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An Appropriate Player - Rob Hirst

(Original article online here)

In the August '88 issue of the Australian musician's magazine Sonics, the musical composition chosen for dissection in the Songlab column was Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning." The writer sliced the song into sections, by chords and arrangement, to illustrate his contention that Midnight Oil "effectively delivers the Aboriginal land-rights message from a musical point of view.

It was quite interesting to see such an in-depth analysis of the band's music, since it is generally their lyrical messages that are torn apart. It reinforced what is often overlooked about Midnight Oil: Their real effectiveness lies in their ability to creatively convey those lyrics through music that captures the essence of the message.

Rob Hirst's intense drumming style has always played a prominent role in the band's impact, helping to propel the music's urgent messages right off the vinyl and into the soul. But equally important to the band's success has been Rob's attitude toward his profession and how it fits into the music's big picture; He feels that once a drummer has learned his craft, he should tailor his drumming around the goals of his band, and not around his own self-serving interests.

Says Hirst: "When you're a young player, there are a whole lot of ego problems you've got to get out of the way; you have to feel that you can play as good as the next guy. That's good, but when you get to a higher level, you should try to fit into the band you're playing with and be a contributing member of that band. Because, let's face it, if what you're doing as a band doesn't make sense, then no one will ever hear about what you're doing as a drummer.

People are quite aware of Rob Hirst in Australia, and his respected reputation has enabled him to carve his own personal niche in drumming history. He has held a seven-year grip on the title of Best Drummer in Australia in the RAM magazine annual readers poll. But in keeping with his modest personality, Rob dismisses the honour as being a reflection of the popularity of the band, not of him personally. Rob then specifically illustrates his perspective on his career - a perspective that is subsequently reflected throughout the interview: "You see, I'm not into drums really, per se. I am interested in the role that drums play and in combining that instrument with others to make great bands and to make great music.

Although nearly all of Midnight Oil's six albums and two EPs contain great music, it is their latest LP, Diesel And Dust, that is the real testament to Rob's philosophies. For a band to have taken such an abrupt change in style, the individual members had to abandon their own raw-edged instrumental delivery to make room for the collective effect. Rob explains that it was the band's experiences on their 1986 trip into remote Aboriginal communities of Australia's outback that shed new light on the meaning of the word "music.

"What happened with Diesel And Dust was we'd been very heavily influenced by what we'd seen and heard out in the desert. We'd heard acoustic instrument' the clap-sticks and the dijeridus and acoustic guitars we'd taken out there - and they all sounded fantastic under those expansive skies, around a campfire in the middle of nowhere. And we thought, 'These songs, such as "Beds Are Burning" and "The Dead Heart" - which were already written at that stage - sound great in this acoustic environment. If we can just get that down on tape, then those acoustic instruments will inevitably sound better on record than electronic instruments, samplers, drum machines, and all that.' So our job really was to try to recreate some of that atmosphere.

"From a drumming point of view, I was trying to express in a rhythmical way what it was like to travel hundreds and hundreds of kilometers down dirt tracks, driving through mallee scrub and mulga and basically feeling like that mountain range in the distance isn't getting any closer four hours down the track. And you get this sort of rhythmical thing with the diesels and the motors going at a certain pace; you're charging down the Gunbarrel Highway or one of those in central Australia, and it's a perpetual rhythm thing. It's very different than, say, on the 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 LP, where songs like 'Only The Strong' are made up of five different takes all cut together and with gear changes and dynamic bits. We wanted the opposite on this; we wanted this sense of perpetual space. These people have been out there for 40,000 years, and things happen very slowly if they happen at all. It's very different for white boys brought up in cities to slow down.

Rob is quick to point out that, while his drumming approach on Diesel may be somewhat different than on previous albums, he doesn't think it is any more laid back, but instead is more "appropriate." "People have misunderstood the LP; they've said Diesel is more commercial or that my drumming is not as wild. And I say, 'Look, to be a good player is to be an appropriate player.' And this 'around the drumkit, hitting every drum at once' sort of stuff that I love doing and that would be appropriate for some songs, simply wouldn't have been right for 'Put Down That Weapon,' 'Warakurna, or 'The Dead Heart.'"

