaker 1: They well, it's funny. They thought they'd get another singer
1:10:28
Speaker 1: for a while. That proved a little bit right, so
1:10:31
Speaker 1: they form about It ends up being an instrumental band
1:10:34
Speaker 1: called The Break and they play arts festivals and around
1:10:40
Speaker 1: and about a bit. They do their own solo albums.
1:10:44
Speaker 1: Both Jim and Rob prolific writers, so there's lots of
1:10:47
Speaker 1: music coming out. Jim produces people and they play with
1:10:50
Speaker 1: other people, so they live the life of working musicians,
1:10:53
Speaker 1: and they're going to be pissed at you. Yes and no,
1:10:57
Speaker 1: I think that. I don't know. I mean, we've talked
1:11:02
Speaker 1: about it a bit. The attitude seems to be, Hey,
1:11:05
Speaker 1: you know you've got to We're not We're not the
1:11:09
Speaker 1: kind of person we can hold back. Okay, what about
1:11:12
Speaker 1: your mind? You're leaving the circus. Are you cool with that? Yes,
1:11:15
Speaker 1: very much so, Okay, you go into politics now at
1:11:19
Speaker 1: the end of it, Okay, what do you think about
1:11:22
Speaker 1: it of having been in politics? Did not regret it
1:11:27
Speaker 1: for a second. Well, you have an experience, But to
1:11:30
Speaker 1: what degree we're your goals fulfilled? Some goals were fulfilled
1:11:36
Speaker 1: to the extent that I hoped for, and others fell short.
1:11:40
Speaker 1: My major feeling about it, Bob, is that I probably
1:11:43
Speaker 1: should have done it earlier. What would have happened if
1:11:46
Speaker 1: you've done it earlier. I think if I had done
1:11:48
Speaker 1: it earlier, I may have had a longer career, and
1:11:52
Speaker 1: maybe even a more senior career. Even though I was
1:11:55
Speaker 1: a cabinet minister. I was very senior by the end.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: So I, for example, I'm very interested in foreign airs. Um,
1:12:02
Speaker 1: so perhaps you know that that I might have ended
1:12:04
Speaker 1: up as a Minister for Foreign Affairs if I had
1:12:06
Speaker 1: a start earlier. So I herded is, how does it end? Well,
1:12:10
Speaker 1: we have a leader at the time, he's the Prime Minister.
1:12:13
Speaker 1: I'm the Environment Minister under him, but he's a difficult
1:12:16
Speaker 1: person to be let I only ever had one boss.
1:12:19
Speaker 1: One was enough. But he's then replaced by a woman
1:12:24
Speaker 1: leader who becomes Australia's first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
1:12:30
Speaker 1: When that changeover happened, she gives me all of her portfolios,
1:12:33
Speaker 1: or most of them. So I become the Education Minister,
1:12:36
Speaker 1: and I work as the Education Minister and the Youth Minister,
1:12:39
Speaker 1: and we pass laws to improve education. But the party
1:12:45
Speaker 1: is not traveling well in the polls, and he, the
1:12:47
Speaker 1: first Prime Minister, stages that come back and I privately
1:12:52
Speaker 1: decide if he comes back, I'm not staying. So he
1:12:55
Speaker 1: comes back and I say to my colleagues, Okay, that's it.
1:12:58
Speaker 1: They want me to stay and stay in that role,
1:13:01
Speaker 1: but I resigned from that role. And then when the
1:13:04
Speaker 1: next election comes, I don't stand again. What was the thought?
1:13:08
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, what were you planning to do
1:13:10
Speaker 1: if you were no longer having that career? Well, I
1:13:13
Speaker 1: could do anything, you know. I could spend some time
1:13:15
Speaker 1: with my my dearly beloved wife, you know, and she's
1:13:18
Speaker 1: been hanging in for me for a long time. Because
1:13:21
Speaker 1: I've obviously been working really hard and long hours and
1:13:23
Speaker 1: all of those things. I understand how the country works.
