Big Blue Sky Read online

  It’s worth adding that the supposed advantages that flow from the arrangement to host the bases, other than the security dimension, are mainly illusory. Bob Hawke admitted as much in his 1994 book, The Hawke Memoirs. Trade was the single most important issue that Australian prime ministers raised in Washington, but as he ‘readily concedes’, ‘we were never really able to get a satisfactory outcome from the Americans’.

  Following the elevation of Paul Keating to prime minister, the government initiated the Canberra Commission to review and make recommendations on advancing nuclear disarmament globally. That work remains important today and the foreign minister of the time, Gareth Evans, has subsequently continued these efforts through his co-chairing of the advisory board of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament at the Australian National University in Canberra.

  Notwithstanding the decommissioning of thousands of warheads by both sides in recent years, the progress towards disarmament has stayed frustratingly slow as the nuclear powers remain unwilling to completely relinquish all their nukes despite significant reductions in the stockpile. Most recently Russia, under Vladimir Putin, canvassed increasing its weapons numbers. To break this logjam a proposal has emerged, with substantial backing from eminent former political and military leaders (including former prime ministers Fraser and Hawke) for an entirely new nuclear weapons convention that would see the possession of nuclear weapons made illegal under international law. These stockpiles are a waste of precious resources, a threat to life on earth, and embody an old way of thinking that is both immoral and devoid of reason. This is a crucially important area where disarmament efforts should be directed in the years ahead.

  11

  KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE

  YOU DIDN’T NEED to be a clairvoyant to see what the future would be like for Midnight Oil once Red Sails was released in October 1984 and the NDP campaign finished—planes and trains (if we were lucky and in Europe) and buses, touring and more touring.

  At the same time we were in a position to settle down a little. Some of us had now married long-time girlfriends. After years of me living out of a suitcase, Doris and I were finally ready to make a home and be a family.

  The band could also afford to support more people who we thought were doing the right thing. We did benefit concerts, and funnelled profits into a donation register to provide grants to individuals and organisations working on causes that were important to us: peace, youth homelessness and the environment. In one case we funded the Brotherhood Christian Motorcycle Club to acquire demountable accommodation for street kids around Parramatta, a program that is still going to this day.

  This was the time when the fate of native forests, those great swathes of eucalypts which are the lungs of the eastern seaboard, was front of mind for many. The issue blew up in Tasmania, where a campaign to stop a proposed dam on the Franklin River drew nationwide attention. I headed down to a rally in 1983 and afterwards we sent some dollars through. We also put on Reef to Rainforest shows at the Entertainment Centre in Sydney in the same year, and then subsidised the preparation of scientific reports to enable a case to be made for the protection of the Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland. Rare in beauty, the rainforest stretches from the ranges inland right down to the coast and inshore reefs, and was home to a dazzling variety of plant life that had evolved over aeons. The Queensland state government, led by Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, was intent on opening up the area to development and housing subdivisions, which would have spelled the end of the intact rainforest. Fortunately, he didn’t get his way. In 1987 the Daintree became a national park, and not long after it entered the World Heritage list—created to recognise globally important natural and cultural areas—and of course is now, along with the magisterial Great Barrier Reef, one of Australia’s most important tourist destinations. There was no shortage of worthwhile campaigns like this to support, but it took time to assess every proposal to make sure the money would make a difference, and time was always in short supply.

  To keep our fans up to date with our musical and political activities, we produced mini newspapers called Oil Rags to coincide with albums and tours, with the help of our old friend Andrew McMillan, a rock journo who’d written extensively about the rise of independent bands on the street in the early days. They were avowedly anti-corporate and anti-fashion, the polar opposite of most fan mags, providing another media platform on which to profile the issues the band was getting behind.

  …

  We were now aiming to influence two continents at the same time. If you wanted to build an audience, you had to get in their face, so after a long stretch of doing just that at home, the Northern Hemisphere started to feature more prominently in the itinerary.

  Our sights were set on North America. By the early 80s we were blasting in and out of club and college gigs at night and local radio stations by day, grabbing food and sleep on the run. With Gary Morris headquartered in Kangaroo Street, Manly—a handy talking point address for an Australian group trying to break into the US—and us on a bus somewhere between Washington and Florida, attempting to forge a path in the States while trying to keep our hands on every aspect of the career—it was chaotic, intense and constantly verging on breakdown.

  We’d kissed big dollars behind in the past while fighting for the right to song choices and album titles, marketing ideas, tours, ticket prices, the colour of T-shirts—anything and everything imaginable that reflected Midnight Oil—and we wanted to maintain this control as much as possible. This meant constantly testing the patience of Gary and our supportive US agent, Mitch Rose, who were charged with rewriting the rulebook.

  As we moved higher up the food chain, one vexing issue was the mass of beer and tobacco signage that adorned many of the bigger venues. Unlike in Australia, these sponsorships operated directly between the companies and the venues, and were set in stone. Wherever possible we had the crew slip in under the radar and surreptitiously cover up the offending logos with drapes and whatever else they could lay their hands on just before we took the stage, and no one even noticed.

