"Let's start the article with the human genome project," suggests Peter Garrett. "I can't explain it to the average AC/DC fan, but you could. You're the writer."

In the case of Midnight Oil, for which Garrett sings and declaims, the human genome project is as good a place as any to start. The multi-billion-dollar effort to decipher the 50,000 to 100,000 genes that compose the blueprint for the human body is going to be a catastrophe, just like building the atomic bomb, because the knowledge will be controlled by the same thugs and morons who control everything else in the world. They'll create a race of automatons who watch "The Bill Cosby Show" while the ozone layer, along with everything else, disintegrates. On this Peter Garrett and I agree.

Another issue on which Peter Garrett and I agree is corporate sponsorship of rock bands. I say it sucks the mop, and this is what Peter Garrett says: "I think those artists who accept sponsorship demean themselves, demean their music and demean their audience. Those are three very bad things for artists to do. But they're going to do it, and we have to let them go their own route. We don't do it, because we don't want to sell anybody anything. We want to make music. We want to make music on our terms."

At the same time, Garrett argues in his book of essays Political Blues (published only in his native Australia) that the government ought to subsidise rock bands. I think if it's wrong to take money from a corporation which wants the integrity of the artist to rub off on its product, it must be wrong to take money from an institution that would want the integrity of the artist to rub off on genocidal wars against peasant populations, nuclear weapons, savage propaganda against the poor, creating a race of automatons...

"Not every band has the commercial potential to exist on its own terms," says Garrett. "Australia is a highly productive place, musically. INXS, Crowded House and Midnight Oil are real long-odds bands. If artists have no financial support and no means to get themselves heard, society is effectively blocking people with something to offer. Artists need encouragement, and that should be the function of government. If you can't make your government accountable in any way, and you think that Pepsi and the government are the same thing, which in this country they are, then I agree with you. But in Australia, it's not the same. We have government institutions there that support artists, especially artists who aren't mainstream, with no suggestion that they toe in line politically. If there were any suggestion of that, there would be an artist revolution. You're right about the terrible things that the government does, but as a taxpayer I want my money to do something besides build nuclear weapons. I would be happy for my money to support a struggling band in a remote town in New South Wales so they could get to the city and be heard.

"The other part of my suggestion is that the person pay back the money if they have any success, which the government has taken up. I have my fears about what they can do, but I look at the success of the Australian film industry, which was completely demolished by Hollywood and had no chance of reviving without independent support. I don't know who else can do that, besides the government."

Six-and-a-half feet tall with bone structure that will make him attractive to genome researchers, Garrett has a hairless head, except for his eyebrows, which are so blond that he might as well shave them too. He could pass as the alert twin of the tall lobotomy case in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and is so flamboyant-looking that you expect him to be flamboyant-sounding as well. He isn't. His speech is that of a politician passionately committed to certain issues but wary of letting something slip that might offend future voters unnecessarily. In fact, I'm kicking myself right now for not getting his autograph, because I'm figuring Midnight Oil is probably good for two or three more albums before they burn out, at which time Garrett will do politics full-time with a fortune in royalties and become important enough in the South Pacific anti-nuke movement that the CIA will have to assassinate him, and his autograph will be worth a lot of money. On the other hand, when the debt structure topples and we fall into a global depression that makes the '30s look like Sunday school, I expect the market in autographs to be soft. So I hope Garrett lives long enough to be elected prime minister and I can move to Australia and get a government subsidy, even if it's immoral.

Anyway, Midnight Oil does not sing about sex. They sing about politics. Maybe they have a market researcher who thinks like I do, or maybe they're just lucky that what they are naturally interested in is catching the wave of history, but you, the reader, remember you read it here first: Sex is not going to be important in the next decade. Politics is going to be important. That Midnight Oil could top the U.S. dance charts with "Beds Are Burning," a plea to give land back to the aborigines, is but a smidgen of the times that are a-changin'. Which brings up: Okay, Peter, how do you sleep when your bed is burning?

"That is the question, isn't it?" says Garrett, leaning back into a potted plant in his New York hotel lobby. "I suppose it depends on what you've been doing prior to going to bed. For life to make sense, I think you've got to deal with what conditions that we all find ourselves in - and I do mean 'our' and not 'my' self. However many people realise it, the fact is that there's only one backyard and we inhabit it together. You can only put up so many fences. You can only have so many navies out there backing into one another in the ocean. You can only have so many goons that think they can force other people to believe certain things by shooting them. It can only happen so much. And it does happen so much. So you sleep with a manner of disquiet. But if you're dealing with it, you sleep a little better. Or maybe you don't."

