they added.<\/a> \u201cFor now there are no words but there will always be songs.\u201d<\/p>\nHirst, born in Camden, New South Wales, founded the band that became Midnight Oil with schoolmates, and it released its debut album on its own independent label in 1978. The band steadily climbed the charts in its native Australia, pairing its brawny rock with sincere and outspoken political activism. Hirst was known for his stylish flair behind the kit, inspiring young Aussie drummers with his intro music for the TV show \u201cBeatbox,\u201d and the thrashing water-tank solo on \u201cPower And The Passion\u201d that brought down the house at live gigs. <\/p>\n
1983\u2019s \u201c10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1\u201d hit number three on the Australian charts, and 1987\u2019s album \u201cDiesel and Dust\u201d \u2014 a suite of songs about the troubles facing Indigenous Australians \u2014 launched the band to global fame. Its anthemic but urgent single \u201cBeds Are Burning\u201d became one of the group\u2019s best-known hits, topping out at number 17 on the Hot 100 in 1988. They released 1990\u2019s \u201cBlue Sky Mining\u201d with a concert outside Exxon\u2019s headquarters in New York to protest its handling of an oil spill in Alaska. The group also charted with singles \u201cBlue Sky Mine\u201d and \u201cThe Dead Heart,\u201d all of which had co-songwriting credits from Hirst.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take on, headlong, all the things that you\u2019re supposed to avoid. We fight the battles that we jointly feel we have to fight and we win some and we lose some,\u201d Hirst told United Press International in 1988.<\/p>\n
![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769077154_931_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Australian rock legends Midnight Oil \u2014 Bones Hillman, from left, Peter Garrett, Martin Rotsey, Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst \u2014 arrive for the 2006 Australia music industry awards the Arias, where they were to be inducted into the hall of fame.<\/p>\n
(Rick Rycroft \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Midnight Oil broke up in 2002 when singer Peter Garrett left to pursue a political career in Australia\u2019s Labor Party. They reunited in 2017 and released two more LPs, 2020\u2019s \u201cThe Makarrata Project\u201d and 2022\u2019s \u201cResist,\u201d and played their final show in 2022.<\/p>\n
Hirst had several side projects, including the band Ghostwriters, which released four albums, and the prolific blues-rock group Backsliders. He self-released an album, \u201cBorn Electric,\u201d in 2025, and an EP, \u201cA Hundred Years or More,\u201d with Midnight Oil bandmate Jim Moginie and Hamish Stuart. Hirst\u2019s daughters, Gabriella and Lex Hirst, also sang on the EP. He also auctioned off his drum kit last year to benefit two Australian musicians\u2019 charities, MusicNT and Support Act.<\/p>\n
He reflected on death in his later music, speaking about his illness in a recent interview with The Age.<\/a> \u201cI realise it\u2019s quite an existentialist bunch of songs, with titles like \u2018Are We There Yet?\u2019 and \u2018A Hundred Years or More,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI suppose I\u2019ve been thinking about lifespan and longevity \u2014 legacy, even. And, of course, that comes out in the songs… Now that I\u2019ve started counting back in life rather than counting forward, the days are even more precious.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rob Hirst, the drummer and co-founder of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil, has died. He was 70.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11416,72295,72296,9342,339,44539,72297,72292,7244,72291,48,52,51,47,50,49,58708,72294,8390,72293,10390],"class_list":{"0":"post-144533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-band","9":"tag-blue-sky-mining","10":"tag-chart","11":"tag-daughter","12":"tag-death","13":"tag-debut-album","14":"tag-ep","15":"tag-ferocious-drummer","16":"tag-group","17":"tag-hirst","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-la-headlines","20":"tag-la-news","21":"tag-los-angeles","22":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","23":"tag-los-angeles-news","24":"tag-midnight","25":"tag-native-australia","26":"tag-oil","27":"tag-rob-hirst","28":"tag-song"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}