  The political nature of the band was always going to challenge America, but not because they didn’t have a tradition of political artists. As with most aspects of western popular music, they did it first and best: just think of Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger and, later on, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Gil Scott-Heron, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Franti, Ani DiFranco, Rage Against the Machine—and legions of similar artists in the wings.

  In the Oils’ case, our vantage point wasn’t shared by the audience, or by the music industry at large. Sure, we sang in English and played with guitar, bass and drums, but as far as many Americans were concerned, we were from another planet (often referred to as Austria). A fair portion of our narrative attack was directed at them, or at least their companies and politicians, especially the Republican president, Ronald Reagan.

  Added to this, our willingness to play the game was zero. We’d always done things a certain way and it was hard to find an entry point to the American music-industry juggernaut, whose support (in some form) was essential if we were to get by, let alone succeed. While we’d moved on from having our own label, Powderworks, to inking a contract with CBS Records, in order to free up more time for writing and playing and to increase our reach, it was on the basis—unusual at the time—that we would continue to exercise creative control over every aspect of our recording career. The local company knew what they were signing up for and included people who were either fans, or at least empathised with what we trying to pull off, so we had a good chance of finding a happy marriage between commerce and art. In the Northern Hemisphere, however, interest in our way of doing things ranged from negligible to downright hostile.

  We were talking big, but running the race sideways. So in the beginning we aimed low, starting at the small inner-city clubs where the band might be judged on its merits, and then stepping up to the college circuit, where a younger crew would listen withou
t prejudice and our songs could get a run on campus radio. We sensed an audience hungry for more, if we could just manage to keep coming back. But a key part of Midnight Oil’s make-up was our Australianness. This was what made us tick and it needed regular refills, otherwise fatigue and longing for home would set in pretty quickly.

  Still, putting in the hard yards—and the long miles—we quickly discovered that America was not at all homogenous, definitely not one nation under God. The south was so starkly different from the north (they had, after all, fought one another not that long ago) and California, with its sun-drenched, Hollywood-flavoured atmosphere was a universe away from the stolid Midwest, which, in turn, was light years removed from cosmopolitan, edgy Manhattan. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, the US was a study in contrasts. In the space of twenty minutes you could go from glittering high-rises to exclusive gated estates in the suburbs to cardboard-box shantytowns under bridges and around bus stations and railway yards. At its best, America was always capable of renewal. Its political system had been designed by a coterie of wise owls who had a pretty good grasp on human nature and the lure of power, but there lurked a deeply conservative strain that could quickly veer into selfish isolationism.

  Yet one thing was a constant wherever we fetched up: from top to bottom, the country was drenched with music. We were in the home of the blues and just about everything that followed. For any musician, getting up on stage to play your songs was the endpoint: you . . . had . . . finally . . . arrived. Americans loved music, and if nothing else, you generally received a fair hearing.

  Even in the early stages of touring there, when we played only five of the potential twenty-five cities that were on the must-do circuit, we could see a very faint light at the end of a very long tunnel that signalled the point of critical mass.

  No matter how dingy the club or filthy the dressing rooms, no matter how far off the map the touring schedule was—once we were booked to perform at the foot of a chairlift in the snowfields outside Salt Lake City at five in the afternoon—one thing was for certain: someone had come this way before. The only question was who or what would break first: the audience, the industry or the band.

  For some bands from home who’d had a go earlier, the pitfalls were clear. In Dragon’s case, lead singer Marc Hunter’s habit of testing the limits of audience tolerance came undone when he called a crowd in Texas ‘faggots’. It wasn’t a good choice of word in that location and the band was lucky to get out of town alive. Skyhooks fell foul of the notorious ego-driven side of the industry; manager Michael Gudinski’s legendary big mouth wasn’t quite as effective in Tinseltown, where big talkers were a dime a dozen. Later the Divinyls, with a swag of great radio-friendly songs and a sassy Chrissy Amphlett up front, came undone as Australian and US managers squabbled over money and some of the band fell into a pit of drugs and couldn’t crawl out in time.

  We had our share of scrapes, mainly around the perception of the band as anti-American. ‘US forces give the nod’ was pretty clear in meaning, and led to the odd record burning in the south. We could live with that; it gave us a bit of cred and meant a couple of states could be deleted from the touring schedule. Audiences could get touchy when it came to insulting the president, too. I copped the odd shellacking, and on one occasion objects were aimed at the stage when my mouth got away from me, including at one open-air show in Boston, where missiles rained down on us from all over the park—which was surprising, given its reputation as a liberal, progressive town. In the firestorm of stage rhetoric it was all too easy for the audience to misinterpret us. The band’s distaste for what the US government was doing didn’t mean we disliked America or Americans; far from it. But our message of ‘We don’t like your commander-in-chief but can we still be friends?’ was often lost in the din.