Midnight Oil's live appeal to young Aussies is largely based on the raw power and aggressive instrumental attacks wielded by the band. But it was through embarrassing audience walk-offs in some of the Aboriginal communities that the band members learned the meaning of being an "appropriate" player.

"You see," Rob says, "when we went out there and did the tour, the first couple of shows we played the way we play a the Sydney Entertainment Center in front of 11,000 kids. And it was totally inappropriate; black folk just walked off into the bush! It took us a while to slow down and make the music appropriate, and that is where this whole idea came from.

Although several of the tracks on Diesel And Dust, such as "Dreamworld" and "Sometimes," were recorded using only straight drums, Rob and producer Warne Livesey employed a combination of acoustic and sampled sounds on other tracks. Warne explains how they were able to achieve this: "We used an Atari computer that was running a Steinberg Pro 24 sequencing package, and all the rhythm tracks were recorded to click tracks generated by that package, so that we could actually sequence things along to the real drums."

Despite Rob's focus on rhythmic consistency on Diesel and Dust, many of the songs are sprinkled with an array of percussion that adds to the LP's vivid imagery. "Sell My Soul," which Rob says is the most electronic track on the LP, was worked up by blending some simple acoustic sounds with a lot of sequenced percussion generated by a couple of Akai S900s. One of the sounds generated implies the use of an anvil. Since this is not a common rock 'n' roll instrument, its inclusion is intriguing and possibly intentional - providing a subtle relation to the song's theme: hitting an anvil, selling your soul, being a slave. Rut Rob's aloof reaction leaves the question a mystery. "Yes, now that you come to mention it, that sounds good," he laughs with a surprised expression. But is that really the truth? He answers fairly convincingly, "No, really I think that chain-gang sort of thing is what we were getting at."

On "Bullroarer" - which is the name of an instrument used by the Aborigines - the motive for some of the sounds included was a little more apparent. But Rob explains immediately they didn't actually use a real bullroarer. "A bullroarer is a sacred Aboriginal instrument twirled over the top of the head, and is used as a message-sending device. If you've seen Crocodile Dundee II, Paul Hogan used one on top of a mountain," he says.

"Well, it's a sacred instrument, and he shouldn't have used it; only initiated men are supposed to hear those sounds. So we didn't use a real bullroarer as that would've been cultural imperialism. Instead we used an imitation bullroarer that school kids in Australia use. It is a ruler with a piece of rope wrapped around it. A real one is made out of a piece of hardwood about two feet long, attached to a piece of hide or skin. The idea behind the song was that we had been given the opportunity to hear those sounds in the desert, and this was to express our gratitude for that."

Rob also used some Aboriginal claves known as clap-sticks in "bull-roarer." This track, like "Sell My Soul," is based on a combination of acoustic and sampled sounds, but this time the computer-generated sounds were sampled in the studio, so they could use Aboriginal instruments. The basic tom-tom rhythm heard throughout the song was generated by computer and Rob played his bass drum, snare, hi-hat, and other miscellaneous instruments over the top of that. Hirst says he would prefer to work up more of his own sounds, but in the case of Diesel And Dust, the studio they recorded in wasn't very good. "We had a real battle on our hands in this studio, and we couldn't work up as many of our own sounds as we would have liked to," he recalls. "So we had to rely a little bit more on Warne's 'briefcase full of sounds' for this album."

On some songs, such as "Beds Are Burning," Rob's use of sampled sounds is very limited. On that particular track he basically threw them in to keep listeners alert. "On 'Beds' you've got this cruise-y sort of beat, and you think, 'Ah, this is quite nice to listen to' and then suddenly this explosion comes in and it's like, 'Wake Up!' It's just punctuations and unusual combinations. I like to combine mainly acoustic instruments, but then throw something in that sort of kicks you in the guts."

