David Twohill (born 21 April 1954) is an Australian

musician A musician is someone who Composer, composes, Conducting, conducts, or Performing arts#Performers, performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general Terminology, term used to designate a person who fol ...

formerly with rock band

Mental As Anything Mental As Anything was an Australian new wave and pop rock band that formed in Sydney in 1976. Its most popular line-up (which lasted from 1977 to 1999, and recorded all of its charting singles and albums) was Martin Plaza (birth name Martin ...

who is also known by the pseudonym Wayne DeLisle or as Bird.

Early life

Twohill was born in

Cooma, New South Wales Cooma is a town in the south of New South Wales, Australia. It is located south of the national capital, Canberra, via the Monaro Highway. It is also on the Snowy Mountains Highway, connecting Bega, New South Wales, Bega with the Riverina. ...

, Australia on 21 April 1954. After matriculating at Waverley College in 1972, where he was the drummer in a school band named "Thackeray's Onion", he attended the East Sydney Technical College at Darlinghurst. Here he met, and later auditioned on drums with, fellow students Chris O'Doherty, Martin Murphy and Steve Coburn who were putting a band together. The band would soon be called Mental As Anything and would become well known around Australia and the world. Twohill performed under the

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

Wayne de Lisle for most of his time as a member. In September 2004 he was sacked from the band by two of his bandmates. He lodged a

wrongful dismissal In law, wrongful dismissal, also called wrongful termination or wrongful discharge, is a situation in which an employee's contract of employment has been terminated by the employer, where the termination breaches one or more terms of the contra ...

case against his former bandmates with the NSW Industrial Relations Commission in 2007, which he won.

Mental As Anything

2001 bushfires

Twohill, with his wife Sue, was in the national news on Christmas Day 2001 when their house was lost in bushfires—a benefit gig, Bird's Big Burnout, occurred at Revesby in early 2002 and a four-piece

Midnight Oil Midnight Oil (known informally as "The Oils") are an Australian rock band composed of Peter Garrett (vocals, harmonica), Rob Hirst (drums), Jim Moginie (guitar, keyboard) and Martin Rotsey (guitar). The group was formed in Sydney in 1972 by H ...

minus

Peter Garrett Peter Robert Garrett (born 16 April 1953) is an Australian musician, environmentalist, activist and former politician. In 1973, Garrett became the lead singer of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil. As a performer he is known for his sign ...

performed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Twohill, David 1954 births Living people Australian rock drummers 20th-century drummers 20th-century Australian musicians 20th-century Australian male musicians 21st-century Australian drummers 21st-century Australian musicians 21st-century Australian male musicians Australian male drummers People from Cooma Musicians from New South Wales