I had been a long-time casual fan of Midnight Oil and their idiosyncratic frontman Peter Garrett. But in a gap between harsh Covid-19 restrictions in early 2021, I was among about 13,000 people at an outdoor show—one of the largest crowds of any kind in Australia that year—as part of the iconic Australian band’s “Makarrata” tour. Devoted to highlighting the invitation for a renewed relationship with Australia’s Indigenous peoples contained in “The Uluru Statement from the Heart”, this tour and album featured a number of Indigenous musicians sharing the songs and stage with Midnight Oil.
One of the things I took from this remarkable show was a new curiosity about Garrett, who was 45 years into his musical career and in his late 60s at that time, but still singing about things that matter, speaking out in support of various justice causes and continuing to give opportunities to younger musicians.
I wanted to be that when I grew up. Not so much the enigmatic frontman of an iconic rock band, but someone who will continue to speak and create in ways that matter as long as I am able, and to support others in doing so.
So I read his memoir—Big Blue Sky—and took a deeper dive into the back catalogue of the band. I found a passionate musician and advocate, who coincidentally was born at Sydney Adventist Hospital. His early life was shaped by personal tragedy and music became the way he found a place in the world. Like any band, Midnight Oil had their hits and misses, both musically and politically, including their famous performance at the closing ceremony of Sydney’s Olympic Games in 2000. Garrett also was circumspect in reflecting on his time—featuring both successes and failures—as a member of Australia’s parliament and government minister (2004–2013), during which time the band took a hiatus, before regrouping in 2017 and their final world tour in 2022.
Filmed over those final years of the band’s life but drawing from footage across their career, The Hardest Line is a powerful introduction to the band and their environmental, peace and justice activism, from touring outback Australia to performing in protest on the street in front of the Exxon building in midtown Manhattan. Of course, for those already fans, it is primarily a celebration of all things Midnight Oil, pulling together many aspects of their story that have been told previously in various forms.
But this new documentary added one significant and intriguing element to my understanding of Midnight Oil and their career. After their initial success in Australia, built on the hard work of travelling and playing countless gigs around the country in the early 1980s, they struggled to continue and grow that success in the wider world. There were a couple of false starts with recording albums in the UK, but it was a tour through central Australia, primarily visiting Indigenous communities, that gave them new perspective and inspiration. Almost counter-intuitively, engaging with Australia’s Indigenous peoples and unique country sparked their biggest global hits and international tours, including “Beds are Burning”—a song about the dispossession of Indigenous peoples—“The Dead Heart” and “Blue Sky Mine”. But, as Garrett comments, Diesel and Dust was not only their most successful album, it was, “much more important[ly], an addition to our way of thinking and feeling and seeing that we never otherwise would have had” that “made us, I think, better people”.
“We were caught unaware that our songs about Aboriginal people in Australia would find [such] an audience overseas—and then we got on the bus and we were shuttled all around the United States and Canada and Europe,” comments drummer Rob Hirst on their extensive touring that began in 1988. Midnight Oil found its greatest and broadest success when finding inspiration on the margins, listening to the dispossessed and literarily amplifying their voices to the wider world in the work of justice. This is “the hardest line” of the documentary’s title—borrowed from their song, “Power and the Passion”—refusing the easier path and instead taking uncompromising, sometimes uncomfortable and even seemingly unsuccessful stands for justice—as well as in pursing their own way of creating music, sometimes in tension with the existing music industry.
As the story of such a longstanding band, The Hardest Line is a significant contribution to the recent cultural history of Australia and beyond, touching on many of the issues that have engaged activists around the world over that time. Whether it introduces you to Midnight Oil or reminds us of some of their biggest songs, this documentary prompts us to reflect on the role of the creative activist and the faithful calling of sustaining this focus over the seasons, successes and frustrations of a lifetime. That’s still what I want to be when I grow up.
To check out Nathan’s books, go to <signspublishing.com.au/books>.
