Peter Garrett gets sentimental as Midnight Oil bid their fans farewell with ferocious hometown show
Review: Midnight Oil remain at the top of their game as they count down the final shows on their farewell lap of Australia.
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Ferocious musical force Peter Garrett is getting sentimental as Midnight Oil’s farewell lap around the world draws to a close.
The powerful rock frontman shared a rare personal romantic memory of early dates with wife Doris with 4000 fans at their One for The Planet concert at Sydney’s Luna Park on Wednesday, one of two final hometown shows.
“For most of us that were Sydney born, Luna Park has had all kinds of impacts on us … and experiences … including (for) me and my dearest; we used to hang out in a boatshed over there. But I won’t be doing that tonight,” he said provoking a laugh from the audience.
Garrett and his bandmates were clearly emotional as they stood arm-in-arm to the crowd after the two-hour concert.
The bittersweet note of farewelling fans who have stood strong over five decades, even when the Oils were not active, is clearly sounding loudly among Garrett and his bandmates Rob Hirst, Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey.
There’s also the shadow of sadness which still cloaks them almost two years since the loss of their longtime bassist Bones Hillman, who died of cancer in November 2020.
They pay heartfelt tribute to him during every show, as they also celebrate the extraordinary talent of his live replacement Adam Ventoura, who deserves a medal for mastering more than 100 songs from the Oils’ extensive catalogue including the occasional rare B-side or blast from the past.
And the band rewarded the party faithful with some spectacular deep dives before and after they played their much-loved 1982 album 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 from start to finish to mark its 40th anniversary.
There was the potent surf punk energy of Knife’s Edge and the taut rap rock of Koala Sprint, from their 1979 album Head Injuries, which made perfect sense sitting in the set’s opening section right next to At The Time Of Writing and Nobody’s Child from this year’s Resist album.
It was a visceral, pedal-to-the-metal primer for the main event of the 10 to 1 songs and one which prompted more than a few fans within earshot wondering out loud how these men have maintained their power and passion into their 60s.
The album’s opening song Outside World, which copped hectic backlash from many fans back in 1982 because these fierce pub rock lions dared to use synths, sounds very 2022 now, full of drama with its piano and keyboard-driven atmospherics.
Sonic wizard Moginie pushed the boat out even further from the Oil’s rock centre with a jazz-inspired solo on Short Memory before reaching the one-two punch of US Forces and Power and the Passion.
They roared home with the clutch of songs – Blue Sky Mine, Hercules, The Dead Heart, Beds Are Burning among the closing set – which underscore why the Oils departure from our stages may be premature, considering their themes of Indigenous rights, war and socio-economic inequality dominate the national conversation now as they did 40 years ago.
Midnight Oil perform at the Fellows Oval ANU on October 1 and their final concert, One for the Road, at the Hordern Pavilion, Sydney on October 3.
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