Mental as Anything

Mental as Anything formed in Sydney in 1976, a gang of visual artists who played new wave pop like a lark and ended up with a string of hits. The lineup that made every record that charted had Martin Plaza singing and playing guitar, Reg Mombassa on lead guitar, his brother Peter O'Doherty on bass, Wayne de Lisle behind the kit and Andrew "Greedy" Smith singing and blowing harmonica between keyboard parts. Four of them wrote the songs, alone or together, and they all painted too: the band made most of its own covers, posters and videos, and Mombassa's art ended up on Mambo clothing.

The 1978 EP Plays at Your Party brought "The Nips Are Getting Bigger", a boozy, bouncy singalong. Cats & Dogs followed in 1981 with "If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?", a hangdog pop song with a grin on its face, and "Too Many Times" came the same year. "Live It Up" went further than anything, landing in the film Crocodile Dundee and climbing to number 3 in Britain. They had fun with other people's songs as well, taking on Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Wreckless Eric.

The ARIA Hall of Fame inducted them in 2009. Smith, the last founder still touring with the band, died in December 2019, and that stopped everything cold, until Mombassa and O'Doherty revived the name in late 2025 and lined up a 50th anniversary tour.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.