‘We were just amazed’: Mindset like anything has its highs and lows – and hits the road again | Australian music

AAmong the many surreal moments in the opening scenes of Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story are shots of tens of thousands of Scottish football fans singing the lyrics of an Australian pop song like a war chant.

“We were blown away by it… and were reasonably happy that suddenly tens of thousands of Glaswegians were singing it,” says guitarist Reg Mombasa as he pours coffee in the kitchen on the veranda of his Glebe home. Rangers fans adopted the Mentals’ 1985 song Live It Up as an anthem, a novelty that propelled the song to the top of several British charts. Four decades later, Mombasa and his brother, bassist Peter O’Doherty, took on a new version of the band once again.

The documentary, which opens in Australian cinemas on March 5, tells the story of a group of art students who turned their hobby into a hit machine: international success and platinum records – then meddling studios, drinking problems and lawsuits. It shows a band coming to terms with their heritage and heritage – and how they manage to keep the show on the road.

The new era of Mental As Anything was launched just before Christmas, with a big party in the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly. “There were about 800 people, many young people, and they were all singing together. I found it very interesting,” says Mombasa. “Manly was good. We were nervous about it, because we hadn’t played those songs for 25 years and hadn’t done a huge amount of rehearsals.”

Reg Mombasa and Martin Plaza (aka Murphy) founded Mental As Anything in 1976, while studying at Sydney College of the Arts. Plaza had a golden voice and Mombasa had a unique slide guitar sound, resulting in a distinctive sound. They were joined by O’Doherty on bass, fellow students Dave Twohill on drums, and Andrew “Greedy” Smith on vocals, harmonica and keyboards.

On most Monday nights in 1977, every rock and punk rock fan would be in the back bar of the Unicorn Hotel in Paddington, dripping with sweat as the Mentals unleashed a host of classic pop and their rather bizarre melodies. Here Martin Fabini and producer Cameron Allen decided to create a record label called Regular – with the first signing of the Mentals team. The first release, The Nips Are Getting Bigger, was a huge success. Twenty-four more Top 40 entries followed – more than any other Australian artist.

In 1985, Mental As Anything moved from Regular to Sony and recorded a fifth album, Fundamental; This would be their biggest blow and would sow the seeds of their demise, as budgets grew and artistic control diminished. American producer Richard Gottehrer – who discovered Blondie – preferred Greedy’s sentimental, sad songs to the arch, sarcastic songs of others. His recordings relied on drum machines and keyboards, a step away from the organic chemistry the band had mastered thus far.

The single “Live It Up from Fundamental” was a massive hit in Australia, the UK and Canada, so the electronics stayed; O’Doherty and Twohill were barely used on the next album, Mouth to Mouth.

“I hated it,” O’Doherty says of this album. “I personally hated it and felt depressed as a musician. I thought I wasn’t good enough. And [Twohill] I felt pretty much the same.

Cracks began to appear, exacerbated by the pressure to deliver another blow. The problem with being a party band was the partying. “We had a tendency to drink most of our contestants before going on stage. Not always, but sometimes. Maybe that was part of what gave us our personality, we were built sloppily to be part of the whole aesthetic.”

For some, the drinking got out of hand, and a series of events – the loss of their manager Jeremy Fabinyi, Greedy falling off the horse, Plaza’s solo career, and Mombasa’s growing fame as a visual artist (his style became synonymous with the Mambo brand) – put the band on a downward spiral.

In 2000, the O’Doherty brothers left to focus on their side project, Dog Trumpet, and their paintings. However, they all remained friends – until a falling out in 2004 between Plaza, Grady and Toohill, which led to Toohill’s dismissal, resulting in a bitter unfair eviction case won by the drummer. In 2016, Plaza, now battling cancer, hung up his hat, and Mental As Anything was just a greedy, self-employed Smith — until he suffered an unexpected, fatal heart attack in December 2019.

The band’s quirky and colorful story attracted writer/director Matthew Walker, following the success of his 2021 music documentary, I Wanita. He took the project to Beyond Productions, where the band’s first frontman, Martin Fabini, served as executive producer.

The resulting film is fast-paced and action-packed, capturing not only the highs and lows of their story but the magic of the band’s unique blend of pop art and pop music.

“You could do it 50 different ways, because they had so many things,” O’Doherty says of the film, but Mombasa feels some dark moments were avoided. “We’re not a band that has as much tragedy and melodrama as the Beatles or the Stones…but there’s an entertainment factor in this conflict beneath the surface of all this great music. This stuff is what people like to see.”

It was the film that inspired the brothers to pick up the mantle of touring nationally. To their surprise, offers came quickly, including a featured spot at Bluesfest. Three new players were recruited: guitarist Simon Rudston-Brown, keyboardist Shannon Stitt and O’Doherty’s son Declan on drums.

“There was a lot of uncertainty and apprehension at the beginning,” O’Doherty says. “We’ve been through it [Plaza and Twohill]; We wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t given us that approval.” He says fans can expect more of the “original flavour” of Mental As Anything. “We were worried about whether it would sound original enough to do justice to the songs themselves. This, as you know, is not easy.

The live set contains most of the hits, some deep cuts that haven’t been played in 45 years and some weird covers. The excitement of revisiting old repertoire is only slightly dampened by the absence of Greedy Smith, who has always been a huge Mentals fan.

“It’s a shame that Greedy hasn’t seen recent success in the UK. He would have been thrilled to have his song blasted by a huge stadium full of Scottish football fans. He would have been tickled pink.”

• Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story is in cinemas from March 5. Mental As Anything will play Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne and Brisbane in June, with tickets on sale now.