So how does Rob, feel overall about the use of electronics? "I hate it!" he laughs. "No, really, I think the use of it is fine, but I think you have to treat it with the contempt it deserves. You can't let it dictate what you're going to do. If you want to hit something and you've got this great sound that you couldn't get from an acoustic drum, that's fine. But there's still something about wooden sticks played on wooden drums tuned right that appeals to me more than anything else about drumming. Electronics can often be a really cold and clinical way of drumming, and it doesn't inspire the heartstrings as far as I'm concerned."

In his live setup Rob relies mainly on his acoustic kit, but he does use some electronics to help recreate some of the combinations from the albums. For songs like "The Dead Heart" and "Beds Are Burning" he has a couple of Simmons pads to trigger a collection of sampled sounds from the LPs. "Same with the snare sounds," he explains. "The snare is bugged with a trigger, and we mix the acoustic snare in with the sampled sounds. For 'Kosciusko,' which sounds like the General Motors Holden Pressing plant on a Monday morning, to get that sound it's easier to do it that way."

Rob's attitude about choice of gear parallels his philosophy that 'to be a good player is to be an appropriate player.' A good setup is made of the appropriate gear, and for him, practicality is more important than flash. "The latest Japanese multi-tom monstrosity doesn't appeal to me at all," he says. "People don't realise that often it's the acoustic environment you're in, rather than the drums that you're playing, that make the good drumset. So my advice to young drummers is to go and get a little Ringo or Charlie Watts style kit that sounds good, is made of good wood and by craftsmen, rather than buying this $10,000.00 atrocity."

With the exception of the snare - which is a Premier Piccolo (3" deep)--Rob's kit is made up of three different Ludwig drumkits thrown together. "Mainly they're the ones Ludwig made in the'60s, the ones that Ringo used to play," he explains. "I like the way they made drums in the '60s; they're nice, warm-sounding drums."

The kit includes three 13" tom-toms, a 16" floor tom, and a 22" bass drum. "The kit is actually divided in two," says Rob. "The first two toms are tuned up really high, like timbales, with white Ambassadors on the top, and the other 13" tom and the 16" floor tom are fitted with Pinstripe heads and tuned really low. So I've got like a toppy, responsive kit to the left and these thunderous deep toms on the right.

"We've also got this ingenious invention made by the Australian Sound Clamp Company called the Australian Crocodile Clamp," Rob explains. "It is a hydraulic mic' clamp - that's the best way I can describe it - that clamps onto the side of all the drums. With this clamp we don't have to have independent mic' stands, and it eliminates the vibrations that you'd normally get transmitted through the drum to the microphone. The mic's are sitting on this hydraulic cylinder. They're great!"

Rob's drumsticks are also made by an Australian company - one called Ozbeat - and Rob says they are modelled after a 5A with wood tips. He wraps them with terry cloth for better grip, since he feels that wristbands aren't enough to absorb sweat. His choice of cymbals includes a Zildjian 20" medium crash and a 20" crash ride and 14" Paiste hi-hats. He also has a cowbell and a UFIP 8" Icebell.

As with his Ludwig drums, Rob prefers older pedals. "My hi-hat pedal and foot pedal are Premier, the old ones that they used to make in the 60's. I'm scouring the countryside for them, " he declares, "so if anyone's got any...! They're fantastic because they never break down - simplicity itself which is the essence of everything, of course. I still have a few of those left, fortunately, but I don't know what I'll do when I smash all those up, because I don't like any of the new ones."

The most conspicuous and unconventional component of Rob's setup is what Aussies call a water tank. (To Americans, it's more commonly known as a corrugated culvert.) It measures approximately 32" high by 21" in diameter, and Rob has it miked up along with the rest of his gear. "We found it out in the desert and threw it on the back of the truck," he explains. "It's sounding even better now; the more I hit it, the better it sounds. It's got this big dent in it." [laughs] Although he doesn't use it a lot, when he does, Rob takes full advantage of its sound-generating potential. Not only does he whack away at it, but he also runs his drumsticks up and down the tank, perpendicular to the corrugations, for a guiro type of sound.

