Rock musician battling cancer has had almost ‘every treatment known to man’
The drummer for a revolutionary Australian rock band has opened up about his battle with pancreatic cancer.
Rob Hirst, who co-founded Midnight Oil in the 1970s, said he has been battling the disease for two years in a recent interview with The Australian .
"So it's ongoing," he told the newspaper. "I've had pretty much every treatment known to man — every scan, ultrasound, MRI. I've kind of had 'the works.'"
Hirst said he was diagnosed "early" and that the cancer was at stage 3 when he found it. The drummer then underwent months of chemotherapy before having an unsuccessful, eight-hour surgery to remove his tumor. Hirst is still getting both chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Cancer Australia reports that the survival rate for men with pancreatic cancer between 2016 and 2020 was 12% for men.
"Coming up to two years, I thought I just need to get this, literally, off my chest," Hirst told The Australian. "Also, I think that lesson for me — and maybe why I've lasted this long — is because, if you do have any of that kind of symptom, where there's something that you feel is wrong, just go and get a simple blood test. It could be life-changing, and life-extending."
Midnight Oil is multi-platinum-selling, award-winning band whose material has brought "a new sense of political and social immediacy to pop music," according to AllMusic .
The band's 1987 single "Beds Are Burning," which advocates for Indigenous land rights, is regarded as a landmark of Australian music. The song peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at No. 6 in Australia.
The band first formed in Sydney in 1972 as Farm, before changing its name to Midnight Oil in 1976. Midnight Oil released three albums before the band's breakthrough project, "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1," arrived in 1982. The album peaked at No. 3 in Australia and contained the top 10 single, "Power and the Passion."
Midnight Oil's next three albums — 1984's "Red Sails in the Sunset," 1987's "Diesel and Dust" and 1990's "Blue Sky Mining" — all topped the Australian charts. The latter peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 chart .
Midnight Oil earned two more chart-topping albums with 2020's "The Makarrata Project" and 2022's "Resist," which was released just one week before longtime bassist Bones Hillman died of cancer at the age of 62.
The band was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006.
