Reflection on Andrew `Greedy’ Smith.

I first met Greedy in 1978 at the Civic Hotel. Mentals
were supporting us and I was trying to get set-up but all this garrulous guy
wanted to do was compare the size and capability of our organs, mine Tiesco,
his Farfisa.

We connected instantly. 
The guitarists were the sex magnets of a band, strutting around with
their phallic symbols.   Greedy and I
were Billy Bunters stuck behind the shop counter, the guys who played third
eighteen and got sent to long on in the hope that nobody would be able to hit a
ball that far because we‘d likely drop it. 
It wasn’t unusual for Greedy and I to be mistaken for one another –
well, for me to be mistaken for Greedy, anyway. One time I had this
particularly long conversation with a young woman who was complimenting me on
my songs and performance – I should have smelled a rat immediately because
women didn’t tend to like Girls Wank and Hot Crotch all that much – but I was
basking in her admiration until she started to ask about Martin and Reg and how
were they doing. Only then the penny dropped. I never told her who was who.

Tony Durant and Greedy 2016 Fundraiser for bushfire victims. WACA.

The Mentals and Suburbs got on really well and we would
tour the Hume Highway often passing one another in some glamourous location
like Holbrook, or sharing cheap beds at Macy’s Hotel.  Separate beds.

I took a break from touring for about ten years. My first
trip back on the Hume Highway, who did I see passing the other way but the
Mentals. They hadn’t stopped.  I doubt
anybody in the world has played more gigs than Greedy over these last forty-two
years. I mean that.

Fremantle 2017

Of course, I can’t believe he’s gone, and it’s only the
fact it’s free entry here today that convinces me he wasn’t just boosting
numbers.

People sometimes ask me what’s the best gig you’ve been
to: and Brian Wilson and Elton John are up there, but so is the night 6 of us
crammed into Rod Gillett’s blue Zephyr and went to the Revesby Workers Club to
watch Mentals play hit after hit.  It was
staggering just how successful they had been. I thought it was hard getting one
it. They had about nineteen. 

Never was anybody less appropriately named than `Greedy’.  He should have been named `Generous’ because
that’s what he was. He always gave. On my last album WHEN, he started off doing
backing vocals, then added harmonica, and even did some art for the track Lonely
Sailor.  

Greedy’s art for Lonely Sailor.

Serious critics of art, including popular music, always sing
the praises of the angst ridden, layered metaphoric artist, and elevate them
ahead of seemingly lighter material. But the truth is that it’s often the
modest, incidental, delicate and seemingly trivial that offer the greatest
insights and truths into our humanity. 
It’s just as difficult, maybe more difficult, to make somebody laugh as
to make them cry. This is where the Mentals excel.

Greedy was without peer in making us feel good, about
ourselves and each other. That is the rarest gift of all.  That is true genius.  His most famous song, Live It Up, is
fundamentally about trust. About how even though we’re vulnerable, we need to
trust someone they can make our lives better.

Greedy, Nicole and me Perth 2017. Greedy and I favoured similar wardrobe.

Everybody here today trusted Greedy to make us feel
better.  And he never once let us down.