first blush Peter Garrett, the gaunt, cueball-skulled lead 4A
Mmi^ksinger for Australia's hard-stomping, outspoken band '
m m Midnight Oil, resembles the long-lost brother of Michael
Berryman, top geek in Wes Craven's horror film The Hills Have
Eyes. After some questioning, however, the true origins of the vo
calist's chrome-domed tonsorial style become more obvious; a
style sported by a small army of Southern California beach punks.
Garrett is a surfer.
‘ I’m just a body surfer now — I don't
ride a board anymore,” Garrett says, a
little apologetically, in his metallic Oz
accent. Clad in a bright, aborigine print
shin, his long legs dangling off an in
'We've tried lots of singers since you’ve
been away, but do you want to come
back?’ I said, Why not, I've got nothing
else to do.'”
With Garrett’s almost off-handed re-en
strument case, Garren is lounging in a
back room of Hollywood Studio Instru
ment Rentals, anticipating his band’s first
American concert and musing “about
Midnight Oil’s remarkable rise.
It’s the beginning of an odd scenario:
the story of a band that exploded out of
Sydney’s surf community in the late ’70s
to become the most musically potent,
politically committed group Down
Under, later rising to popularity in the
U.S. with their critically praised album
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and their kinet
ic performances on an 11-city American
tour this spring.
The seven-year saga of "the Oils”
began when Garrett was an unemployed
law student visiting his parents in Syd
ney. ”1 went looking for a job and
couldn’t get one, and I saw an ad in the
paper: Band wants singer to tour around
the coast, ” he recollects.
Garrett left the band, w'hich included
drummer Rob Hirst and guitarist-key
boardist Jim Moginie, to return to school
in the fall, but he returned to Sydney the
following year to find the group still to
gether, now writing songs. "They said,
try' into the group. Midnight Oil began
their conquest of the surfing community
along Australia’s north beach. The Ant
ler Hotel at Narabeen, which is like surf
headquarters of Australia, just happened
to be the place where we started, and we
drew that kind of audience, who re
sponded to our no-nonsense approach
to the way we played," Garrett recalls.
"We had songs about surfing—we were
sort of the new wave hard rock Beach
Boys for a period of time."
The band’s popularity grew nation
wide, and Midnight Oil embarked on a
recording career with their own label.
The group’s eponymous first album,
which featured the curl-riding anthem
“Surfing with a Spoon” and the anti
uranium mining tract “Powderworks”
side by side, flew directly in the face of
prevailing musical trends, Garrett notes:
"At the height of punk, when we were
considered a punk band by the Austra
lian press because we played very fast
and hard, we included a seven-minute
song full of guitar solos.” The record’s
successors, Head Injuries and Places on
a Postcard, further honed the group’s
pungency and forceful social conscious
ness.
Last year, after five years of spectacular
success on their home turf, Midnight Oil
finally pacted with CBS and released
their first U.S. album, 10, 9, 8_ For
American audiences totally unfamiliar
with the group, the record came as a
pleasant shock. It showcased a devilish
hard rock sound, kicked along by the
feverish rhythm section of Hirst (who
beats his drum kit into submission with
a Keith Moon-like intensity) and bassist
Peter Gifford, the twin-guitar heat of
Moginie and Martin Rotsey, and the
gale force howl of Garrett’s vocals. Even
more dazzling than the fury’ and fluid
ensemble dynamics of the playing was
the songwriting, which took on im
perialism (“U.S. Forces"), personal polit
ical commitment (“Power and the Pas
sion”), and tht lessons of history (“Short
Memory”) with deft, painterly strokes.
The mention of such “political” songs
as “Power and the Passion" causes Gar
rett to tense noticeably. The singer is
aware, more than anyone, of the pitfalls
of being branded a “political band.”
“We don’t seek to preach to anyone
particularlyGarrett says. “I don’t see
the stage as a soapbox to say my own
personal ideas, although I’m willing to
express them if I’m asked. The thing that
I think we’re most concerned about is
that we don't get labeled by the press as
being, uh...Garrett pauses.
A political band?
“Yeah, in the sense of like a Clash or a
Crass or something like that. If you want
labels, it’s humanistic ecology or what
ever word you want to use for it It’s in
stinctively based. A lot of our stuff has
come about from a concern about what
we’ve seen and thought to be very
wrong, that we’ve written songs about
just as a gut response.”
So where do the members of Mid
night Oil see themselves standing in the
rock political spectrum, with the issue
oriented Clash at one end and the hazily
idealistic Alarm at the other.
“I suppose in the middle, but ... not
really in the middle, no,” Garrett says
with a quiet laugh. "We don’t see our
selves primarily as a political band—we
see ourselves as a band. ”