From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The front I'm Claire Harvey. When I think of a rock drummer, he's smashing the snares and swilling the beer. But Midnight Oil's drummer Robert Hurst, a famously energetic player, defies the cliches. Hurst is a thoughtful and talented songwriter, a drinker of Camomile t and he helped write the band's era defining songs. He's also been battling pancreatic cancer for two years, a secret he's revealed today in the Weekend Australian magazine to
our music writer Andrew McMillan. This is Rob Hurst and creating these musical works of art. Hurst was one of the writers of these famous Midnight All songs, and although the band's most famous member was charismatic frontman Peter Garrett, it was Hearst shaping this unforgettable sound. Rob Hurst is a legend by any metrics.
He's one of the greatest drummers in Australian music history, not just through the popularity of Minna Oil, but the innovation and power of his playing.
This is Andrew McMillan, The Australian's music writer.
Early on in the band's career, the stage crew took to nailing his drum kit to the floor, otherwise the instruments would fly off the stage. He just hit with ferocity and gusto. That was almost unmatch I dare say in Australian rock and roll. But besides being the drummer, he is one of the key songwriters in Minna Oil, alongside Jim Ojeini, the guitarist.
We often assume it's the lead singer writing all the hits, but for Midnight or Will just like in Excess and Cold Chisel, That's not necessarily the case. In the Oil's case, some of the band's biggest hits came from the back of the stage. Here's Rob Hurst in conversation with Andrew.
I do feel very happy amongst that group of Australian songwriters. I've always admired it just quietly chip away songs and try to get them as good as possible. That's great after all these years to have something where you can't just dust it off and go okay, job done. Master that. No, you never do, in fact quite the country. You try to always write something better than the last thing or the thing before.
The magic of Midnight Oil was to take ideas that back in the eighties were pretty radical and make them into pub rock bangers. Indigenous rise, reconciliation, environmentalism, corporate greed, politics.
Everyone in the band expressed the activism, the politics, the urgency of certain issues they wanted to get off their chest in a different way, and with Jim and I, Ed was always trying to write really strong songs that meant something. Songwriting is one hundred percent more potent if what you're writing about something is clearly something that the author or composer was passionate about, but not in a
didactic way or a proselytizing way. How can I do it where you actually get people thinking and bring people with you. We realized early on that if it didn't have a killer hook, melody, big chorus grade beat and then delivered, you know, through these massive speakers texts, it was not never going to be absorbed.
Rob Hurst got the real politic partly from his dad, Peter. He also had a hugely influential lecturer, Barbara Tucker, while studying law at Sydney UNI. But Hurst's art was shaped, perhaps most powerfully by his mum, Robin, My mother.
Was an avowed socialist, and she'd regularly get to trouble, she said, by talking her mind, but she stood aground underneath it. She was tough, but pretty big, hard was so.
Lucky throughout her life. At various points, she suffered from depression, as Rob describes as the black dog howls through his family, and Rob himself suffered through depression as well at various points. But Robin towards the end of her life, when she was eighty five, she got to such a dark place where she no longer wanted to be here with her husband, with her family, And as Rob describes it, in her final year, she drank three different poisons in an attempt
to end her life, and the third one succeeded. And Rob told me that one of the last things that she said to him on her deathbed was don't grieve for me. She had just come to the end of her tether and Rob saw the extreme pain, emotional pain
that she was in towards the end. And that's a pretty sad memory for him, but one that he has the willingness to speak about now, not just in terms of honoring her memory, but also thinking of the alternative where, perhaps an a strange canon chew sort of way, Robbers become a proponent of voluntary assistant dying for those who are tonally unwell, where rather than hang around as long as possible in extreme pain in some cases, he's a proponent of taking up that option of the VAD laws to
enable him to have a peaceful, loving end of life surrounded by those closest to him, rather than what his mum say that he went through.
Coming up how this soulful man is facing death. In late twenty twenty two, Midnight Oil drew the curtain on a forty six year career. Six months after the band's final show at sixty seven years of age, rob Hurst's post Oil's life took a dramatic turn.
