Oils To Be Inducted

Midnight Oil will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the October 29 Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) awards.

Ed St John, chairman of the ARIA awards committee and president of Warner Music Australia, said, “Midnight Oil is one of the greatest rock & roll bands this country has ever produced. They made music that mattered. They covered subjects that had rarely been addressed in a rock song before: land rights, the environment, social justice, war, human rights and Australian history. There has never been a band like this, and I doubt there will ever be one like them again.”

The act sold 12 million units worldwide of 17 albums, including 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 (November 1982), Diesel And Dust (August 1987) – which yielded the Top 20 U.S. hit “Beds Are Burning” – Blue Sky Mining (March, 1990), and Earth, Sun and Moon (February 1993).

The act broke up in December 2002 after singer Peter Garrett left to enter politics. He is a Member of Parliament for the Federal Labour Party in the New South Wales seat of Kingsford-Smith.

– Bryan Jones