R.I.P. Rob Hirst
A eulogy for the Midnight Oil drum, songwriter, and force of nature
Rob Hirst has died. He was 70. The Midnight Oil drummer and founding member was also a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and the lyricist behind a lot of the great Midnight Oil anthems — helping to shape the political concerns of Peter Garrett into singable words, even creating many of the melodies too. He was a most musical drummer, who was driving the band from the back, and would also play in loads of side-projects, sometimes on a snare with brushes, other times with his guitar and vocals. The Ghostwriters and Backsliders are just two of the Oils-adjacent/concurrent side-projects that Hirst was a huge part of — again as songwriter, and performer.
He was also one of my absolute drum heroes.
One of his greatest tricks was hiding a (very musical) drum solo inside a politically-charged pop song.
Midnight Oil burst out of the late 70s with surf-punk, political pop. They were angry and charged and on the correct side of the arguments. Hirst was a good old fashioned band-driver from the backseat of the drum set. He was dynamic and no fuss, but very clever too.
No frills, but plenty of great fills, he was a percussive improviser, famously incorporating a corrugated iron water tank into his stage kit, and at various other times playing bits and pieces from around the place, or standing front and centre at a cocktail kit, or just with a snare drum. A showman through and through.
In the mid-1980s the band became even more political and the mega hit Beds are Burning and album Diesel and Dust featured a lot of ‘basic’ drumming which was for the song always.
Diesel was the very first cassette tape I bought. It has stayed in my collection (across various formats) ever since. It is one of the albums I’ve listened to the most in my life. But I couldn’t say it was my favourite Oils album — because there are so many. It’s just the one that fully lured me in. I love 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and Red Sails In The Sunset more. I adore Head Injuries and Blue Sky Mining and, well, actually everything. Midnight Oil has always been one of my favourite bands. And Rob Hirst was a huge part of that.
His book, Willie's Bar & Grill, is one of the best (most honest) music memoirs you could read — it deals primarily with the band’s bad luck and timing of being a foreign prospect in America trying to tour in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. They go from Letterman appearances and the like to playing in front of 25 people in Nowhere bars, and worse. Cancelled gigs, dejected band on the verge of breaking up.
Hirst’s heart was all through the band, and across the pages of the book, and in the songs he co-wrote, and in some (very strong) cases was sole writer (Bedlam Bridge, Mountains of Burma).
He incorporated early electronic drums, and was primarily always at an acoustic kit — he gave every song exactly what it needed, sometimes just sitting right back and loping along as if nothing special, or sitting hard on the line, but always with his unique touch:
I also learned to play Beds Are Burning — a very straight ahead groove — as one of my first ever songs behind the drums. So for that alone, Rob Hirst would have been my drum hero. A name I knew because of that.
But he was so much more than that. And his playing was thoughtful and always just right:
Some of those explosive fills that open Midnight Oil songs feel like the country vehicle backfiring, the rifle that clears the treetops, the country gate opening so the herd can merge, the sheep dog rallying, the rush to grab the surfboard off the roof rack and run to the beach. He was an Australian drummer making Australian music and you can feel that. The heat. The energy. The absolute commitment.
And he was part of one the greatest bands of all time — just one of many wizards in that crew. And they made some of the best songs I’ve ever known.
Rob Hirst had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2023. He fought on, and continued to make music as best he could. His legacy is with Midnight Oil of course. But the Backsliders, and his other projects, including solo work, is all worth hearing. He was a gem. And I was so had hearing this news. It’s absurd to say this of course, but I thought he might live forever. It felt like that when you watched him play. At least, of course, the music he helped to make will live forever. And it sounds like that every time you listen to his helpful, heart-filled urgency.
R.I.P. Rob Hirst
