Rob Hirst, the drummer and co-founder of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil, has died. He was 70.
The band confirmed Hirst’s dying from pancreatic most cancers in statements posted to social media.
“After preventing heroically for nearly three years, Rob is now freed from ache — ‘a glimmer of tiny mild within the wilderness,’” the band mentioned. “He died peacefully, surrounded by family members.”
“We’re shattered and grieving the lack of our brother Rob,” they added. “For now there are not any phrases however there’ll all the time be songs.”
Hirst, born in Camden, New South Wales, based the band that grew to become Midnight Oil with schoolmates, and it launched its debut album by itself impartial label in 1978. The band steadily climbed the charts in its native Australia, pairing its brawny rock with honest and outspoken political activism. Hirst was recognized for his trendy aptitude behind the package, inspiring younger Aussie drummers along with his intro music for the TV present “Beatbox,” and the beating water-tank solo on “Energy And The Ardour” that introduced down the home at reside gigs.
1983’s “10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1” hit quantity three on the Australian charts, and 1987’s album “Diesel and Mud” — a set of songs in regards to the troubles going through Indigenous Australians — launched the band to international fame. Its anthemic however pressing single “Beds Are Burning” grew to become one of many group’s best-known hits, topping out at quantity 17 on the Sizzling 100 in 1988. They launched 1990’s “Blue Sky Mining” with a live performance exterior Exxon’s headquarters in New York to protest its dealing with of an oil spill in Alaska. The group additionally charted with singles “Blue Sky Mine” and “The Useless Coronary heart,” all of which had co-songwriting credit from Hirst.
“We tackle, headlong, all of the issues that you simply’re speculated to keep away from. We combat the battles that we collectively really feel we have now to combat and we win some and we lose some,” Hirst informed United Press Worldwide in 1988.
Australian rock legends Midnight Oil — Bones Hillman, from left, Peter Garrett, Martin Rotsey, Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst — arrive for the 2006 Australia music business awards the Arias, the place they have been to be inducted into the corridor of fame.
(Rick Rycroft / Related Press)
Midnight Oil broke up in 2002 when singer Peter Garrett left to pursue a political profession in Australia’s Labor Social gathering. They reunited in 2017 and launched two extra LPs, 2020’s “The Makarrata Undertaking” and 2022’s “Resist,” and performed their ultimate present in 2022.
Hirst had a number of aspect tasks, together with the band Ghostwriters, which launched 4 albums, and the prolific blues-rock group Backsliders. He self-released an album, “Born Electrical,” in 2025, and an EP, “A Hundred Years or Extra,” with Midnight Oil bandmate Jim Moginie and Hamish Stuart. Hirst’s daughters, Gabriella and Lex Hirst, additionally sang on the EP. He additionally auctioned off his drum package final 12 months to profit two Australian musicians’ charities, MusicNT and Assist Act.
He mirrored on dying in his later music, talking about his sickness in a latest interview with The Age. “I realise it’s fairly an existentialist bunch of songs, with titles like ‘Are We There But?’ and ‘A Hundred Years or Extra,’” he mentioned. “I suppose I’ve been interested by lifespan and longevity — legacy, even. And, in fact, that comes out within the songs… Now that I’ve began counting again in life moderately than counting ahead, the times are much more valuable.”
