Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie reveals threats to life in new memoir

In his memoir The Silver River, the Oil’s Jim Moginie reveals how the pressures of fame wreaked havoc on his life and how the band’s principles put them in grave danger.

Exclusive: Midnight Oil was on top of the world when Jim Moginie’s life came crashing down.

In his memoir The Silver River, Moginie reveals the pressures of fame wreaked havoc on his family, resulting in the end of his marriage and sending him on a quest to find “where my shit was coming from.”

The band’s co-founder enjoyed an idyllic upbringing in Sydney’s leafy northern suburbs and was 11 years old and on a family holiday in Tasmania when his mother told him he was adopted.

He had many questions but it was the 1960s, Australian men and boys didn’t talk about feelings, and Moginie soldiered on, until he couldn’t anymore.

The Silver River tells the story of his band family, his adoptive family and his quest to find his birth family which began in the mid 90s as the Oils hit the career peak.

“All of this success was sort of amplifying this emptiness that I had for a long time. And I think it was partly due to the fact that I didn’t know where my shit was coming from, where my family was from, even though I had this great family with parents who weren’t my real parents,” he said.

Jim Moginie opens up in his memoir, The Silver River. Picture: Tim Hunter

“Everything about fame was just making it worse … even though I had this family with the band too, my real family with my kids and my wife, it just was all falling apart.

“It took me a long time through the search to find my birth family, to find my identity … this mad Irish thing.”

After many years of searching records, Moginie got in touch with his birth father Brian McRedmond who led him to his mother Anne and siblings John, Janet, Paul,

Dave and Susan, all born after his unwed parents gave him up for adoption as a baby.

Moginie said he started writing the book in the 90s as an “instruction manual” for his daughter Alice and son Sam to better understand their father and his complicated life. He hopes his story might also help adopted adults on their own quests to find their birth family.

But the book also pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of the Oils, the sublime and ridiculous life of a band who shot to global stardom with uncompromising songs about the rights and wrongs of the Australian life, global politics and climate change.

Moginie said fame wreaked havoc on his life. From left, Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie, Bones Hillman, Rob Hirst and Martin Rotsey in 1996.

Those principles often put Moginie and bandmates Peter Garrett, Rob Hirst, Martin Rotsey and the late Bones Hillman in danger.

Like the time they were almost rolled in a van by angry loggers after a protest gig to protect the last remaining patch of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island.

“You could see they just want to kill us, because we’re greenies, we’re coming from another country. Yeah, sometimes life on the road got dangerous,” he said.

Moginie said he also feared for the band’s safety during the American leg of their Great Circle world tour in 2017.

“When we were playing America, Pete was mouthing off every night about Trump, who was President then, and we’d have at least a dozen people walk out,” Moginie said.

“Pete has a serious set of balls and he was giving it to them and a lot of people didn’t like it … someone could have whipped out a gun and just taken us out.”

The Silver River by Jim Moginie.

Midnight Oil in October, 1993.

Moginie shares in the book that he was the one to call his bandmates to call an end to the reunion which began in 2016 and finished with their final gig at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney in October 2022.

All of them were, and remain, bereft for the loss of Hillman who quietly battled cancer as they were recording their final records, The Makarrata Project (2020) and Resist (2022).

“I never got a lot of kickback. We had the reunion, we did a record that we all really liked so let’s quit while we were ahead. I’ve seen too many bands that didn’t quit while they were here and it’s not a pretty sight,” he said.

That final show in their hometown went for a marathon 40 songs played over three hours and 45 minutes. The four core members each chose eight songs for the set list with another eight must-dos added.

Midnight Oil in 1998. From left, Rob Hirst, Peter Garrett, Martin Rotsey, Bones Hillman, Jim Moginie. Picture: Getty Images

Emotions were high on and off stage; Moginie struggled to hold back tears. His daughter Alice filmed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Oils fan filming the show.

Moginie shares in the book how the PM got his own backstage dressing room – for security purposes, of course. He hasn’t got to the bottom of how a bottle of champagne the band had on standby for the end of the show found its way to Albo’s room.

“My girlfriend Christabel went and stole it back,” Moginie said, laughing.

The answer to the question every Oils fan has – Will they ever play again? – is As his former frontman Garrett tours the country with his side band The Alter Egos, which also features guitarist Martin Rotsey, Moginie says never say never.

“People are good at forgiving bands when they break up because they want the band, it reminds them of their better selves,” he said.

“Of course everyone says ‘You’re going to come back and do another tour and all that.’ That could happen if it was the right cause and the right thing.”

The Silver River by Jim Moginie will be published by HarperCollins on March 6 and is available to pre-order now. Jim will be touring from March, full details at Harper Collins

Originally published as Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie reveals threats to life in new memoir