It's an interesting question, because if you do look around in a serious way, it's easy to succumb to panic or a sense of impotence and self-hatred.

"That's the modern dilemma. Everybody is acutely aware that life is out of whack and they want to come to terms with it in their own minds, which are already full beyond what they can handle, and they're not getting any guideposts. They're not seeing a direction to go to participate. The political institutions certainly aren't encouraging anyone to participate. But I do think it's there for people to get involved. It's just hard work. At the end of this tour, we're doing a benefit for the Navajos' relocation struggle. They're fighting to hold onto the Sacred Mountains area. That seemed the most appropriate cause this time around."

For all Midnight Oil's insistence on maintaining the Australian nature of their work, the themes are universal. A simple concept like "let's give it back to the Aborigines" would be met with extreme hostility in the Black Hills.

"It's a very common tale. 'Let's give it back' is a radical call to set something right in Australia. It's radical in this country too. It is in South Africa, South America, Japan, Indonesia, where there are indigenous people. There's nothing impossible about it. It's just that Peabody Coal and General Electric and various conglomerate resource companies don't like that message getting in the way of their predicted profits. They spend a lot of money on bribes and propaganda, keeping the debate nice and simple and racist. We've been working with a group called Survival International, an advocacy group for indigenous people [send them vast quantities of your money at: Survival International, 2121 Decatur Place N.W., Washington, DC 20008]. They came to see us at our first show in Baltimore and I was amazed to discover that they only have two people on staff in America. We have along way to go."

Garrett grew up in Sydney where his parents did "nothing special." Inquire further on the point and you get the grudging concession that he grew up "middle-class." Ask what his father did and a barely audible "business-manager-type person" arrives through clenched teeth. So were his parents politically involved?

"Not day to day. But interested and involved. And informed."

We talk about genocide, corporate rape and pillage, nuclear proliferation, impending eco-catastrophe, and you get nervous talking about your parents?

"I don't have any joy in... I think artists have to know where the line gets drawn between public and private. For me it gets drawn somewhere pre-Midnight Oil. I've chatted about it occasionally, but it's not something I care to talk about at any length."

As the twig is bent, the tree will grow. I just want to know how you grew. History is the interplay of issues and personalities.

"I see that as part of the way the individuals are profiled, and I understand why writers want to do it. It's certainly an area of legitimate inquiry. If you were going to ask all the Oils about their parents, then maybe I'd be happy to say Mum did this and Dad did that. But I'm intent on giving you a Midnight Oil picture and not a Peter Garrett picture."

But you're the front man and only you and drummer Rob Hirst will talk to the press.

"You're stuck between the Styrofoam and the ozone layer, aren't you, mate?"

No shit.

"We don't want to make it difficult for you. There just isn't a lot to say. My mother was the rabble-rouser in the family, the politically active one. My father was more conservative in terms of character. They were against the Vietnam war, and my Mum went out and protested. In terms of the home environment, we didn't have the television on a lot. Family discussion was encouraged. At least once a week we'd all eat together and talk about what was happening in the world. We were encouraged to think even when we were little, and given to understand that our point of view mattered. My parents' friends were people who had made a decision not to keep on chasing dollars. They were interested in books and ideas and they'd open up the whiskey cabinet and talk for hours."

When did you discover rock 'n' roll?

"When I discovered Rob and Jim [drummer Hirst and guitarist Moginie, respectively]. I discovered a bit of it when I was in boarding school, listening to my tranny [transistor radio in Aussie parlance] at night in the dormitory. I remember hearing 'Won't Get Fooled Again,' which certainly had an impact on me. I mucked about with kids playing music here and there, but it was never the kind of ultimate, ecstatic experience of hearing Presley or the Stones or the Sex Pistols for the first time. My life was changed by Midnight Oil. When I heard them play, that's when I stopped being part-time. Before that, I was not very interested in music."

You could be the only musician I ever talked to who didn't have that religious conversion experience.

"Yes. Even with the Oils it wasn't so much that as it was just something about the way that they made noise that clicked for me. I liked Jim's and Rob's songs, and I wanted to be a part of it."

