Take 5 with Peter Garrett
About this episode
Peter Garrett discusses his life in music, activism, and personal loss while reflecting on the theme 'Songs of Change'.
Peter Garrett has been an unstoppable force of Australian music for decades. As the iconic frontman of Midnight Oil, a grassroots activist, and a former Federal Parliamentarian, he's spent a lifetime driving change: from the pubs of Sydney to the remote outback communities that reshaped the band's sound, from the floor of Parliament to the world's biggest stages. He's never stopped pushing. But beneath the towering public persona lies something unexpected. When Zan Rowe gave him the theme "Songs of Change," Peter Garrett revealed a softer, surprisingly open side: a man moved to tears by music, still searching for love and meaning, and still driven by hope in a world that often feels hopeless. He traces it all back to a suburban childhood where his parents spun protest records on a gramophone, through the tragic, sudden loss of both parents as a young man, to the formation of Midnight Oil with Rob Hirst and Jim Moginie, a partnership that would define Australian rock for half a century. He recalls the 1986 Blackfella Whitefella tour through remote Indigenous communities with Warumpi Band as the experience that moved him more deeply than playing to 50,000 people in Rio or New York…
More episodes of Take 5
- Take 5 with David Byrne
- Take 5 with Darren Hayes from Savage Garden
- Take 5 with Shania Twain
- INTRODUCING: Brand new TV episodes of Take 5 with Zan Rowe
- Best Bits: Paul McCartney on The Beatles and writing a song
- Best Bits: Kacey Musgraves on Tame Impala and Dolly Parton!
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Take 5 podcast page.