I've been having some kind of vague discomfort, not pain, in the abdomen and some kind of weird gurgling sounds. So I went down to the doctor here at the biomedical center, and a fellow said it's probably lactose intolerance, you know, take a couple of panadole, and didn't even
send me for a blood test. So a couple of days later, still thought a bit weird, went to the GP in Sydney and a few days later and by the way, should never get a phone call from your GP on a Sunday afternoon, she said, go straight to Northern Beaches Hospital. Your liver markers are through the roof. I think it might be pancreatitis. Went up there, had a scan, pancreas cancer out of the blue. So quite a shock to say the least.
Andrew, how did you find out Robhurst was unwell?
Luck and circumstance. Basically, I was at Cold Chisel's final show in Sydney in December last year at Kutos Bank Arena and just by chance, I was sat behind Peter Garrett and his bandmate Rob Hurst, who were both there with their wives, and at various points throughout the show, Peter was ducking across this next to Rob when they were an intense conversation, and it kind of happened a few times throughout the two hours, and I thought, what's
Rob up to? I've no idea since minnight Oil ended, he'd been silent publicly, so I just wondered what he was up to, put that request into his manager and learned that things had not been going so well for Rob.
Hurst decided it should be Andrew and by extension, The Australian to help Spreadharst's new message as far as possible, a message of health awareness, and also of his late friend Mark Moffatt, an esteemed producer, guitarist and composer who passed away from pancreatic cancer last year age seventy four.
So one of the reasons I wanted to talk about pancreas cancer is tourn a Mark. There hasn't been any memorial and there are so many people whose lives affected. One of the great musicians, had worked with everyone, and I wanted to get the story of pancreas cancer out there because it's one of those cancers that most people don't really register them, hasn't really attracted the attention, for example, of skin cancers or breast cancers or others, but it's
really on the rise. Also, the lesson for me, and maybe why I've lasted this long, is because you know, if you do have any symptoms, just don't get a simple blood test and it could be life changing and life extending.
Pancreatic cancer is particularly aggressive. It's more deadly than skin cancer or breast cancer per diagnosis, due to the difficulty in early detection. For most patients, a diagnosis calls a death sentence. It's just too late to do anything.
I just don't think Anglo Celtic people do death very well compared to most other cultures. We either don't talk about it or we're terrified of it. Most other civilizations in Asia, South America, particularly Southern Europe, they accept death as a natural part of life and they celebrate for years.
I used to joke, you know, when I go I organize a Viking funeral, because I got a lovely old wooden fishing boat, and I thought, you know, maybe with a carton of grange only seventy two, you know, just motor off about five kilometers off the coast of New South Wales, drink the grange and arrange my own Viking funeral. I thought, that's not fair. It's a really nice wooden boat.
I would have enjoyed that. But you know, I don't think the length of your life is nearly as important or crucial is the quality and opportunity of the life that you've had. And in my case, it's been absolutely better than anything anyone could ever ask for. And so if my life is attenuated by this tiny little tumor that threatens to do me in. Then I will still
consider myself incredibly fortunate, a fortunate life. As ab fac he wrote those years ago, I tear up thinking about how kind people have been, bringing food and clothes and books and checking with me all the time. It's just been it's been a real sorry, it's been really life affirming and lovely.
You're clearly loved, Rob.
You don't realize until this kind of catastrophe hits from the side. That's been the joyful aspect of this whole Tralamini.
As the sun set in Byron and Andrew's interview with Rob Hurst drew to a close. Hurst told Andrew the metric he'd like people to use when measuring his life and work.
From a musical point of view, I would like to be remembered as someone useful to have around a band. Deborah Osl would write a book called useful, which I commend to you. But I really love that term because you know, in a way it kind of encapsulates what we should be doing with our tiny, little microscopic time on the planet, which is just in the greatest scheme of things, is so minuscule and so transient, is you know? Are we in any way useful for the planner, for people,
for friends, for loved ones? What I like that idea.
Andrew McMillan is The Australian's music writer and you can read his feature on Robert Hurst inside the magazine in the Weekend Australian wherever you get your paper, or of course you can read it online right now at the Australian dot com dot au. Thanks for listening to the Front this week. This episode was edited and produced by
Jasper Leek, who also composed our music. Our team includes producer Christen Amiot, Leat, Samaglue, Tiffany Dimac, Joshua Burton, Stephanie Coombs and me Claire Harvey.