Even when he was asked to join, Garrett hedged his bet by returning to law school for a year to complete his degree. Though he hadn't learned to sing yet, he was a useful guy for a young band to have around: He was big enough to load the PA, he could read a contract, he had loads of confidence, and he looked spectacular. Becoming Midnight Oil in late 1977, they were ferociously protective of their world view in a country that is overrun with American popular culture. In other words, they didn't sing longingly of New Orleans on the Sydney pub circuit where the local surfers appreciated grand gestures, volume and home-grown references.

In the United States, the Oils have released three albums - 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, Red Sails in the Sunset and Diesel and Dust - each selling more than the last as their shows went from the tiniest clubs to hockey rinks. While they have always received and deserved excellent reviews, they do seem to have achieved some kind of artistic as well as commercial breakthrough with Diesel and Dust. Partially inspired by a trip to the Australian bush, the music has a certain sparseness that sets off the guitar interplay to great effect. Hirst swings with aggression and Garrett has truly learned to sing within the boundaries of his own eccentricity. CBS pushed hell out of "Beds" as a single, but the album has other pleasures as well: "Put Down That Weapon," "Sometimes" and "Dreamworld" stand out, but there's something to discover on every cut. Great hooks and political concerns ranging from liberal to left to Green - they're the Cars with a conscience. And balls.

"I suppose it's a typical story about what is hopefully the spirit of rock 'n' roll - that enormous word. Kids in jeans and T-shirts with a few scratchy lyrics and making a hell of a racket, discovering no one wanted to know about the material, yet having such intense pride in what they were doing, getting thrown out of board rooms and record companies, finally doing it themselves on a small label, playing to a hundred people in a pub, ending up in a relationship with one of the bigger companies. But it is understood on both sides that we have to be allowed to be Midnight Oil. There is no suggestion that anyone would ever interfere with what we're doing. That would end the relationship, contractually and every other way."

To what extent is your message getting through?

"It's hard to know how far it goes. We would dearly love for everyone to get it, but we know that some people will respond to it as sound, lights, rhythm and whatever. We don't presume that everyone has to get it. We are simply informing ourselves about certain situations and informing our audience through the songs. We do not expect the world to change because of one record, but we can see a cumulative wave effect out from what we do. I think we have an open-minded audience. At least I hope that's the audience we've found."

Midnight Oil is probably the only band in my experience to show up on time for the sound check. So when I get to the Felt Forum a half-hour late - which with any other band would be an hour early - they are packed up and back in seclusion. This burns me out somewhat because I had wanted to ask Garrett some follow-up questions. Instead, I drop in on opening act Yothu Yindi, a mostly aborigine band on their first trip to the States. They are intent on getting warmed up and tuned up, as any band playing New York for the first time in front of five thousand kids should be, and I can't understand their accents very well, but they do explain that their yidaki (otherwise known as a didjeridu) is a long stick that has been hollowed out by termites. There are three levels of yidakis, for progressively more sacred ceremonies, and the yidaki they use for touring is the lowest level, which is used for social events and jam sessions. They come from Yirrkala in the Northern Territories and represent the Gumatj and Rirratjingu tribes. If the Australian government won't give them their land back, I'm hoping that they have a huge hit and can just buy it back.

In the dressing room across the hall are Little Steven, Jackson Browne and the sundry members of Graffiti Man, a band Browne has championed, so I ask him for a capsule description. "They are your typical American Indian primal blues band backing up a political poet," he says. The poet is John Trudell, a Sioux from Nebraska living in L.A. We all agree that the current elections stinks and that Musician readers should send any money they haven't given to Survival International to the Big Mountain Legal Office, In Defense of Sacred Lands Project, P.O. Box 1509, Flagstaff, AZ 86002. The Navajos are getting thrown off some of their ancestral lands and they're bringing a lawsuit to stop it on the grounds that open-pit uranium mines are going to interfere with their religion.

"I just started writing poetry one day," says Trudell, who is otherwise a political activist. "I didn't have enough sense to stop. My feeling is that we're being well-received so far. At least nobody's throwing things at us."

