Midnight Oil seeped out of the Sydney northern beach scene in the late Seventies, with lead singer Garrett following the musical direction of guitarist Jim Moginie and drummer Rob Hirst - the band's oldest continuing members. Influenced by punk, British folk, and metal the Oils helped spearhead a rise of bands from downunder - which included groups such as Men At Work and Hunters & Collectors - and defined the sound and no-fluff approach of the harder-edged Australian rock bands.

"The pubs," Garrett explains, "are the bread and butter for the rock industry. That's what made Australian bands stay alive and has given them that, 'here I am you can't ignore me, I've got my teeth in this riff and I'm not letting go until you're moving,' sort of attitude." And attitude - in the Oils' case - as applicable to social issues as the dance floor. Midnight Oil scorns hits with songs on Australian aboriginal land rights like "Beds Are Burning," and endangered environment messages such as "Dream World."

Environmental issues - a common Oils subject - hit a very personal coral reef with Garrett. Appalled by the polluted condition of his former surfing beach haunts, Garrett became personally committed through his position as President of the ACF to trying to stop a seemingly irreversible trend towards global destruction.

"I think we already have about half a dozen major ecological disasters sitting right around us at the moment," Peter warns. "We're just simply going to see them roll over. In that sense, one is frustrated by the tragedy that is unstoppable - no matter how many songs you sing. The situation is a lot worse than most people realize. Clearly, if you want to take a roll call of wins and losses, we're winning more than we used to - at least in Australia. But if you want to look at the Global Village through somebody taking tally, we're probably not winning. That's because what is required is a very massive change."

"I've changed and I think a lot of other people have too," Garrett confides. "I'm not deep green in the sense that I believe that we can return to some kind of Garden of Eden grace where we all kind of hang around under trees and we're happy because of that. But what I do think we have to learn is how to have accumulative shifts in policy and personal practices and international relations - and human relations - so that whatever we do, doesn't put the bio-sphere in peril - doesn't endanger the fact that the Earth actually breathes and we breathe with it."

The 38-year-old law school graduate speaks slowly and chooses words carefully as he continues: "At a really basic level, you've got to protect you ear, your soul and your work. Any society that starts to let those go is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. That is what I would call the sort of common sense of community, which you see in farming or Indian communities. I think the difficult question for people is to try to figure out how the hell it got so out of whack. That is a complex answer... but I think I can identify at least one part of it, and that is the current idea that virtue is in production and consumption and that the thing that provides for production and consumption of goods, only provides for virtue in the system's terms. That has limitless provisions built into it and can be manipulated in any way to get an outcome. That comes about because most engineers, economists, bureaucrats, big business people and politicians still have a 17th, 18th and 19th century view of things. They see the world as a machine and whoever has the reins of power controls the way the machine goes..."

Wastefulness, according to Garrett, has taken a bite out of New York City. The Australian singer observes: "To our eyes, there has been a dramatic decline and a very noticeable spiral downwards since we started playing the Ritz and the college circuit in '85 or '86. Certainly the level of homelessness and the way in which the general infrastructure within the city has just been let go. I'm sure the problems are big, but you know, this a a very wealthy country. You've got lots of money. It's just what you're spending it on and whose got it and what they're doing with it. The wealthy have just gotten a lot richer through that Reagan period while everybody else just got slamdanced... But to see someone who literally does live in a cardboard box shuffling inside sort of a really flashy jewellery store or a terrific clothing store with people inside - is almost an incomprehensible contrast of the human condition, and the fact that it's tolerated is amazing. I don't blame New Yorkers for that. I'm sure that if I lived here, eventually I wouldn't notice either."

A cue-ball headed prophet of doom Garrett is not - despite predictions of future tough times. He finds the Earth's salvation in the hands of individuals, who may or may not buy Oils records. "If you decide you are going to address your problems, you're going to find yourself in a situation of momentum with somebody else at some point in time. You may have ten or fifteen years of difficult campaigning. You've got to be prepared to sacrifice your life and your life's work to take that route. Whether you're getting success from it or not is irrelevant. Just in the way that people like Mandela and others who've been working in South Africa made the sacrifice, white and black, for the last thirty years. It's taken over their lives... Yet, they've done it. They will see that wrong righted. They will see the balance come back into human affairs there and we'll do the same thing here with the Earth. We'll see the balance righted. We will come back to a situation where we recognize the Earth as a partner... We're in for hard times - all of us - even someone who's a successful rock person. But, I think they're very challenging times and I say bring them on. Let them happen quickly. Let them happen now. Let George Bush do his worst - by-pass the U.N. Earth day summit in Rio, get re-elected for another term of inconsequential stay-at-home samisms, and let there be revolts. Let people come up out of the community to start suggesting alternatives and let there be support for them, and songs for them as well."

A decade of the Oil's alternative, the band's latest release - Scream In Blue (Columbia) - a live compilation - keeps the downunder fire burning, while they work on their next album. The future release will expound on, among other topics, alienated suburban life - with songs tested live in small Australian pubs by slick Oils under assumed names such as 'Ebb Tide and the Shorebreakers' and 'The Jerry Falwell Society.' "We want to avoid the studio bug," Garrett says, explaining the alter ego gigs. "Really we do it just to get back to the nuts and bolts of it, and make it work in an organic sense."

Going forward using basic principles always encompasses Peter Garrett's work, whether it be as an environmentalist or a lead singer - doing well makes all the difference. "I can honestly say that the Oils, as a band, get a primary satisfaction from being able to write and perform a song that works. As rock musicians that is what this band is all about, and that is where we start; but not where we finish."

From Creem, by Robert Hambrecht

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