1:13:27
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of experience, you know, big levels
1:13:29
Speaker 1: of government. I've been an activist. Now I can add
1:13:32
Speaker 1: value to someone. Okay, So once you don't stand for
1:13:35
Speaker 1: a re election, at what point do you say, fuck,
1:13:37
Speaker 1: we'll get the band together. Well that's the good question,
1:13:40
Speaker 1: isn't it. So I thought I'd be working essentially as
1:13:43
Speaker 1: a lawyer, come activists with community groups. That's what I thought.
1:13:47
Speaker 1: I'd been doing, and playing a bit of music on
1:13:48
Speaker 1: the side, you know. I thought, well, we'll play a
1:13:51
Speaker 1: club and we'll raise a bit of money, you know,
1:13:53
Speaker 1: for for for whatever, and have some fun. But I
1:13:58
Speaker 1: finish and then as I wrote my autobiography, and as
1:14:02
Speaker 1: I'm writing my biography, there's a guitar sitting in the
1:14:04
Speaker 1: corner of my study, and I'm I'm an average guitarist,
1:14:08
Speaker 1: but I can play the guitar and I'm a musician,
1:14:10
Speaker 1: so I know, with the chords and this guitar, as
1:14:13
Speaker 1: you know, it's starting to move and it's quite weird,
1:14:16
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, am I seeing things? It's not really moving,
1:14:19
Speaker 1: but it's calling me. Pick me up, you know, So
1:14:22
Speaker 1: I start picking the guitar up. At the end of
1:14:24
Speaker 1: each day, i'd try and write eight hundred words, you
1:14:26
Speaker 1: know what it's like, And then I pick up the
1:14:29
Speaker 1: guitar and I'm just playing some simple chords and I
1:14:31
Speaker 1: end up with a dozen or so what I call
1:14:33
Speaker 1: folk songs. So I played these folks songs just like
1:14:37
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old. You know. I've got a few
1:14:40
Speaker 1: folks because I've always been in a band with people
1:14:41
Speaker 1: who are great songwriters, and they're always writing songs and
1:14:43
Speaker 1: playing guitar. You should record the songs have some fun.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: So inevitably I do go and record those songs with
1:14:50
Speaker 1: Martin Rozzi from Midnight or but with other people as well.
1:14:53
Speaker 1: We turn them into electric folks songs. And I loved it,
1:14:56
Speaker 1: you know, I really I just re encountered that part
1:14:58
Speaker 1: of my life, which makes me feel good. And in
1:15:01
Speaker 1: doing that, Martin and I were chatting, and of course
1:15:05
Speaker 1: we said it would be interesting to see what happened
1:15:06
Speaker 1: if we got in a room together. Shall we do it?
1:15:09
Speaker 1: And I said to the oils, do you want to
1:15:10
Speaker 1: get in a room together? Because I've loved making music
1:15:12
Speaker 1: by myself A little different when you're back with your
1:15:15
Speaker 1: colleagues again, with the promise that we made to one another,
1:15:18
Speaker 1: which we weren't going to break, get in the room
1:15:21
Speaker 1: and if everybody doesn't feel, literally, as an older musician
1:15:25
Speaker 1: who's been around the block ninety times, that we're blowing
1:15:28
Speaker 1: one another's heads off, then you've got to walk out
1:15:31
Speaker 1: the door. But as it turned out, it sounded alarmingly
1:15:35
Speaker 1: better than I remembered, and we thought, well, let's play
1:15:38
Speaker 1: some shows. And it was literally little steps like that
1:15:41
Speaker 1: ended up to today. Okay, So what what year do
1:15:44
Speaker 1: you stop running for re election? Two thousand and twelve? Okay?
