Latest / The Front / Facing death, Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst wants to be useful

Transcript

Facing death, Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst wants to be useful · The Front

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: front I'm Claire Harvey. When I think of a rock drummer,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: he's smashing the snares and swilling the beer. But Midnight
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Oil's drummer Robert Hurst, a famously energetic player, defies the cliches.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Hurst is a thoughtful and talented songwriter, a drinker of
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Camomile t and he helped write the band's era defining songs.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: He's also been battling pancreatic cancer for two years, a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: secret he's revealed today in the Weekend Australian magazine to
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: our music writer Andrew McMillan. This is Rob Hurst and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: creating these musical works of art. Hurst was one of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the writers of these famous Midnight All songs, and although
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the band's most famous member was charismatic frontman Peter Garrett,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: it was Hearst shaping this unforgettable sound. Rob Hurst is
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a legend by any metrics.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: He's one of the greatest drummers in Australian music history,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: not just through the popularity of Minna Oil, but the
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: innovation and power of his playing.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: This is Andrew McMillan, The Australian's music writer.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Early on in the band's career, the stage crew took
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: to nailing his drum kit to the floor, otherwise the
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: instruments would fly off the stage. He just hit with
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: ferocity and gusto. That was almost unmatch I dare say
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: in Australian rock and roll. But besides being the drummer,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: he is one of the key songwriters in Minna Oil,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: alongside Jim Ojeini, the guitarist.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: We often assume it's the lead singer writing all the hits,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: but for Midnight or Will just like in Excess and
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Cold Chisel, That's not necessarily the case. In the Oil's case,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: some of the band's biggest hits came from the back
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: of the stage. Here's Rob Hurst in conversation with Andrew.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: I do feel very happy amongst that group of Australian songwriters.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I've always admired it just quietly chip away songs and
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: try to get them as good as possible. That's great
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: after all these years to have something where you can't
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: just dust it off and go okay, job done. Master that. No,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: you never do, in fact quite the country. You try
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: to always write something better than the last thing or
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: the thing before.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: The magic of Midnight Oil was to take ideas that
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: back in the eighties were pretty radical and make them
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: into pub rock bangers. Indigenous rise, reconciliation, environmentalism, corporate greed, politics.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Everyone in the band expressed the activism, the politics, the
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: urgency of certain issues they wanted to get off their
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: chest in a different way, and with Jim and I,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Ed was always trying to write really strong songs that
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: meant something. Songwriting is one hundred percent more potent if
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: what you're writing about something is clearly something that the
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: author or composer was passionate about, but not in a
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: didactic way or a proselytizing way. How can I do
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: it where you actually get people thinking and bring people
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: with you. We realized early on that if it didn't
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: have a killer hook, melody, big chorus grade beat and
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: then delivered, you know, through these massive speakers tings, it
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: was not never going to be absorbed.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Rob Hurst got the real politic partly from his dad, Peter.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: He also had a hugely influential lecturer, Barbara Tucker, while
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: studying law at Sydney UNI. But Hurst's art was shaped,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: perhaps most powerfully by his mum, Robin, My mother.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Was an avowed socialist, and she'd regularly get to trouble,
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: she said, by talking her mind, but she stood aground
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: underneath it. She was tough, but pretty big, hard was so.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Lucky throughout her life. At various points, she suffered from depression,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: as Rob describes the black dog howls through his family,
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: and Rob himself suffered through depression as well at various points.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: But Robin towards the end of her life, when she
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: was eighty five, she got to such a dark place
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: where she no longer wanted to be here with her husband,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: with her family, and as Rob describes it, in her
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: final year, she drank three different poisons in an attempt
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: to end her life, and the third one succeeded. And
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Rob told me that one of the last things that
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: she said to him on her deathbed was don't grieve
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: for me. She had just come to the end of
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: her tether and Rob saw the extreme pain, emotional pain
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: that she was in towards the end. And that's a
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: pretty sad memory for him, but one that he has
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: the willingness to speak about now, not just in terms
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: of honoring her memory, but also thinking of the alternative, where,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: perhaps an a strange canon chew sort of way, Robbers become
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: a proponent of voluntary assistant dying for those who are
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: tonally unwell, where rather than hang around as long as
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: possible in extreme pain in some cases, he's a proponent
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: of taking up that option of the VAD laws to
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: enable him to have a peaceful, loving end of life
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: surrounded by those closest to him, rather than what his
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: mum say that he went through.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Coming up how this soulful man is facing death. In
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: late twenty twenty two, Midnight Oil drew the curtain on
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a forty six year career. Six months after the band's
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: final show at sixty seven years of age, rob Hurst's
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: post Oil's life took a dramatic turn.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: I've been having some kind of vague discomfort, not pain,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: in the abdomen and some kind of weird gurgling sounds.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: So I went down to the doctor here at the
