Creatures of Leisure

The band Mental As Anything – Martin Plaza (guitar, vocals), Reg Mombassa (guitar, vocals), Peter O’Doherty (bass, vocals), Greedy Smith (keyboards, harmonica and vocals) and David ‘Bird’ Twohill (drums) – were a group of cash-strapped art students who began playing together in 1976. Their first album, Get Wet, was a smash hit in 1979. Counting more than a dozen songs about drinking in their discography, including the classics ‘Too Many Times’ and ‘The Nips are Getting Bigger’, the ‘world’s greatest garage band’ now have more Top 40 singles to their credit than any other Australian group and have sold millions of records world-wide. By 2005 only Smith and Plaza remained of the original members, but Mental as Anything released an acclaimed acoustic album, Plucked. Smith estimates that over forty years, the longest break he has had from performing is six weeks. The Doherty brothers continue to perform in the band Dog Trumpet, formed in the 1990s, billed as ‘arguably the loudest soft-rock band in southern NSW’. Chris O’Doherty (Reg Mombassa), well known as a designer for the brand Mambo, has 21 artworks in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales alone.

Paul Worstead, poster artist and fabric printer, met the five band members while they were all at art school; it was he who suggested the name Mental As Anything. Worstead designed the cover for the debut album, Get Wet (1979), as well as series of posters promoting the releases of Creatures of Leisure (1983) and Garage (1998).