1:15:55
Speaker 1: And at what point do you start running your autobiography
1:15:58
Speaker 1: straight away? Okay? So you really we never did all
1:16:00
Speaker 1: these other things working through whatever. You went straight to
1:16:03
Speaker 1: the bio autobiography. Okay, So then you're in the room together,
1:16:07
Speaker 1: you play the small shows. At what point do you say, funk,
1:16:10
Speaker 1: We're going to give it a run. Pretty much straight away? Yeah,
1:16:14
Speaker 1: pretty much straight away. I think there's no point in
1:16:18
Speaker 1: doing it halfheartedly, and there's only one way of testing it,
1:16:21
Speaker 1: you know, to see if people are there. And I
1:16:25
Speaker 1: think that challenge, of course, is the one that you
1:16:28
Speaker 1: don't want to be a nostalgia act. You don't want
1:16:30
Speaker 1: to be past your best physically or obviously not as
1:16:33
Speaker 1: as young as you were. So what is it that
1:16:36
Speaker 1: makes it work well? For us? It's always been about
1:16:39
Speaker 1: the sound that we're creating on the stage. Is that
1:16:41
Speaker 1: still going to happen. We've got new management who shared
1:16:45
Speaker 1: the vision. We played here a little bit and people
1:16:49
Speaker 1: went beyond bananas. It was a little bit well okay,
1:16:54
Speaker 1: and so you could feel that the lightning, but really, well,
1:17:01
Speaker 1: let's go and play in the world and see if
1:17:02
Speaker 1: there's anyone there. But this was a really big deal, okay,
1:17:07
Speaker 1: because I would hear from people literally from Canada literally
1:17:10
Speaker 1: the you gotta go, you gotta go, and I you know,
1:17:13
Speaker 1: this was such a big deal okay, And and we
1:17:18
Speaker 1: views were great. Whatever you come back from that tour,
1:17:21
Speaker 1: now what well, we gotta make some music. So yeah,
1:17:26
Speaker 1: we've started writing and recording and we'll do that. And
1:17:30
Speaker 1: so if you went back on the road, where can
1:17:33
Speaker 1: you play? Where? Where does midnight oil mean something? Pretty
1:17:37
Speaker 1: much everywhere? Just Australia, United States, Canada. Now we could
1:17:41
Speaker 1: play uh so South America, Brazil, Europe, um scandinaving countries
1:17:48
Speaker 1: and on this last toury to go to all those places.
1:17:51
Speaker 1: Yes we did, we play most of them. It wasn't
1:17:53
Speaker 1: lucrative in some ways in some places that were certainly
1:17:57
Speaker 1: paid for itself and better. Okay, Yeah, let's go back
1:18:01
Speaker 1: to the political thing. Okay, what did you learn about
1:18:07
Speaker 1: the process? It's a little bit like making sausages. You
1:18:11
Speaker 1: don't want to get too close to it, you know,
1:18:13
Speaker 1: if you've got high ideals about it. But on the
1:18:15
Speaker 1: other hand, it's the most important game in town. Okay,
1:18:20
Speaker 1: but to what degree by making the sausage does it
1:18:24
Speaker 1: teamp the individual? To what do we do you have
1:18:26
Speaker 1: to compromise? Well that the definition of politics is compromised.
1:18:32
Speaker 1: There is nothing happens politically, even the big steps in
1:18:35
Speaker 1: this world, without someone somewhere compromising to some extent. The
1:18:39
Speaker 1: question around that is always are you compromising the very
1:18:43
Speaker 1: thing that you're standing for. Are are you ultimately advancing it?
1:18:47
Speaker 1: And I think nine times out of ten my viewers
1:18:50
Speaker 1: that within the party we were always advancing it if
1:18:54
Speaker 1: there were things that you didn't agree with, which essentially
1:18:56
Speaker 1: is a compromise for you. That is part of the
1:19:00
Speaker 1: process of being a team player in a political party.
1:19:02
Speaker 1: In the Westminster system. One of the things that holds
1:19:06
Speaker 1: us back politically as a species people's egos and people's
1:19:12
Speaker 1: lust for power and the fact that they'll do anything
1:19:14
Speaker 1: for it, and the fact that they don't support their
1:19:17
Speaker 1: colleagues for the greater good. And one of the things
1:19:20
Speaker 1: that I did when I went into politics was I
1:19:22
Speaker 1: essued the fact that I was really a very well
1:19:25
Speaker 1: known national person in Australia, celebrity if you like, not
1:19:28
Speaker 1: my my word, but probably definitely the most famous person
1:19:32
Speaker 1: ever to walk into the Parliament just like that. And
1:19:35
Speaker 1: anyone who's tried that before, whether it's been a football
1:19:38
Speaker 1: player or a sports star or someone has got smashed
1:19:41
Speaker 1: out of the park. And I wasn't going to show
1:19:45
Speaker 1: up on the weekend shows and crack jokes about midnight oil.
