Peter Garrett on the one thing more valuable than success

Peter Garrett on protest music, hope and Midnight Oil's legacy Midnight Oil never made noise for the sake of it. Politically driven and socially conscious, the legendary Australian rock band always made music with meaning, reflecting what they saw to be the greatest global and local injustices. Frontman Peter Garrett's first exposure to protest music came early. In his episode of ABC TV's Take 5 with Zan Rowe, he recalls hearing African American spiritual turned civil rights anthem Tell It on the Mountain by American folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary as a child. "When these first protest records started coming out, my mum went out and bought them and started playing them endlessly," he says. "So, I could hear this from my bedroom and then I got to know it and understand it." The young Garrett was unaware it was a protest song. As with so much great art, his understanding of the song and its importance grew over the years. "When I listened to it again, I was really transported not only to the memory of listening as a kid, but also what that song then became for people," he says. "I had an awareness of now. It gave the song extra weight for me." The making of a frontman It wasn't long before a young Peter Garrett was putting his own voice out there. "I started in choirs and I really loved it," he says. "I was one of the only boys in the church choir up on the North Shore in Sydney." Upon starting university in Canberra, Garrett leapt at the chance to take the lead role in one of the rock bands on campus. "I'm not shy," he says. "I'm lucky. I don't have stage fright or anything like that. So, I didn't have to be urged. I was ready to go. "It was a band called Devil's Breakfast. Probably the worst name. That's what we sounded like. We changed our name, thankfully, to Rock Island Line." That band was short-lived, but Garrett had the bug. After leaving Canberra, he wasted no time in joining up with a new set of musicians. "Eventually I came up to Sydney and fell in with this other bunch of young miscreants. Rob Hirst, Jim Moginie, and later Martin Rotsey, and, yeah, the rest was history," he says. The outfit, Midnight Oil, blew up Australia's booming pub rock scene in the late 1970s thanks to songs that were as intense, urgent and energetic as their breathless live shows. In the 80s and 90s, they became a global force, troubling charts in the UK, US, Canada and Europe. Hindsight may be 20/20, but Garrett swears he felt the magic from the outset. "When I first came in to meet them, Rob started playing and so did Jim, they were 17 or 18, and I just looked at them and I went, 'Wow,'" he says. "Something in me just knew that this was very special. I never knew how far it would go." While Garrett has often seemed the face and figurehead of Midnight Oil, powerhouse drummer Rob Hirst, who died of cancer earlier this year, was another force behind many of their most enduring songs. "Rob and I competed with one another sometimes," Garrett says. "It's like having a frontman on the drums, who's also a great singer and a songwriter," he says. "Always with respect. Pushing to try and always make it as good as we could." Protest music's continued relevance Those drawn to Midnight Oil's music and message commonly lament the lack of protest music making waves in the current day. But music with a message is still out there. For Garrett, the missives of Filipino and Murrawarri artist Dobby ring loudly. He chooses the song Dirrpi Yuin Patjulinya for his Take 5, a highlight from Dobby's ARIA-winning 2024 concept album Warrangu: River Story, which outlines the cultural importance of the Bogan, Culgoa and Barwon Rivers, and the over-irrigation and water theft that plagues them. "I share the deep call from the heart that he has about the Murray-Darling, about what we've done to our river systems," Garrett says. "I still don't think that we've gotten to the point with leaders, with governments, where we deeply understand how important the natural world is to us and what we're doing to it. He absolutely sums it up here. It is epic." Any perceived dearth of protest music shouldn't be too surprising. In a precarious career environment for creatives, there are risks to sticking one's neck out. What's more, writing effective protest songs is difficult. "Part of the challenge … is to try and have that work in a song where people don't run away from it whilst at the same time not being too self-conscious about it," Garrett says. "[Dobby] has done it in a way which is very powerful and without reservation. It's epic in a way, and it's going right to the heart of where things are at now in country." It's not just a young man's game. At 76, Bruce Springsteen also knows how to make protest music that connects. Garrett considers the live version of the Edwin Starr classic War, recorded in Minneapolis around the time of this year's ICE raids, particularly electric. "Tonight, we ask all of you to join with us in choosing hope over fear, democracy over authoritarianism," Springsteen rages in his intro. "The rule of law over lawlessness, ethics over unbridled corruption, resistance over complacency, unity over division, and peace over war." For Garrett, this call is a clear example of the impact of protest music. "The way he introduces this song, and the way that they play it, says everything to me about what we all need to do in this era that we live in," Garrett says. "The fact that he can get up and say, in a highly polarised country, this is what the times demand, he's really risen to the moment. "It sounds as strong and as fresh and as needed as it was when he first played it, and when it was first written. Powerful. Necessary." What drives us Protest music is often born from rage and frustration. But the strongest examples aren't defeatist: they are driven by hope. "Hope is realising there can be a better future through action," Garrett says. "Hope is the antidote to apathy and disinterest and cynicism. "So, hope becomes the most important and precious commodity that we have, but not hope which is born of wishful thinking, hope that's born of an understanding that it is people who change the world. It's people acting that make the difference." And Garrett considers hope for the future a more appealing prospect than nostalgia. Despite spending most of his 73 years as a rock star or federal politician, Garrett isn't one to dwell. "I don't look back," he says. "It's great to yarn about it, but I don't spend much time meditating on the past. "At my stage of the game, my most precious resource by far, apart from love and family and connection, is time. There's nothing that's more important to me now than that." Even when performing on the stage of Sydney's Hordern Pavilion at this year's APRA Awards in tribute to Hirst, Garrett knew he had to get the job done, lest the gravity of the situation overwhelm him. "The legacy of the band, in terms of my experience of it, it takes up so much space in how I think and feel," he says. "If you start to get too introspective about it, or if you're always looking in the rear-vision mirror, or even assessing what it is, you're buggered." Garrett's performance that night was not born from protest, but from celebration. But the approach remains the same no matter the task at hand. "You've just got to be in the moment," he says. "It's not easy to do, but it is the key. Hang in the moment, make the moment work as best as you can, and then out the door." Watch every episode of Take 5 with Zan Rowe right now on ABC iview. Hear extended interviews with all guests on the Take 5 podcast.