The Remembered Years

How Rob Hirst and the Oilers helped me grow up

Like a lot of people today I’m listening to Midnight Oil on repeat. Rob Hirst, a truly great Australian musician has died. A vital, vibrant and lithe drummer for ‘The Oilers’.

I never knew Rob Hirst the fellow. But I met his impossibly high swinging right hand at just the right time for a different youngster trying to figure it all out. There was no record collection, no fan-boying, not even a gig til I was in my 30’s. I just knew that I loved his spirit and what he was about.

Somehow ‘The Best of Midnight Oil’ had made it onto our family computer’s Winamp player in 1997. Probably one of about 6 albums total on that machine that was used to connect to the primitive internet through mums work connection.

This was a long way past Midnight Oil’s halcyon days. The vitality of the band in the 1980’s was palpable in my parents generation. This was a band that mattered and mattered to them. They seemed a foreign entity to the decade that produced Kylie and Jason, Crocodile Dundee and Koala Blue. But somehow their staunch argument with the country made them feel more ingrained in its culture than the cartoonish promoters of the land down under.

Before the Oils, it was Rage Against the Machine. Stupidly, I wore them like a set of the latest Vans; virtue signalling that I was vaguely political because I knew some of the lyrics. I was truly a Rollerblade anarchist. It wasn’t until much later that I grasped the scale of the atrocities and injustice Rage were shouting about. This was grown up stuff and I was playing dress-ups as a 15 year old.

But me and my drama room mates all knew that it meant something - we wanted our music to be about something in the way that you want to feel important as a teen.

Hirst’s snap to attention on ‘Forgotten Years’ was a clear memory as I spent more time with my aging war veteran grandparents. His beat insists his message, it pushes and pushes like a tide though jangling guitar; don’t let peace grow into complacency. Grandparents war mates were passing. The media was starting to celebrate and glorify war service. Politcians leaned into the notion of war as national identity.

“This was Hirsts answer to Born in the USA“ his Grandfather and Father had experienced war and had said it was up to future generations to remember the atrocities of war to avoid them.

All of a sudden things for the Rollerblade anarchist were conflicted - what is it to respectfully commemorate but not effectively celebrate? Forgotten Years didn’t solve my unease but it gave it a rhythm and a pulsing reminder.

Another teenage mate and dedicated musician was a fan. It seemed so misplaced to be weird underground fans of an Aussie band that our parents loved in a decade that was all about the latest stuff from the states.

Years later once he was an established touring drummer we were talking about the band at a party.

‘Mate, you cannot possibly hit ‘em harder than Hirsty’.

Technically, my mate loved Hirsty’s ‘Attack’ on the drums. Without knowing what this drumming nerd meant - I knew exactly what he meant. The epic high swing. The full body press into the skins. It was a lightning strike and a generator. Hirst worked in concert with Peter Garret to power a performance that nobody in the country could match.

Garrets staccato moves that punch along in songs like Read about it literally punch out Hirst’s beat. King of the Mountains pounding beat fills Garret and the audience from the ground up and into a soaring vocal -’ Heeeeeey! Mountain in the shadow of light!’

In 1998 at school, it wasn’t good to be different at all. It was a very fast route to the outstide. The middle, the safe were celebrated and hiding parts of yourself was a survival instinct. Redneck Wonderland was released by the Oilers that year. Watching Garret on TV fulled by his mate Hirst all pogoed and sharp and unsmoothed blew recognised stagecraft away. This wasn’t Michael Hutchence mincing about with a mic. It was unspoken and electric two hander performance art - it didn’t make sense but it worked. Their symbiosis encouraged me to be brave, that you could do amazing, creative things with teamwork.

Another teen friendship formed immediately with an anxious lad who delivered vulnerable and raw performance in a drama class despite the bored footy players in the class. They were on the bludge and mercilessly teased his monologue. I’d leapt to his defence, knowing how powerful and brave a move it was. We recalled it only recently as the moment that we became friends.

This was the same year our motley crew walked out of class to protest One Nation in Melbourne with a concurrent protest in Sydney. The Rollerblades were off and social awareness was starting to have more meaning for me and my drama room buddies. We were naive but switching on. Getting the significance of what was happening around us.

It felt like the country was growing up in the same way we were; awkwardly and often tripping over ourselves. Slowly Australia was learning to talk about itelf and growing in confidence. Culturally it was moving on from the Menzian hangover after a decade of media blast from the USA. The 2000 Olympics felt like a debutant ball of national significance. There was a bizarrely unifying anxiety that we’d stuff this up in the eyes of the world.

Forgiving some inevitable shmaltz (Victa Mowers, Nikki Webster) my drama room buddies gathered with cheap beer in a sharehouse. We were keen to see how the Oilers closed the games. Amazingly they were replacing The Seekers who couldn’t perform.

Their silent protest at revealing ‘SORRY’ on their jumpsuits was celebrated like we’d scored. Beer went flying and a coffee table got broken. We jumped up and down on the couch and high-fived. The moment had come. No Prime Minister could ignore that clear and simple message. It was a moment that meant something and it felt like we were a part of it.

I didn’t get the chance to see Hirst perform until I was in my 30’s. The Music Bowl in 2017 where he seemed to skin a watertank in a drum solo that started in the 1980’s but somehow seemed current. He’d have been 61 at this point.

Hirst’s classic outfit of cut off sleeves with his wiry limbs reminded me of the shearers at my cousins farm in the Wimmera. Lean and leathery. All tendon and muscle. He was the engine of a pub hardened political art rock band. By now, the crowd reflected him - mature and cultured with a penchant for a bit of bedlam.

What he modelled for us drama kids was that you could be creative, collaborative have a message and belong. You didn’t need to be the frontman to make a difference.

Well may he be remembered. Thanks for the tunes, Hirsty.

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Thanks for having a read. Dan Toomey is the writer of this and the owner of Fisher Classics. If you’d enjoyed this please subscribe for more articles like this, sporting and cultural moment as well as creative updates from the studio.