1:19:48
Speaker 1: And you know, we've played a big set, and now
1:19:50
Speaker 1: the legislation is star. I did it as a serious politician,
1:19:54
Speaker 1: and a lot of people here didn't quite figure that
1:19:56
Speaker 1: out to begin with, that, including my peers, couldn't quite
1:19:58
Speaker 1: understand that. But I felt that the Midnight Oha was
1:20:01
Speaker 1: too important for me to demean them in any way
1:20:05
Speaker 1: by using them. And I also felt the politics as
1:20:08
Speaker 1: too serious as a vocation to try and utilize show
1:20:12
Speaker 1: business to advance it. So I was a classic policy wonk.
1:20:16
Speaker 1: I'm the boring guy that reads everything you know and
1:20:19
Speaker 1: wants to get it done. Okay, So what was it
1:20:22
Speaker 1: like when people thought you compromised him? That angry at you?
1:20:25
Speaker 1: I'm talking about constituents, Uh, mostly predictable all part of
1:20:31
Speaker 1: the course. And what could you cope with it? Oh? Yeah, no,
1:20:34
Speaker 1: of course, yeah okay? And then well what you know,
1:20:38
Speaker 1: you were a minister of education and you've in a
1:20:41
Speaker 1: perfect world. What would you like the educational system to
1:20:45
Speaker 1: be well as it should be in your country? You know?
1:20:48
Speaker 1: And I went to I went to your country. I
1:20:49
Speaker 1: spent time with the education secretary there, Obama's education secretary,
1:20:52
Speaker 1: and we just can't remember the guy's name, but you know,
1:20:55
Speaker 1: trying to do good stuff So here's here's the here's
1:20:58
Speaker 1: the deal as eventually, unless we have well rounded citizens
1:21:04
Speaker 1: emerging in our countries who have got the capacity to innovate,
1:21:10
Speaker 1: to empathize, to be creative, who've got a decent knowledge base,
1:21:16
Speaker 1: and who understand a bit about history, the world to
1:21:19
Speaker 1: be messy. In order to do that, you have to
1:21:22
Speaker 1: maximize the opportunity for any young boy or girl, whether
1:21:26
Speaker 1: they're living in the suburbs of Connecticut or they're out
1:21:29
Speaker 1: in the middle of wherever, and no matter how much
1:21:32
Speaker 1: money their parents or carera zone, to be the best
1:21:34
Speaker 1: student they can be. So we've got a Bell curve
1:21:37
Speaker 1: in our populations in America, and I've got a Bell
1:21:40
Speaker 1: curve in Australia. You want to make sure everybody gets
1:21:43
Speaker 1: the best opportunity, but you're bell curve. Kids are the
1:21:45
Speaker 1: ones who become the scientists, the designers, the leaders of
1:21:48
Speaker 1: the future. To do that, you have to make sure
1:21:52
Speaker 1: that every school is adequately resourced to do that job.
1:21:56
Speaker 1: The teachers are well trained and well remunerated, and that
1:21:59
Speaker 1: the leaders in this schools principles or head masters or mistresses,
1:22:02
Speaker 1: whatever you call them in your country, have got the
1:22:05
Speaker 1: capacity to lead and in our country. That means that
1:22:09
Speaker 1: everyone should get supported in education funding from the big
1:22:13
Speaker 1: budget according to need, not the loudest voices, not the
1:22:17
Speaker 1: richest schools according to need. And these other principles apply.
