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Midnight Oil performs during their farewell tour 3 September at Spark Arena. Photo: RNZ / Nik Dirga
"They really believed that Midnight Oil was a machine that they were all part of," says the director of a new documentary about the legendary Australian band.
The Hardest Line tells the story of Australia's quintessential rock band, for the first time.
Across their 45-year career, 'The Oils' helped shape modern Australia with anthems like 'US Forces', 'Beds Are Burning', 'Blue Sky Mine' and 'Redneck Wonderland'.
The band merged from Australia's thriving late '70s pub rock scene, Paul Clarke told RNZ's Music 101.
"Peter Garrett became a spokesman for pub rock really, this generation of people who in Australia in the '70s, the young people were quite kind of downtrodden.
"I really think that pub rock was a rebellion of a generation, and Peter really became the spokesperson for that generation."
With his distinctive voice and towering presence, the founding members realised they were on to something when he auditioned for singer in the band, Clarke said.
"They advertised for a singer, and he was the only one that turned up, and he actually was driving, and they were still at school, at a school called Sydney Grammar, and they were rehearsing in this grammar school. Rob [Hirst] was there, and Martin [Rotsey] was there.
"It's a school that prime ministers like Malcolm Turnbull went to, quite a free-thinking private school in Sydney and Darlinghurst, and he turned up very cynical and kind of mistrustful of the situation, but he realised that they could really play, and they realised that you would never forget him if you ever saw the band."
The band famously fused a hard driving sound with socially aware lyrics, he said.
"There are moments on the Diesel and Dust record that are so elegiac about the First Nation experience in Australia, songs like 'Warakurna', any great Irish musician would be so proud of that song.
"And beautiful things, like 'Beds Are Burning', where the impetus to act on what's been a real wormhole for Australia in black-white relations and just the recognition of what went on, and it's just put so simply and directly to the audience."
The band have also used their platform to stage some famous protests, he said.
"During the Exxon Valdez breakup and oil spill they performed in front of the Exxon building in midtown Manhattan. And they put up a placard saying, 'Midnight Oil makes you dance. Exxon makes you sick.' And they just started playing, they owned midtown Manhattan out front of Radio City Music Hall for an hour."
Another act of "fearlessness" was at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
"They wore sorry pyjamas when they performed at the Olympics in 2000 and it was to demonstrate the fact that the government just could not say sorry to First Nations people for the treatment that they had inflicted.
"And so, they did it in order just to really show up the Prime Minister John Howard at that time.
"I love the fact that they were so brave to act on what they did and so clever in the way that they were able to achieve those moments, I think they will really last forever."
Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line will screen at the NZIFF Film festival. Check your local NZIFF programme for dates here.