oral history
THE MAKING OF THE POWER AND THE PASSION MUSIC VIDEO Sydney history, artists’ rights and the perfection of the Midnight Oil “formula” – it’s all wrapped up in the making of the Power And The Passion music video, as Kris Swales discovers when he tracks down three of the key players.
I
t’s a cement pylon like many others under the Woolloomooloo viaduct – covered in the ubiquitous markings of an inner-Sydney graff writer, with a forlorn pile of plush toys rotting at its base. This particular pylon may be stripped bare, but the large painting on the next pylon along is one of nine surviving from the Woolloomooloo Mural Project. Conceived in 1982 as a community statement against rampant development and a document of the area’s history, the project also included seven temporary paintings, including Robin Heks and Graham Kime’s now iconic I Love A Plundered Country where the plush toy shrine now stands. With those five words, Heks and Kime captured some of the spirit of Midnight Oil’s Power And The Passion, released later that year. Then the music video, shot under the viaduct, announced them to the rest of the world. Rob Hirst (Drummer): I think Ray Argall and co went looking for a place that would also represent this sense that we had back then – which, by the way, is very much still alive – of the big media barons, ahem, Rupert – and others and big corporate greed running the show against the endeavours and the passions of the little guy. So we found that location down in Woolloomooloo. Merilyn Fairskye (Artist/Curator, Woolloomooloo Mural Project): We had a real run-in with Midnight Oil at the time because they didn’t ask our permission to shoot in front of the murals. Ray Argall (Director): It is interesting that now we live in a world where Intellectual Property is a really crucial issue and I’m acutely aware of it in all the work I do. However 30 years ago the process we went through
26 • THE MUSIC • 25TH SEPTEMBER 2013
was a very simple, straightforward clearance with the Council to work in a public area. Merilyn Fairskye: As one of the two organising artists on the project I did go and speak to their manager* – who, I have to say, was rather hostile. Ray Argall: I think Gary [Morris, Midnight Oil’s manager until July 2013] would’ve been the main person that negotiated with them to resolve anything. I have to say that in my experience, Gary and Peter [Garrett] both deal with the absolute most integrity. Merilyn Fairskye: Eventually they agreed to pay the two artists a usage fee of $50 [$157, adjusted for inflation]. Ray Argall: The [music video] budgets were not big. Anywhere between the lowest for around $1000 [$3,144, adjusted] and
the highest probably didn’t get above 10, and we were probably in the middle ground somewhere. Merilyn Fairskye: I don’t want to make out that we hate Midnight Oil or anything like that! It’s just because we were so involved at the time with defending artists’ rights; we were all real activists around it. Ray Argall: Once we’d found that area to work in... If you look in the clip you can see when we’re circling around, there’s quite a little crowd of people. You know, there’s music playing and it’s probably a warm late spring night or something. Rob Hirst: It was a really cold winter’s night, I remember. I was sick as a dog and didn’t really want to do it. I got dragged out there but as soon as the music started we were kind of on. Ray Argall: We rolled the playback pretty much from beginning to end and I just captured that energy not unlike I would’ve on stage, however there was no audience so I was able to go everywhere with the camera. We were probably there for a couple of hours. We did around four runs of the song. Rob Hirst: Pete’s dancing and his performance is just great. It really just defined that unique dancing style. After I kicked the drums off the thing I had nothing more to hit, so I just grabbed a drum and sort of do this weird, Whirling Dervish thing along with Peter. Ray Argall: I also got them the next day to basically do the same thing, a few runs of the song in a studio against a chroma key background. That was going to give me the parts, what I needed from them, to work with all of the other images I was going to put together.