Among the many surreal moments in the opening scenes of Live It Up: The Mental as Anything Story is footage of tens of thousands of Scottish football fans caterwauling the lyrics to an Australian pop song like it’s a war chant.
“We were just astonished by that … and reasonably happy about it suddenly being sung by tens of thousands of Glaswegians,” says guitarist Reg Mombassa as he pours coffee in the kitchen of his Glebe terrace. Rangers fans adopted the Mentals’ 1985 hit Live It Up as an anthem, a novelty which propelled the song to the top of many British charts. Four decades later, Mombassa and his bassist brother Peter O’Doherty are taking a new iteration of the band back on the road.
The documentary, which is released in Australian cinemas on 5 March, tells the story of a bunch of art students turning their hobby into a hit machine: the international success and the platinum records – and then the meddling studios, the drinking problems and the lawsuits. It shows a band coming to terms with their heritage and legacy – and how they managed to keep the show on the road.
The new Mental as Anything era kicked off just before Christmas, at a large gig in the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly. “There were about 800 people, and a lot of young people, and they’re all singing along. I found it quite gratifying,” says Mombassa. “Manly was good. We were both feeling nervous about it, because we hadn’t played these songs for 25 years and we hadn’t had a huge amount of rehearsal.”
Reg Mombassa and Martin Plaza (AKA Murphy) formed Mental as Anything in 1976, while studying at Sydney College of the Arts. Plaza had a golden voice and Mombassa a unique slide guitar attack, making for a distinctive sound. They were joined by O’Doherty on bass and fellow students Dave Twohill on drums and Andrew “Greedy” Smith on vocals, harmonica and keyboards.
Most Monday nights in 1977, every hipster and would-be punk rocker was in the back bar of the Unicorn hotel in Paddington, sweating as the Mentals unleashed a set of classic pop and their own somewhat quirky tunes. It was here that Martin Fabinyi and producer Cameron Allen resolved to start a record label called Regular – with the Mentals their first signing. The first release, The Nips Are Getting Bigger, was a hit. 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; it would be their biggest hit and sow the seeds of their demise, as the budgets grew and the artistic control shrank. American producer Richard Gottehrer – who had discovered Blondie – preferred Greedy’s sentimental and melancholic songs over the ironic, arch tracks by the others. The records he made relied on drum machines and keyboards, a step away from the organic chemistry the band had hitherto perfected.
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,” says O’Doherty of that album. “I personally hated it and I felt dismal as a musician. I thought I wasn’t good enough. And [Twohill] felt pretty much the same.”
Cracks began to appear, exacerbated by the pressure to deliver another hit. The problem with being a party band was the parties. “We did have a tendency of drinking most of our rider before going on stage. Not always, but sometimes. That was probably part of what gave us our personality, We built sloppy in to be part of the whole aesthetic.”
For some, the drinking got out of hand, and a series of events – losing their manager Jeremy Fabinyi, Greedy falling off a horse, Plaza’s solo career, and Mombassa’s growing acclaim as a visual artist (his style would become synonymous with the Mambo brand) – put the band on the downslide.
In 2000 the O’Doherty brothers left to concentrate on their side project Dog Trumpet, and on their painting. Nonetheless, they all remained friends – until a rift in 2004 between Plaza, Greedy and Twohill, which saw Twohill sacked, leading to a bitter unfair dismissal case which the drummer won. In 2016, Plaza, now battling cancer, hung up his hat, and Mental as Anything was just Greedy Smith and hired hands – right up until his unexpected, fatal heart attack in December 2019.
The strange and colourful story of the band attracted writer/director Matthew Walker, after the success of his 2021 music documentary I’m Wanita. He took the project to Beyond Productions, where the band’s first label boss, Martin Fabinyi, happened to be an executive producer.
The resulting film is fast-paced and action-packed, capturing not only the peaks and troughs of their story, but the magic of the band’s unique blend of pop art and pop music.
“You could make it 50 different ways, really, because they had so much stuff,” says O’Doherty of the film – but Mombassa feels that some of the darker moments have been avoided. “We’re not a band that has the same amount of tragedy and melodrama as the Beatles or the Stones … But there’s an entertainment factor in that conflict below the surface of all this great music. That stuff is what people love to see.”
It was the film that inspired the brothers to pick up the mantle for a national tour. To their surprise, the offers came in fast, including a prime spot at Bluesfest. Three new players were recruited: guitarist Simon Rudston-Brown, keyboard player Shannon Stitt and O’Doherty’s son Declan on the drums.
“There was a lot of uncertainty and apprehension at first,” says O’Doherty. “We passed it by [Plaza and Twohill]; we wouldn’t have done it had they not given us that approval.” He says fans can expect more of the “original flavour” of Mental as Anything. “We were concerned whether it’s gonna sound authentic enough to do justice to the songs themselves. And that’s, you know, not an easy thing.”
The live set contains most of the hits, some deep cuts that haven’t been played in 45 years and a few eccentric covers. The excitement of revisiting the old repertoire is only slightly shaded by the absence of Greedy Smith, who was always the Mentals’ biggest fan.
“It’s a shame Greedy didn’t see the recent success in the UK. He would have been delighted by his song being bellowed away by a huge stadium full of Scottish football supporters. He would have been tickled pink.”
Live It Up: The Mental as Anything Story is in cinemas from 5 March. Mental as Anything are playing Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne and Brisbane in June, with tickets on sale now.