"People pop out of it occasionally," Rob says. "We were playing once in Melbourne, and I was doing a drum solo for 'Power And The Passion,' and I heard someone else playing along as well, and I thought, 'That's funny; I'm not playing this!' So I stopped and I realised that Paul Hester from Crowded House was inside the tank, playing along! He finally popped his head out."

During live shows, Rob's energised personality commands attention. He has a non-stop smile; he also channels his reactions to audience eye contact and the emotional intensity of the song being played by magnifying his actions behind the kit. He frequently leaps up, playing from a standing position.

Rob also does melodramatic manoeuvres with his drumsticks. Often during a pause he flips them backwards into the water tank. Other times during a tune, with each consistent lick on his upper right Zildjian, he'll let the stick go propelling off it across the stage, and then rhythmically repeat the action. And at the end of the set he takes two handfuls of sticks, and with one sweeping bash, sends them scattering about. Rob shrugs it off, with a reply about as unpredictable as his behaviour: "Not very ecologically sound, is it? Here's a band writing about 'Dreamworld' and saving our forests, and I go through 30 sticks a night; there's a lot of contradiction there, huh? Of course, the crew does rush around and pick them all up, though."

So showmanship isn't all that important? "The showman side of me is just the way I play, and I don't give it a second thought," Hirst says. His actions are quite erratic, but he also exhibits a great deal of creative control. Well, his actions appear controlled, but then again... "I just think it's part of your personality and your makeup. If you're a vandal like I've always been, then you tend to be a vandal on the drumkit as well. You'll find that drumming is the same as driving a car: It's an extension of your personality. If you're a ratbag character, you'll drive like a ratbag." He continues, laughing, "If you're a mad, lame dog, and slightly erratic, that'll sort of come out in your drumming, too."

As far as his favorite drum tracks to play on stage, Rob says he doesn't have any in particular, but he sees some as more of a challenge than others. "Songs like 'Kosciusko' or 'Only The Strong' from a purely drumming point of view are a real challenge, because I've got to sing at the same time."

So when did Rob actually get interested in drums! "Oh, well, you know i think it's in the blood. I started playing along on the carpet to Beatles records when I was around seven," he recalls. "I listened to the Beatles four or five years obsessively, and then discovered there were other bands apart from them. I watched all the Merseybeat bands. In Australia there was a show called Thank Your Lucky Stars, and it used to have all the Merseybeats on it, like Freddie & the Dreamers, the Hollies, and the Dave Clark Five. All those British bands were early influences. Later in the '60s I fell in love with Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Who. They were my major influences."

His first experiences drumming outside of home were at school. "First of all I was playing in school in these military sort of bands, which are good to learn the basic rudiments. They sent me away to this camp where they set you down for six hours a day to practice your paradiddies and triplets and so on.

"At the school I went to, you had to do two years in the cadet corps, whether you liked it or not. I was horrified by this idea, so I thought,'How can I get out of this!' and the only way out was to join the band. The band used to attract all the scum of the school. Everyone volunteered to play cymbal, bass drum, and triangle, and so you had all these misfits - bam, bam, bam.

"But in retrospect, these were a lot of the people that I still keep in contact with because they were the people who learned early on that it was better to strap on a Premier snare drum than to fire off rounds into the bush like some bush turkey."

So this was a marching band! "This was mainly for cadet marching," Rob replies. "So it was a convenient way of not strapping on weapons, just joining the band. It did me a lot of good, though, because I got the rudiments of playing. I suppose I was about 14 or 15 at the time."

