The two-weeks that became a lifetime in Mental As Anything

A fill-in role that was meant to last two weeks turned into a 22-year career for Pete O’Doherty, who is now back playing the songs that helped define Mental As Anything as the band marks 50 years.

The band’s 50-year milestone is also being marked with the release of a feature documentary, Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story, which was released in cinemas in March.

O’Doherty stepped in as a teenager when the band’s bass player went on holiday, a short-term favour that quickly became permanent.

“I borrowed a bass and filled in for two weeks, which eventually became 22 years,” he said.

Mental As Anything formed out of Sydney’s art school scene in the mid-1970s, when Chris O’Doherty (who performs as Reg Mombassa) and Martin Murphy (who became Martin Plaza) started playing together after meeting at a party.

There was no clear plan at first, just a group of art students working things out as they went.

They played for months without a name until a gig at a venue in Redfern forced the issue.

“One was ‘Mental As Anything,’ and that’s the one he chose for the poster. Once it was in print, it stuck,” O’Doherty said.

From there, the band built slowly, developing a following through regular live shows rather than any single breakthrough moment.

One of those early anchors was a Monday night residency at the Unicorn Hotel in Paddington, where the setup was cramped and chaotic.

“It was pretty wild — two guys on a pool table and me squeezed on a tiny stage with the drums,” he said.

Those shows helped shape both the sound and the dynamic of the group.

Greedy Smith began sitting in on harmonica before moving onto organ, adding another layer to the music.

Songwriting followed a similar pattern, with multiple members contributing rather than relying on a single voice.

“From the first album on, we had four contributing songwriters,” O’Doherty said.

 

“It was a very even spread across all nine albums. Once the snowball started, it just kept rolling.”

That balance became a defining feature of the band’s catalogue.

The band released 22 Top 40 hits across their career.

It now stretches across decades and includes around 25 singles.

Fifty years on, pulling a setlist together means working through that history.

“We cherry-pick from those, plus some album tracks and obscure ones we haven’t played for 45 years,” he said.

“People will recognise almost every song we play.”

There are still certain songs that come with an expectation.

“You can’t help but play the obvious ones like ‘Nips Are Getting Bigger,’ ‘Too Many Times,’ and ‘Live It Up’.”

O’Doherty is hearing those songs differently now.

“It’s just one of those good pop songs,” he said of Live It Up.

“Now that I’m playing them again, I’m appreciating how well-constructed they were.”

At the time, those recordings reflected a changing industry.

The band began with a stripped-back sound before moving into a more polished style in the mid-1980s.

“By the mid-80s, big record companies were spending a lot of money on making records and film clips,” he said.

“It got weighed down by the commercial part of it.”

The difference is most obvious on stage.

Early shows were unpredictable and often chaotic.

“Many times,” he said, when asked if he had ever had to dodge a beer bottle.

“I remember dodging full bottles of beer smashing on the back wall.”

 

On one occasion, the band found itself playing to a hostile crowd at a bikey festival in Victoria.

“They’d had an AC/DC cover band playing for three hours before us, and they didn’t want to tolerate our pop songs,” he said.

“We were getting beer cans thrown at us.”

Adapting on the fly was the only way through.

“We redirected the playlist to more blues-oriented stuff and we got away with it,” he said.

In contrast, recent performances have been far more controlled, playing large festival stages with consistent sound systems.

“It’s chalk and cheese,” he said.

“We’ve done shows like St Kilda Festival in front of a huge crowd, and a lot of young people were singing our songs back at us.”

That shift is coming from audiences who were not around when the songs were first released.

The O’Doherty brothers left the band at the end of 1999, though the group continued in different forms over the years.

Coming back to the songs now, O’Doherty is hearing them differently.

Some of the strongest memories remain tied to specific places.

The Northern Rivers has long been one of them.

“We’ve been playing up there since the early days — Ballina, Bangalow, Byron, Lismore,” he said.

“It always felt like you were on holiday even though we were working.”

“And we probably smoked too much pot while we were doing it.”

Mental As Anything will plat at the Mullum Roots Festival in Mullumbimby on July 11 and 12.