A lot of people, unfortunately, do throw things at Graffiti Man later, and the band is nearly booed off the stage. Kid behind me is screaming, "OIL! OIL!..." I wanna sock him for being intolerant of indigenous peoples, but the truth is, Trudell isn't very good. I couldn't understand anything he was saying over the band, and an unintelligible poet gets boring fast. He's vastly better on cassette.

Yothu Yindi wisely explains to the crowd that they are going to do traditional aborigine music and dancing beforehand, and the crowd is much more agreeable. The rock part of their set isn't quite there yet, but they've got some ideas that could develop into something.

The crowd boos a DJ who announces an upcoming Garden date with Van Halen, and cheers a mention of Jimmy Page at Nassau Coliseum. I interpret this to mean they hate metal but respect tradition. They probably are the crowd Midnight Oil would choose. They want the politics, and there is no letdown when the Oils do "Beds" early in their set. They want the whole repertoire, and are as enthusiastic over Garrett's political asides as they are over the chant-along sections of the hits. Hirst reminds me more of Dino Danelli than of his hero, Ringo, but he's still well-grounded in '60s swing. The guitar attack is amazingly varied. Except for Garrett's voice you wouldn't know it was the same band from song to song. Garrett himself works the stage better than anyone except maybe Jimmy Swaggart. Maybe the two of them can arrange a heavyweight preach-off some day before the apocalypse.

Between bites of bluefish and fries backstage, Rob Hirst expresses sorrow for today's kids because they missed the '60s.

"It's still the best decade," he munches. "There were no labels then, no corporate sponsors, all the great bands were pushing back the barriers. Bands who take risks now don't have a hope in hell."

Well, Midnight Oil is experimental and they're successful.

"We're very much the same band we were in 1978," he says. "We alienated the industry, refused to go on television, got blacklisted and badmouthed until 1982 when 10-9-8 came out. We were lucky because that happened to be a very political time. There were a lot of anti-nuke demonstrations, anti-uranium mining demonstrations. The current album is at least as Australian as the first, and we're lucky again because of all this interest right now in Australia. I was surprised to hear kids in Baltimore singing along with 'Warakurna,' which is about the destruction of an Australian rainforest."

Everyone in the band shares Garrett's political commitment? "Oh, yes..." And we discuss all the good causes for half an hour or so. But wouldn't you like to sing about sex just once?

"I can turn on MTV any time and see throbbing, wet flesh. There is no scarcity of bands peddling that propaganda."

What The Oils Play

Rob Hirst wants it clear that they have no sponsors in or out of rock 'n' roll. "We only use gear because we like it," he says. So here, in complete disinterest, is the gear:

Martin Rotsey plays his Fender Stratocaster and Washburn acoustic through a Mesa Boogie Mark III that powers a 4x12 cabinet with Black Shadow speakers. Special effects-wise, he goes for Boss' Overdrive, Graphic Equalizer and DD2 Digital Delay, and a Yamaha SPX90.

Jim Moginie amplifies himself with a 300-watt Mesa Boogie Coliseum and a Mesa Boogie Mark III that power a Mesa quad cabinet with two Black Shadows and two Celestions. For effects he affects the Yamaha REX 50 Multi-Effector, the Boss Graphic Equalizer, Boss Vibrato, t.c. Flanger/Chorus and the Coron Sound Cutter volume pedal. His guitars are primarily a Gretsch six-string and a Washburn acoustic with a Boss Turbo Drive gaffer-taped to the body (listen for it on "U.S. Forces").

Wayne "Bones" Stevens plays a Spector bass through an Ampeg SVT head and an EVTC box with a single 15" speaker. He jazzes up the sound with a Boss Bass Chorus and Rat distortion pedal, which stage manager Michael Lippold describes as capable of making "a fucking obnoxious noise."

Everyone except Peter Garrett uses either a Yamaha or Nady 701 radio transmitter. Garrett attaches his Shure SM58 mike to a long cord because his dancing is so energetic that he tends to shatter transmitter crystals.

Hirst plays a set cannibalized from three Ludwig sets of 1960s vintage. His snare, bass pedal and high-hat stand are Premier, also of '60s vintage. His cymbals are Zildjian, except for the ride which is Paiste. "I've always liked the Ludwig and Zildjian sound. It goes back to my fondness for Ringo. If I sat behind one of those new, flash Japanese sets, there would be no empathy."

From Musician, by Charles M. Young

(Note: this article has not been approved for reproduction.)