Aside from what he learned at the camp, Rob didn't take formal drumming lessons. Instead he learned his craft by listening to and observing other players. "I used to watch other players a lot. And I used to put the headphones on and play along to tracks, so I could play exactly as they did. That was good for discipline and timekeeping. "There was also a jazz drummer, Jon Collins, who had a music shop out in back of my place in Sydney. I used to harass him for information all the time; bless his heart, he was very tolerant and a nice guy. So he gave 'me a few ideas as well, and a few lessons.

"Then having reached a stage, my old man finally relented and bought me this hideous lapanese drumkit. Lava," Rob laughs, "this red/blue/green-lava sort of one. It was called a Star. It is interesting that even today I play this hideous lava drumkit, only it's Ludwig - or bits and pieces of Ludwig. I was always attracted to this incredibly bad-taste thing."

Purchasing the drumkit was an extremely significant happening in the Midnight Oil history book, because it marked the band's genesis. "I bought the drumkit because I'd been introduced to Jim Moginie, and we started the band."

So you haven't ever played in any other band! "No, I bought a drumkit to play with him, and he had this sort of funny white Japanese guitar. That was the birth of the band. I've never played with anyone else; he hasn't either. Martin was in the rival band at school, and when they eventually broke up, he originally joined on bass."

Once the band was fully intact - with Peter Garrett on lead vocals and Andrew James on bass - they began touring the pubs up and down the coast of New South Wales. Rob was already establishing his reputation as a flailing powerhouse when the band released its first LP, titled Midnight Oil, in 1978, which Rob describes as being a "historical document. It sounds like this sort of white noise, like Animal from the Muppets."

In 1979 they released Head injuries, which was followed in 1980 by an EP called Bird Noises. At this point bassist Andrew James left the band and Peter Gifford took his place. It was also in 1980 when Hirst began his reign in the RAM magazine reader's poll.

1981 saw Place WithoutA Postcard burning up the Oz charts like the previous releases, but it was 1982's 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2, 1 that catapulted the band into the royal ranks of success. It was on this album that U.S. audiences got their first taste of Hirst's power with the infamous "Power And The Passion," and then also on their first U.S. tour. Rob explains that he used a Linn drum machine on the track, but that the solo was done in one take. "We just put together everything you could hit and threw it in the studio. And [producer] Nick Launay said, 'We'll just sort of count down, and you start hitting things.' It was just adrenaline coming out, and it was thrown on top of the Linn track."

Red Sails In The Sunset entrenched Rob's drumming reputation even more with songs such as "Best Of Both Worlds" and "Kosciusko." Although his philosophy is generally to work the drums into the overall musical aims of the band, "Kosciusko" was an example of just the opposite. "'Kosciusko' sounds like a drum track and a vocal track with guitars put around the outside of it," Rob says. "There was so little room for anything else, once the drums had gone on it - they were so huge, typical Nick Launay stuff, huge drums and vocals - that you just put everything else around it."

It was not until Diesel And Dust that Midnight Oil really caught fire in the U.S. The album subsequently brought them on a long, three-part tour of the country. With his enthusiastic character and obnoxious water tank, Rob Hirst garnered a lot of attention on the '88 tour. Since Rob is one of the main songwriters in the band, it has helped him better tailor his drums into the songs right from Midnight Oil's initial stages of development.

Does he feel that has contributed to the overall cohesiveness of the drums in the music! "Yes, because if you're in a songwriting position, you realize that the drums aren't the 'be all and end all' of it. Drummers sort of get right into their instrument, which is great, but then you've got to get right out of it again, to put it into perspective. If all you want from a drum track is someone throwing a tambourine against a wall, then that's all it needs. So it's good for perspective."

Conversely, Rob's songwriting ability enables him to get drumming ideas from the very start. "If I've got a line and a lyric and a melody, then I'I1 think about what sort of tempo is needed. What happens is - and anyone who writes songs will tell you this - that lines will suggest tempos; there's a certain speed that they'll come out at."