  This became crystal clear when, later, I was invited to present at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles, a big deal at the time, where the cream of the music industry gather to schmooze and lay bait. The Oils had always taken the line that TV awards ceremonies have little to do with the intrinsic value of what artists produce—they are more like marketing exercises than celebrations of music—so we’d steered clear of them in the past. In this case, however, the opportunity to get in front of a big crowd, and on national television as well, with a distinctly Midnight Oil message was too tempting to refuse.

  After tossing a few ideas around with Gary Morris, I decided to dress like Abraham Lincoln and deliver a stern message to the crème de la crème of the rock and pop world. Instead of reading the cue cards word for word, I’d riff a little on how it was false security for a strong democracy to rely on threatening others, and that the most important thing was to rid the world of nuclear weapons. I’d finish with an emphatic: ‘And that means you, America!’

  I came on to a smattering of applause only to see a shocked Molly Meldrum, the legendary Australian music personality, sitting ten rows back staring at me, eyes widening as the hubbub subsided; he alone at that point might have guessed something unpredictable was about to unfold. Ignoring the trepidation on his face, I launched into my spiel. By the time I’d finished, the crowd was as cold as frozen fish fingers. Backstage, amid the usual pretend mateyness of air kisses and hugs, I was treated like a leper. The rebellious nature of rock be damned; I’d overstepped the mark—Lincoln of all people!

  But for the most part, peace reigned. If you were going to repeatedly insult a head of state, it was safer to do it in the US than in most other countries. Thankfully, they took freedom of speech seriously. And so we ploughed on.

  Because music was everywhere, you could fasten on to songs and block out the ugly. It started when you flew in to LA, with a dozen lines floating in your head about that city alone. Jim Morrison howling ‘LA Woman’, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ latest—the buzz persisting across the length and breadth of the Union.

  Popular music served as escape, as it does all over the world, but it was also a vehicle for the country’s conscience.

  Music was one of the signposts for the Vietnam years and the rise of the counter-culture, which had seen America experience a shake up which took the country decades to recover from (if indeed it ever has), and all the eras that followed.

  And it wasn’t just the protest songs or the conveyor belt of the top forty. Black soldiers play Hendrix loud as the bombs rain down on them in Apocalypse Now. Brass bands oom-pah-pah up the main street on the 4th of July. Gospel singing soars out of white timber churches in the south on Sunday mornings.

  The air hums as big city radio stations with powerful transmitters blast classic rock from Anchorage to New Mexico. If you tire of wailing guitars and formula vocals you can dial up any era of pop/rock/country/blues/rap/jazz/classical/world.

  I always found it hard to sleep on the tour bus: I was too tall for the bunk and too fidgety with someone else at the wheel, so the country stations became a favourite. Swinging down the interstate at two in the morning, with fields of corn and canola stretching away either side and the Soggy Bottom Boys harmonising on ‘In the Jailhouse Now’ with a touch of static as backing. Towns like Chicago, steeped in the blues, likewise New Orleans for jazz, Nashville for country, Memphis, San Francisco, Austin, all with music blasting into the truck stops and bars, anywhere with a set of speakers and a crowd of more than one.

  We played, played and played, as hard as we could. And Americans talked, talked and talked, so word of mouth, as it always will, travelled up from the street to the attention of the opinion makers. But still, Australia called. Just as we were being drawn ever closer to the belly of the beast, we turned inwards to face the mirror, to have another look at our own country.

  12

  A CONTINENT IMMENSE IN THE WORLD

  I FINALLY GOT away from Cessnock Workers Club at around 1 a.m. one Sunday, late in January 1985. It had been a business-as-usual night, brutally hot and heavy. A small stage, sound overload, and a room full of miners’ and farmers’ kids who didn’t ofte
n see a band of the Oils’ size and wouldn’t go home—fair enough.

  When the show finally ended the Boogie Queen undertook one of her least favourite tasks: picking up the sweat-drenched stage clothes (actually dungarees and workman’s shirts) and, holding her nose, squashing them into a giant plastic bag. Meanwhile, aching joints were straightened out, the recovery soothed with a few beers while we caught our breath—sometimes literally. Towards the end of the set I’d had to take a quick visit to the oxygen bottle. After early brushes with mortality in the furnaces of the Stagedoor Tavern and the Royal Antler Hotel, it was a permanent fixture on tour, with its own road case stacked next to the guitar racks in the dressing room. A few gulps of the pure stuff and I was out to rejoin the writhing mass.

  Once basic movement had been restored and the heart rate had come back to normal, we were into the hire car, two beams of light and a big city waiting over the hill. Other than a few solitary wallaby corpses, the winding back roads to the freeway were deserted, and when we crossed the Hawkesbury River, the mangroves and oyster leases edging the water were palely visible in the moonlight.

  We were alive, full of adrenalin, still pumping after the gig—and I was readying myself for a gig of a different kind. I had to get back to the city for an inaugural get-together of the members of the newly appointed Constitutional Commission, established by the Hawke government to consider how the constitution could be improved. We would be meeting at Admiralty House, the Sydney base of the governor-general.