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: biomedical center, and a fellow said it's probably lactose intolerance,
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: you know, take a couple of panadole, and didn't even
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: send me for a blood test. So a couple of
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: days later, still thought a bit weird, went to the
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: GP in Sydney and a few days later and by
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: the way, should never get a phone call from your
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: GP on a Sunday afternoon, she said, go straight to
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: Northern Beaches Hospital. Your liver markers are through the roof.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: I think it might be pancreatitis. Went up there, had
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: a scan, pancreas cancer out of the blue. So quite
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: a shock to say the least.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Andrew, how did you find out Robhurst was unwell?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Luck and circumstance. Basically, I was at Cold Chisel's final
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: show in Sydney in December last year at Kutos Bank Arena,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: and just by chance, I was sat behind Peter Garrett
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: and his bandmate Rob Hurst, who were both there with
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: their wives, and at various points throughout the show, Peter
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: was ducking across this next to Rob when they were
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: an intense conversation, and it kind of happened a few
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: times throughout the two hours, and I thought, what's Rob
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: up to? I've no idea since minnight Oil ended, he'd
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: been silent publicly, so I just wondered what he was
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: up to, put that request into his manager and learned
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: that things had not been going so well for Rob.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Hurst.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Decided it should be Andrew and by extension, The Australian
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: to help Spreadharst's new message as far as possible, a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: message of health awareness, and also of his late friend
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Mark Moffatt, an esteemed producer, guitarist and composer who passed
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: away from pancreatic cancer last year age seventy four.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: So one of the reasons I wanted to talk about
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: pancreas cancer is tourn a Mark. There hasn't been any
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: memorial and there are so many people whose lives affected.
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: One of the great musicians, had worked with everyone, and
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: I wanted to get the story of pancreas cancer out
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: there because it's one of those cancers that most people
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: don't really register them, hasn't really attracted the attention, for example,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: of skin cancers or breast cancers or others, but it's
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: really on the rise. Also, the lesson for me, and
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: maybe why I've lasted this long, is because you know,
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: if you do have any symptoms, just don't get a
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: simple blood test and it could be life changing and
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: life extending.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Pancreatic cancer is particularly aggressive. It's more deadly than skin
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: cancer or breast cancer per diagnosis, due to the difficulty
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: in early detection. For most patients, a diagnosis calls a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: death sentence. It's just too late to do anything.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: I just don't think Anglo Celtic people do death very
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: well compared to most other cultures. We either don't talk
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: about it or we're terrified of it. Most other civilizations
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: in Asia, South America, particularly Southern Europe, they accept death
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: as a natural part of life, and they celebrate for years.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: I used to joke, you know, when I go, I
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: organize a Viking funeral, because I got a lovely old
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: wooden fishing boat, and I thought, you know, maybe with
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: a carton of grange only seventy two, you know, just
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: motor off about five kilometers off the coast of New
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: South Wales, drink the grange and arrange my own Viking funeral.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I thought, that's not fair. It's a really nice wooden boat.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: I would have enjoyed that. But you know, I don't
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: think the length of your life is nearly as important
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: or crucial is the quality and opportunity of the life
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: that you've had. And in my case, it's been absolutely
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: better than anything anyone could ever ask for. And so
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: if my life is attenuated by this tiny little tumor
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: that threatens to do me in. Then I will still
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: consider myself incredibly fortunate, a fortunate life. As ab fac
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: he wrote those years ago, I tear up thinking about
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: how kind people have been, bringing food and clothes and
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: books and checking with me all the time. It's just
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: been it's been a real sorry, it's been really life
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: affirming and lovely.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: You're clearly loved, Rob.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: You don't realize until this kind of catastrophe hits from
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: the side that's been the joyful aspect of this whole Tralamini.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: As the sun set in Byron and Andrew's interview with
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Rob Hurst drew to a close. Hurst told Andrew the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: metric he'd like people to use when measuring his life
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and work.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: From a musical point of view, I would like to
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: be remembered as someone useful to have around a band.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Deborah Osl would write a book called useful, which I
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: commend to you. But I really love that term because
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: you know, in a way it kind of encapsulates what
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: we should be doing with our tiny, little, microscopic time
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: on the planet, which is just in the greatest scheme
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: of things, is so minuscule and so transient is you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: are we in any way useful for the planner, for people,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: for friends, for loved ones? What I like that idea.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Andrew McMillan is The Australian's music writer and you can
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: read his feature on Robert Hurst inside the magazine in
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the Weekend Australian wherever you get your paper, or of
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: course you can read it online right now at the
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. Thanks for listening to the
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Front this week. This episode was edited and produced by
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Jasper Leek, who also composed our music. Our team includes
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: producer Christen Amiot, Leat, Samaglue, Tiffany Dimac, Joshua Burton, Stephanie
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Coombs and me Claire Harvey.