1:22:22
Speaker 1: If you think about when you and I went to school,
1:22:25
Speaker 1: and some people listening to this compared to my kids
1:22:27
Speaker 1: and then their kids. You don't need to be a
1:22:31
Speaker 1: brain in mass to be able to add up. You've
1:22:34
Speaker 1: got a pocket calculator. Nowadays you've got a computer. You
1:22:37
Speaker 1: don't need to be told how the world actually fits
1:22:41
Speaker 1: together in terms of geography, because you can ask Madam
1:22:44
Speaker 1: Google and Madam Google and enlighten you. But how do
1:22:48
Speaker 1: you become a well rounded citizen? How do become someone
1:22:50
Speaker 1: who learns to listen, who understands problem solving, who realizes
1:22:54
Speaker 1: the gaps in their own knowledge, and then goes off
1:22:56
Speaker 1: and make sure that they fill those gaps to do
1:22:59
Speaker 1: something with them, is imbued with a sense of concern
1:23:02
Speaker 1: for their fellow people. You can only do that by
1:23:05
Speaker 1: good education system in the primary level. And if you
1:23:08
Speaker 1: look at a country that does it well, Finland is
1:23:10
Speaker 1: of course as example, but there are others that's what
1:23:13
Speaker 1: they do and they don't do it they don't work harder,
1:23:16
Speaker 1: the kids aren't in class longer than they are in
1:23:18
Speaker 1: Australia or the States. They're not being coached at home
1:23:23
Speaker 1: by tutors more than other people are. At all. Their
1:23:27
Speaker 1: teachers are well remunerated effectively, their masters of education, and
1:23:33
Speaker 1: the schools are well supported. That's what you got. Okay,
1:23:35
Speaker 1: But in the United States, first reaction to what you're
1:23:38
Speaker 1: saying is who's going to pay for all this? Yeah,
1:23:40
Speaker 1: well guess what. Everybody should pay, including the wealthy. Everybody
1:23:44
Speaker 1: should play, including the big companies. Know you're preaching in
1:23:47
Speaker 1: the converted here, but just you know, looking at the thing.
1:23:51
Speaker 1: I mean in America, tax is a dirty word. You
1:23:54
Speaker 1: can't even mention it. It's a third real topic. So
1:24:00
Speaker 1: so what is the hope for the world. Well, I
1:24:03
Speaker 1: can't talk about the hope of the world. The hope
1:24:05
Speaker 1: for America is it's got to get over its allergy
1:24:07
Speaker 1: to tax. You know, it's gotta there's gotta be a
1:24:09
Speaker 1: reconfiguration of language to enable that to happen. Okay, let's
1:24:12
Speaker 1: as I say, well, let me let me be more
1:24:14
Speaker 1: specific and broad. At the same time, we have all
1:24:18
Speaker 1: these nationalistic people around the world primarily a reaction to
1:24:23
Speaker 1: income inequality and globalization. You and me know the globalization
1:24:27
Speaker 1: is inevitable. You know, you don't want to make a
1:24:29
Speaker 1: flat screen. You don't want to be three thousand dollars
1:24:32
Speaker 1: for a flat screen. But we can also say that
1:24:35
Speaker 1: the people were left behind globalization didn't get any help. Correct. Okay,
1:24:40
Speaker 1: but is the world going to move more towards Rexit,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: ward towards Trump or is there going to be an
1:24:47
Speaker 1: event that flips us back to what ones was in
1:24:50
Speaker 1: terms of globalization? What do you think? Okay? Uh, big question.
1:24:56
Speaker 1: But I think essentially that one component of nationalism Trump
1:25:00
Speaker 1: and Brexit, which if you like, a previous social democratic
1:25:04
Speaker 1: and progressive forces haven't fully understood, is the tribal nature
1:25:10
Speaker 1: of communities and nations, and that unless we are clear
1:25:15
Speaker 1: about how we essentially mediate globalism locally as opposed to, hey,
1:25:22
Speaker 1: just let it happen, people are going to be then
1:25:24
Speaker 1: it's going to be a very contested space politically. Having
1:25:27
Speaker 1: said that, I think that the most important awareness that
1:25:32
Speaker 1: we can have is the awareness that we got when
1:25:34
Speaker 1: NASA for NASA for sent people to the moon, you know,
1:25:37
Speaker 1: and we first saw the photos and so it's simple
1:25:40
Speaker 1: sounds like a very simplistic thing to say, but the
1:25:42
Speaker 1: truth of it is that, you know, it's eight and
1:25:44
Speaker 1: a half billion people and numbers growing, although eventually it
1:25:47
Speaker 1: will stabilize off and a world that where the ecology
1:25:50
Speaker 1: and the environment of the world is pretty much getting
1:25:52
Speaker 1: stretched to map to breaking point. We have to work
1:25:56
Speaker 1: out the cooperative mechanisms for allowing us to have national
1:26:00
Speaker 1: and international responses to these issues which are coherent and
1:26:05
Speaker 1: can work hand in hand. And that is essentially the
1:26:09
Speaker 1: vision that they had after World War Two when they
1:26:11
Speaker 1: set up the United Nations, and that vision was we
1:26:13
Speaker 1: cannot have a global war. Now the vision must be
1:26:17
Speaker 1: we must have absolute global cooperation whilst maintaining the sanctity
1:26:22
Speaker 1: of communities, local communities, regional communities and nation states to
1:26:27
Speaker 1: chart their own course within these much more broadly agreed parameters.