With Rob being such a creative personality, both on the drums and with songwriting, it is surprising to see him with one band, the only band he's ever played with after all these years. Does he ever feel his creativity is stifled by this? "No, because we're fortunate to find members in Midnight Oil with as much musical latitude as we need and very open-minded attitudes towards music, so there has never been a need to look outside what Midnight Oil offers in the music world. I mean, Red Sails In The Sunset sounds like a different band on every track. That was always the attitude of the band: Whatever anyone would throw up, we'd have a go at it. Now we feel very fortunate that we haven't had to hack around at sessions; it must be awful to have to do that. I know there are people who are very good at it, but we've never had to do it. We come from the opposite school of thought; we've always believed in the chemistry of great bands. The sort of thing you get after years and years together, an instinctive thing that you have with four or five other people, is very precious.

"There are millions of players, millions of fantastic drummers," Rob continues, "but that's not the point. We're talking about music here, we're talking about songs, about moving people's minds and hearts. To do that you've got to combine yourself with people who feel the same way.

"One of the strengths about Midnight Oil is that no one has really done anything outside of the band, ever. The band has an ability to satisfy all musical whims and desires, and I don't feel you need to go outside the band context to do it. We get enough production expertise when we're making the records because they're all co-produced by the band, and we get enough chance to explore any musical area that the band has within the confines of the Oils."

The one slot in the band that has changed has been the bass player. Since the drum/bass relationship is usually an important one, has working with three different bassists caused problems for Rob? "When Andrew James, who was the original bass player, was in the band, there never was a rhythm section. He was sort of like a lead player on bass, and we never really played together anyway, so it didn't matter. Peter Gifford and I actually developed a rhythm section in a way. And I thought that chemistry would be very hard to replace, because, as I was saying before, great bands are made of years and years of sweating it out together. We've been lucky enough to find someone like Bones - I don't know how we do it, plucking out of thin air - who has fit in, in the space of 12 months. So feel as comfortable as I did all that time."

Many drummers get discouraged over the years, battling the ups and downs of the music business. But Rob Hirst always displays an endless amount of enthusiasm and self-confidence. He explains that his occupation in a way provides for this attitude, because the act of drumming itself is sort of rehabilitative. "I reckon there would be a lot less crime and domestic violence in the U.S. if everyone had a drumkit," he says. "I just think I'm lucky I have got this outlet to annihilate something that's supposed to be hit loudly and often.

"Everyone gets aggressive, everyone gets disappointed and frustrated, and I've had this drumkit to take all that out on; and that's a therapy in itself."

Apparently Rob has found a formula for success in the music business, which is to approach it with sort of an aggressive and enthusiastic attitude, while still being able to step outside its confines for objective analysis. And, as with all the Oils, Rob feels that his job is far more than just bashing away on the instrument. In order to use music to mould people's attitudes, Rob and his fellow musicians must treat their respective instruments as only one of the tools needed from the toolbox to achieve their goal. Rob also says that there is no ultimate goal for him, but rather he sees it all as just an ongoing process. "Well, I'd like to play a bit of drum track, write a bit of song...you know, the goals don't stop. I can tell you the next record won't sound like Diesel And Dust."

Expanding his work into other areas of drumming doesn't appear to be one of Rob's goals at this point, since he has no desire to get into session work or production, nor does he feel that he should teach. "People come to me and ask me if I do any teaching, and I usually refer them to a few great drummers I know in Sydney, like Jon Prior. It's not something I particularly would feel responsible enough to do," Rob laughs "Anyone learning from me might end up as a fairly reckless product of mine. I'd rather leave it in the capable hands of someone like Jon, who is a drummer's drummer."

With Rob's feelings toward being part of a musical entity and not just being a "drummer," it is unlikely we'll ever see him aspiring to reign over the drumming world. Rob agrees, re-emphasising his attitude: "As I said before, basically the long and short of it is that really none of us in the band has ever played with anyone else, and so I think that when Midnight Oil finishes, I'II probably send the lava red/blue/green drumkit back to the shop, and that'll be it."

From Modern Drummer, by Debbie Scott

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