Strolling with Chris O’Doherty through his Sydney neighbourhood, Glebe, nestled between harbour’s-edge parklands and the greater inner west, is a trip through decades of family memories. It’s also an absorbing conversational journey as the visual artist and musician (AKA Reg Mombassa, perhaps best known as founding member of celebrated Australian band Mental As Anything) talks rock’n’roll lifestyles, paintings, UFOs, reincarnation, ageing, death – and his mysterious father.
Before we enter the lane through the back gate of the lived-in family terrace where O’Doherty and his wife, Martina, have lived for 45 years and raised three children, now adults (one, Los Angeles based actor/comedian Claudia, still keeps a bedroom), we sit for a few moments in the kitchen. It’s alive with the signs of his artistic life: a small, battered, Gibson amp; guitars leaning against chairs; his art on the walls, a kitchen table strewn with newspapers, pencils, crayons and sketchpads.