1:26:31
Speaker 1: And the obvious one around here, Bob, is climate change,
1:26:34
Speaker 1: because it's the ultimate economic issue, but it's also the
1:26:38
Speaker 1: ultimate global issue, and it's the ultimate environment issue. It
1:26:40
Speaker 1: affects us all and no rich person you know living
1:26:44
Speaker 1: in your state or this city who thinks they can
1:26:46
Speaker 1: escape it by having a better air conditioning system. And
1:26:49
Speaker 1: a world of state is going to escape. It's not
1:26:51
Speaker 1: going to happen. Okay, we're does music fit in with
1:26:54
Speaker 1: all this? Well, music is our soundtrack, you know. Music
1:26:57
Speaker 1: is the soundtrack about time of the zychi that whatever
1:27:00
Speaker 1: is happening at the moment, it's not necessarily going to
1:27:03
Speaker 1: lead the charge. Music doesn't change the world by itself.
1:27:06
Speaker 1: It can't. People do it. It's people that change the world.
1:27:09
Speaker 1: But they need their songs. I've got to have their songs,
1:27:12
Speaker 1: They've got to have their soundtracks. So I think that
1:27:15
Speaker 1: music has not even a role to play. I think
1:27:18
Speaker 1: it it does its thing in a most magical way.
1:27:22
Speaker 1: It crosses, if you like, the mind to the heart
1:27:25
Speaker 1: barriers very quickly. It goes straight to both and then
1:27:28
Speaker 1: it goes to your feet as well. What could be better?
1:27:31
Speaker 1: That's what you need? Okay, So you've achieved so much,
1:27:34
Speaker 1: You've had an internationally successful group that didn't sell out,
1:27:37
Speaker 1: you had a political career. What is the next dream? Well,
1:27:43
Speaker 1: I I just hope to be able to do each day. Well,
1:27:47
Speaker 1: you know, and I think this is honestly, and I'm
1:27:49
Speaker 1: not trying to be falsely modest, but I really do
1:27:51
Speaker 1: think that one of the mistakes that is easily made,
1:27:55
Speaker 1: particularly in this profession, is to believe that you have
1:27:59
Speaker 1: the answers that you're the hero. You know. I don't
1:28:01
Speaker 1: buy the hero myth, you know. I think it's been
1:28:03
Speaker 1: a really dangerous myth for Western civilization. I buy the
1:28:06
Speaker 1: collective myth. Together working together, using our different skills and capacities,
1:28:10
Speaker 1: A believe we can get good stuff done. So I'll
1:28:13
Speaker 1: just continue to do that with my music friends and
1:28:15
Speaker 1: with anyone else who wants to do. Okay, did you
1:28:17
Speaker 1: have that same viewpoint before you got involved in politics
1:28:21
Speaker 1: or did you learn it as a results. I had
1:28:22
Speaker 1: the same view before I got involved in politics. My
1:28:25
Speaker 1: views haven't changed much over the last thirty years. Okay,
1:28:30
Speaker 1: so much food for thought. Peter Garrett certainly politician, lead, singer, charismatic.
1:28:37
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for doing this well, Bob, has been
1:28:39
Speaker 1: a pleasure to talk to your mate. Okay, great, I
1:28:42
Speaker 1: have so much more to learn until next time. This
1:28:44
Speaker 1: is Bob left SA