Bones is burning
From Avondale to Nashville, Midnight Oil bassist Bones Hillman looks back on a colourful career.
Becoming a part of Oz rock institution Midnight Oil will always remain the central chapter of Bones Hillman’s career. He joined the band, now on a reunion world tour, in 1987, just as the group went global with breakthrough album Diesel and Dust. He stayed until the 2002 split.
But before that, the New Zealand bassist had already left his own mark on Kiwi rock history. He had gone from learning his instrument in his Avondale teenage bedroom to joining New Zealand punk rock originals the Suburban Reptiles.
“It was the most documented band that did f--- all,” Hillman says with a laugh of the notorious group that gave him the nom de punk the bloke born Wayne Stevens has used since.
“Although it probably reads really well on paper, in reality we never really played that much. With the Suburban Reptiles, I think we did a gig once every six months if we could actually convince someone to let us use their space.”
From the ashes of that short-lived headline-grabbing band came the nervy pop of the Swingers. And sparked by Hillman’s bassline, which came to him during a sound-check at a Christchurch pub, Counting the Beat became a transtasman number one in 1981 and perennial advertising jingle.
“I didn’t sit down and come up with it. I put my antenna up into the ether and I channelled it from somewhere,” he says of the song co-credited to him and bandmates Phil Judd and drummer Buster Stiggs.
The Swingers foundered. So did his next band, Coconut Rough. Eventually, while Hillman was painting houses in Melbourne, his landlord, a chap by the name of Neil Finn, recommended him to Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst when the band needed a new bassist. Helped by his vocal harmony abilities, Hillman got the gig.
Initially, he was offered just an Australian and Canadian tour. But five albums later, he was still there – until frontman Peter Garrett decided he needed to swap political rock for actual politics and the band split.
Midnight Oil has occasionally got back together for charity shows but Hillman had given up on a more ambitious reunion. Then, last year, Garrett having quit politics and delivered a solo album and a memoir, Big Blue Sky, the band decided to reconvene. After dates in Europe and North and South America, they come to New Zealand in September before shows in Australia.
Hillman says the reunion decision came against the background of a year in which many of rock’s old guard left the stage; the band, whose ages hover around 60, began thinking, “Well, now’s good … Last year was fairly brutal for artists shuffling off this mortal coil from David Bowie right down to Ray Columbus. I think we saw a lot of people were checking out. We are still in good health and we can still play, we can still walk … so why not embrace this heritage, this great career and music that we have done?”
Hillman knows a thing or two about embracing heritage. After the Oils split, he returned to New Zealand for three years, which included the recording of Dave Dobbyn’s 2005 Available Light and the subsequent album tour.
Then he had another urge: Nashville.
“We are still in good health and we can still play, we can still walk … so why not?”
But once there, it was time to unplug.
“I had to learn some new tricks. Just being the electric rock bassist had no pull in this town. For some reason, everyone wanted an upright bass. That resurgence of young people playing string band music just came into the culture.”
Hillman bought a vintage double bass, listened to a lot of playing by Elvis Presley’s original bassist, Bill Black, and spent six months in the basement getting a new set of calluses on his hands as he learnt the instrument.
In the past decade in Nashville, he played on nearly 20 albums by various acts, touring with artists such as prominent country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook and appearing on Late Show with David Letterman. “It really was an education. Just a different appreciation about playing,” he says. “I had no idea on that 747 flight out of Auckland I would end up playing upright bass with hillbilly musicians at the Grand Ole Opry.”
His double-bass era came to a close after five or so years. He sold the instrument – “that was the end of the love affair” – and went back to electric bass guitar as a sideman to Canadian singer-songwriter Matthew Good.
Then came the call from the old firm in Australia.
“Man, I have always kept moving. I think part of doing this is you become a troubadour. If I was just living in the same city doing the same kind of thing, I would probably stop doing it.”
Midnight Oil play Spark Arena, Auckland, on September 9 and Horncastle Arena, Christchurch, on September 11. Peter Garrett appears at WORD Christchurch on September 10.