Rob Hirst, drummer and founding member of Australian rock band Midnight Oil, has died at 70. The news broke early Monday morning Australian time, sending shockwaves through the music world.
Hirst wasn't just Midnight Oil's rhythmic backbone - he was a co-writer, creative force, and the conscience behind some of the band's most politically charged work. While frontman Peter Garrett delivered the vocals and became the public face, Hirst's drumming and songwriting shaped the sound that made Midnight Oil matter.
Hirst helped write many of the band's most enduring songs, including "Beds Are Burning" - the track that brought indigenous rights issues to global audiences in 1987.
Because Midnight Oil was never just a rock band. They were activists who happened to be exceptional musicians. They used their platform to fight for environmental protection, indigenous land rights, and nuclear disarmament decades before "socially conscious artist" became a marketing category.
Their 1982 album 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 protested nuclear weapons. Diesel and Dust centered indigenous Australian voices. When Garrett eventually entered politics, serving as Australia's Minister for the Environment, it wasn't a career pivot - it was the logical extension of everything the band had always stood for.
And Hirst was there for all of it, providing the driving beats that turned protest into anthems.
The music industry loves to romanticize "artists who stood for something," usually after they're safely dead or irrelevant. Midnight Oil did it while it mattered, when it could cost them commercial success. Hirst spent five decades proving that rock and roll could be both artistically serious and morally committed.
