COOMA’S David Twohill was once an unlikely part of Australia’s “most unfashionable, most accessible, most relatable and busiest” award winning touring band Mental as Anything and now he is one of the subjects of a new book about the new wave pop and rock band’s life.

The book - Starting Out Just Drinking Beer: The Mental as Anything Story, by Stuart Lloyd with Dave Warner – was released in November and includes untold stories behind classics like Too Many Times, If You Leave Me Can I Come Too, Live It Up, Egypt and The Nips Are Getting Bigger and a de facto social history of a time when a band formed on top of a pool table went to the top of the music charts and enchanted millions of people along the way.

The book has achieved rave reviews, mostly because the authors had access to all of the band members and doesn’t shy away from the colour, the personalities, the drama, the fun and the “larrikinisms” of the members.

“I am happy with it,” David, who was known during the bands heyday as “Bird” - and did 28 years as drummer - said.

Dave spoke with The Monaro Postdown the line from Sydney, where he lives when not in his hometown and “doing stuff” with Monaro Art Group and playing occasional gigs only as a guest “because I had open heart surgery and carrying drums around is a bit tough these days”.

If he is in town on the third Sunday of the month when BerriJam open mic is on at Coolamatong Country Club in Berridale, he can often be found there, massaging a pair of drumsticks, providing the beat for a couple of buddies from the old days and keeping a low profile.

“They have done a good job of telling the story, even the bit where I was sacked from the band and then took them to court and won,” he said with a laugh. “Mostly it is about how we got together and the times we had.”

The famous drummer, 69, wanted to be an artist, not a musician - and attended art school after graduating high school. He had grown up around the Cooma music scene in the 1960s and 70s and recalls Cooma having seven nightclubs, growing up in the old pub and attending concerts in the town hall by Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.

“I have been hitting things for a long time,” he said. “As a kid I played on jumbo ice-cream cans. I filled them with water and played them on the table. I got my first drum kit at 13. I just taught myself, learning off records and stuff. “

“I was playing guitar, too, but there were too many guys much better than me, and you had to know how to tune it. Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts, they were my heroes. The only reason I got the gig with the Mentals was because I could keep it simple and play a backbeat they could hang on to. Not because I was actually any good.”

He studied at East Sydney Tech and formed a band with his classmates in 1976 to “meet girls and get free beers”. It was a great time.

“Next thing we were the hardest working band in Australia and had more Top 20 singles than any Aussie band," he said.

“We never started out wanting to be rock stars, couldn’t believe our luck really.”

David said he, Martin Murphy (Martin Plaza), Christopher O’Doherty (Reg Mombassa), Peter “Yoga Dog” O’Doherty and Andrew “Greedy” Smith didn’t think their band would last, so decided to change their names.

“We each chose a truckdrivers first name and added an elaborate second name, so I became Wayne de Lisle. Wayne being a truckies name and De Lisle a former Governor General of Australia, Lord de Lisle. Then I got a nickname of Bird because Reg thought I looked like a seagull eating chips.”

They played at the Unicorn hotel on top of the pool table, which was where they were discovered by some guys professing to be starting a record label called Regular Records and asking them to get onboard.

“We all thought, sure, but they did. They later signed Kate Ceberano and Icehouse, but we were the first. They released our first EP and Mental as Anything Play at Your Party, was sold out of car boots, it had Nips (The Nips are Getting Bigger) on it. Then we got a Festival Records distribution deal and were on the top 40.

“I think people liked us because we were always accessible, we weren’t like rock stars. You could walk into the dressing room, and we would talk to you. We took on the

Australiana thing, that became so fashionable with croc Dundee (we are on the movie soundtrack). We didn’t follow fashion, we were pretty punk starting out, playing old Australian songs, the Monkees, etc, new wave, but we were unique and different to what was around at the time. People related to us, we were not rock gods, we used to use Hills hoists and lawnmowers. We were in the right place at the right time, pretty lucky. “

David’s time with the band ended in September 2004, but it continued with new members.

Since then, he has kept his hand in, playing in Cooma with Gunther Gorman and Roger McCullick and the band The Bar Stars, and playing with 50 Million Beers in Sydney, Mangrove Boogie Kings, and an Irish band called Shameless Seamus and the Tullamore Dews.

Starting Out Just Drinking Beer: The Mental as Anything story

By Stuart Lloyd with Dave Warner

Puncher and Wattmann Publishers

Available in bookshops

$36 RRP